Not too hot to weave ...

Arletta making rag placemats

With the Studio and Garden Tour 2012 now behind us and a hot, dry summer settling in, things are getting  back to normal at the weaving studio. This week, Chris has three women from Illinois who are spending four days taking weaving lessons and producing their own treasures.

Keena weaving a dish towel.

Myrna making huck placemats.

The gardens were affected by the drought and nighttime visits from our deer friends. Chris notes that the weather must make it tough on the deer, too, so we're cutting them a little slack and a day lily snack or two.

Temps around here have hit 107, and it's been weeks since we've had significant rainfall. Fourth of July fireworks locally have been postponed until Labor Day. We are managing to keep the veggie garden going with water from the green tank in the middle of the picture below. The tank fills from the gutters and downspout at the back of the studio (when it rains) and from the pond on our property when it doesn't.

Part of the back garden ... tomatoes and kale.

We met some interesting folks on the tour, with the first visitors being from Edinburgh. Scotland, that is, not Indiana, and lots of folks from Indianapolis, Columbus, Ohio and Louisville, Ky. Visitors trying their hands at weaving produced two "community rugs" which will be given to local charities as fundraisers. We raised about $80 from the sale of Chris' mug rugs to be donated to the Brown County Art Scholarship fund. And some funds were raised by selling peace flags which we created on the tour last year. We are suggesting a donation of $10, all of which goes to the local Habitat for Humanity. (We can ship them for $15, and it's an ongoing project until all the flags have found new homes.) 

Peace Flags for your garden - visitors to the studio tour wrote messages
on the fabric which was then woven into flags.

Guest artist Doug Runyan sold several of his paintings and pastels and created one of his best drawings while demonstrating pastel techniques.

"Consider the Lillies of the Field" by Douglas Runyan

Chris just finished several scarves, some of which will be going to the Columbus (Ind.) Visitor's Center. 

We're also preparing a group of rugs and clothing to be listed on the Indiana Artisan's new virtual marketplace website. More on that later.

The studio will remain open throughout the summer, booking day weaving classes as weather permits. Visitors are always welcome.
Bob (and Chris)

Too busy to blog?

It's been months, faithful followers, and we apologize. Did I say "we"? Yes!

I (Chris) now have a RETIRED husband and he has jumped in to help with the studio. I'm thrilled. He's also agreed (since he was a newspaper editor in his pre-retirement life) to help with this blog so you'll be hearing from the Homesteadweavers more often.

We're almost ready for the 13th annual Brown County Studio and Garden tour, which we'll be a part of for the 11th straight year.

The forecast is calling for cool afternoons and only a small chance of rain (YEAH!) for the tour which goes from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. this Friday and Saturday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday.

We'll have a full selection of rugs, placemats, clothing and all things woven, including the Mobius shawl, named after the famous Mobius curve, which is a two-dimensional plane with a twist in it, meaning it has no beginning, no end, no inside and no outside. The shawls are finely woven pieces made of carefully selected cotton, rayon, bamboo, silk, and polyester yarns. Stealing a line from The Who, this year we're encouraging people to "touch them, feel them" and enjoy them.

We'll have two guest artists again this year: Painter Doug Runyan from the Fort Wayne area, who will be demonstrating his plein aire style during the tour, and weaver Marla Dawson from Ellettsville, who specializes in clothing items, including hats, scarves and gloves. Doug, who recently had work accepted into the prestigious IHA show, has an impressive assortment of his paintings on display, while Marla will have a full contingent of her work available.

We'll be demonstrating weaving for anyone who's interested, and we're making peace flags, our own version of Tibetan prayer flags, as a special feature this year. These are weavings with messages. All who are interested can write their thoughts on a strip of cloth and weave it into the flag. We hope this is a meaningful work of positive energy to wave in the peaceful breezes of Brown County.As usual, we'll have the "community rug" set up on a loom where all who are interested can take a shot or two at weaving. When completed, the rug will be donated to a charitable cause and auctioned off, with all proceeds going to the charity. In the past, the rugs have been given to auctions for Habitat for Humanity, UMC missions, and the annual soup bowl benefit, which funds Brown County's "Mother's Cupboard" soup kitchen for those who otherwise would not have nutritious meals on a daily basis. Most years we end up with two or three rugs to donate.

As usual, our gardens are in bloom, with red, orange and gold day lilies, multicolored zinnias and hostas, and a few surprises thrown in. Look for a new shade of zinnia in the front yard, and some new additions to our plate garden, with the border collected from garage sales and thrift stores.

A whole wall of hollyhocks is attracting the bees and butterflies ...

Free goodies include chocolate chip cookies, healthy turkey and ham wraps around lunchtime, iced tea, chips, trail mix, and as always, freeze pops for the young and young at heart. If the weatherman is wrong and it turns hot, we'll have the misting fan going to cool you off. And we're offering a 10 percent discount for cash purchases, plus a free mug rug for each $50 spent on rugs.

We're one of 12 studios on the tour this year with 27 artists to meet. It's a free, self-guided tour and the drive is gorgeous this time of year through the gently rolling hills.

We hope to see you out here sometime this weekend. Visit the website for the tour and print off a map or pick up a brochure at one of the map pickup sites listed on the website. Don't be intimidated by our steep driveway. It seems to be a little easier to navigate this year than in some other years (less gravel on it!), so just put your car in low gear and come on up.

See ya here!

Ahhhh, summer

After all my preparations, complaining, weaving, gardening, and brow beating, the Studio and Garden Tour is OVER! A big sigh of relief and on to summer.
We had about 280 visitors over three days of miserable heat. What troopers they were.I had a guest artist, Norene Mara, that paints and makes jewelry:
I also had a guest artist, Rose Poe, that makes beautifully colored baskets and also weaves.
The gardens could have used more work, but at 90+ degrees, not that many people were taking time to look at them ... out of their cars and into the air-conditioned studio!
The "weaver's garden" had a new umbrella for shade and some cute purse pots (an idea I stole from a friend) hanging on the shepherd's crooks. The purses got a LOT of comments.

The loom room was a demonstration and display area:The plate garden needed washing ... too bad. Pike was watching for cars ...Too hot to sell clothing ...

The positive comments make all the preparation work worthwhile. But I'm ready for pool time and to get back to weaving for the fall shows.

More gardening and meditating

When we bought this house in 1999, the landscaping was pretty minimal, although there was a nice picket fence along the front.After me moved here, a local woman befriended me and gifted me with an enormous amount of perennial plants: hostas, Siberian iris, miniature Japanese iris, day lilies and other items she was thinning from her beds. Every June, when the day lilies bloom, I thank her for her generosity. She was also very helpful with getting beds started all along the inside of the picket fence ... about 150 feet of flower beds ... and that's just one of the 16 gardens or beds on the property. Another friend has given us many varieties of day lilies which she and her husband collect and grow.
Here's what it looks like now.
Getting back to the meditating ... as I've been thinning the beds, it's given me time to reflect on lots of things ... getting older, taking control, and how tangled parts of our life can become. It has been a very cathartic exercise because there really IS no plan ... for the gardens, for life, for the future. It is whatever we make it, good or bad. Do we control our own destiny, or was it decided for us before we were born? What do you think?

Some pictures from the weaving studio ...

This is my weaver's garden ... a small terraced patch off the front deck of the studio. It includes flax and cotton plants, dye plants, herbs and plants with scents like lavendar and scented geraniums.
It is a joy and butterflies and moths love it.
There's a wonderful ceramic garden totem with frogs and dragonflies that was made by my friend Cheri Platter. It's spectacular.
The St. Francis statue holds a small bowl for water.

Working on the porch to design my rugs, I get inspiration from the beauty I behold before me.

Here is a shot inside the studio during the tour last month:

The tours have been a great way to get people to visit the studio and see what we do here.

This rug rack was acquired from a gallery that closed last fall ... it holds more than 50 rugs!

It's a rainy day and probably a good opportunity to do some weaving inside where it's dry and warm. Even WeatherBug is confused today ... it's reporting 33.8 degrees at Columbus, Indiana at 10: 49 on July 22. I don't think so ...

so far behind ...

When you get this far behind in posting to your blog, what can you do to catch up? Just ignore the three-plus months since the last post where I was waiting for spring? It's now mid-summer (although the weather for the last week has been divinely spring-like) and I don't know where to start.

Much of the intervening time was consumed with preparations for the Brown County Studio and Garden Tour which took place the last weekend of June. Gardens had to be designed, flowers planted, weeded, watered (not much) and deer-proofed. There have been years where the local deer population wandered in the week before the tour and ate most of the daylily buds, the roses and the hostas. This year, they were considerate and only ate beans off the fence of the vegetable garden ... I was very grateful. I suspect that they remembered the taste/smell of the home-made concoction I sprayed on plants last year.

In addition to the gardens, I was busy weaving rugs and clothing for the tour and for stores I sell to ... business is still solid, if not brisk.

During the tour, we had more than 350 visitors over the three days.

Ready for spring ...

I LOVE DAFFODILS! They are so cheerful and forgiving of the weather. They pop their heads up around St. Patrick's Day in our area. Over the years of buying bulbs, I have acquired about 20 different ones with different blooming cycles (ok, so I'm not a botanist!) and they make me smile for about a month while they take their turns showing off.
I have been negligent in my postings. Hilary keeps commenting on the fact. She, on the other hand, posts regularly. What can I say, I've been preoccupied with other things.
What things? you might ask ...
My studio was selected to be featured in a newspaper article to be published this summer (more later). The interview and photo shoot were in March, but my husband and I had to open a WHOLE BUNCH of flower beds a lot earlier than we normally would so that the place would look better. He also decided we needed to paint the fence ... 17 sections, front and back. Bless his heart. My apprentice, Stephanie, got called in to help and it took 3 days (times 3 people) to complete the job. Daffodils were just starting to open and I finished my "plate wattle" in time. Technically, it's not a wattle, but it replaced two stick wattles beside the walk that had been there for two years and really wanted to return to the earth so I pulled them out and started adding plates, first from a potter friend who was cleaning her studio, then from my husband's forays at a couple thrift shops. I think he did an excellent job of picking the plates, don't you?

So, the interview went well and the gardens were opened and growing. We had a couple snow warnings, but not much came our way.
A few trays have been planted in the greenhouse and now it's time to water and wait.
I love spring!

Spring in Brown County

Spring has come later than usual to our area (or so it seems). For me, that was good, because I was "snowed under" with computer work ... websites, taxes, copy editing. So now that most of that work is behind me, I am enjoying getting outside and uncovering the flower beds. The daffodils and narcissus (narcissi?) are up and beautiful ... we have about 20 different varieties. The other good thing is the deer don't eat them, like they do about everything else. The day lilies, tulips, hostas and hyacinths are eaten as soon as they pop up. We've tried various methods to deter the deer but nothing is foolproof. This year, I'm going to try adding some habenero hot sauce to their daylily salad and see how they like it. Today we're planting some trees that we got from the Arbor Day Foundation. I also want to start some seeds in our little greenhouse ... peppers, zinnias, maybe tomatoes. I'm ready for spring now!