Inspiration From My Friends

I have to force myself to go out sometimes. I am quite happy here at home by myself, but I also know that I can’t become a total recluse. The weather was stellar yesterday—mid-20s with brilliant sunshine—so I made myself go to sewing. We meet at the community center about four miles up the road. I really have no excuse not to attend.

I was very glad I did. This group of women is so much fun, and even though all I did was sit and work on a prayer shawl for about an hour, I came home refreshed and inspired. Show and Tell is a big part of our get-togethers. People bring their projects for us to ooh and ahh over, and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing what everyone is doing.

When I arrived, Sarah was giving a mini master class on preparing fine fibers, like cashmere:

And then she demonstrated how to spin them on a supported spindle:

She spun the yarn for and knitted that gorgeous sweater that she’s wearing.

Several women showed off quilts they had just finished. Robin brought a lake-themed wallhanging. I remember when she bought some of the fabric for it on one of our trips to Missoula.

I came home and put the borders on the Sunbonnet Sue quilt. That one is ready for basting, hopefully this weekend. I still need to get batting for it, but I wasn’t sure exactly how big it might end up. I should be able to start quilting it next week.

And I frankenpatterned the Olympia with the Miramar. I’m going to run up a muslin of that one soon. I have some navy blue DBP in the stash. If it turns out to be a wearable muslin, that will be a nice addition to the wardrobe.

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Piglets—six of them—have been reserved for delivery around June 1. I put in my seed order yesterday morning and that is on its way to me. Sarah and I were comparing notes yesterday. She had such success with tomatoes last year that she wants to grow even more of them this year. I am on a waiting list for the Carolina Amethyst pepper seeds. I grew that variety last year and I could not believe how well it produced. Peppers are iffy here. Some years they do really well and some years not. I did get some Chocolate Bell pepper seeds as a backup.

We lost some fruit trees over on the rental property in December when we had that heavy, wet snow. I was not heartbroken about it because those trees had been in for over 10 years and never produced a single piece of fruit. We’ll replace them this spring. Susan is grafting more apple trees for me and she said she might be able to graft onto the rootstock of those trees if there is any left.