I’ve dedicated a whole 16 square foot plot for just flax and planted it last Friday. It looks like just maybe several seeds are starting to germinate, so here’s hoping I have a good crop to harvest this year!
I’ve not really been finishing any projects these past months, though I have picked up Chinese again and have been taking banjo lessons.
The cats are good except for poor Ella, who has chronic dry eye and now we have to give her drops every evening while she thinks we want to murder her.
Went over to a wonderful human’s house where I used to live and she still has peonies where I planted them years ago 🙂
I have gotten more into tea lately–I brought my tea set to work because it is less likely to get pieces broken by cats there and it has worked out quite well. I ordered some Silver Needle white tea and it is very very good.
Been planting some supplemental flowers in beds as I have time and got some marigolds and coreopsis already blooming. Naturally I picked off some blossoms and took a hammer to them on some fabric I mordanted last year.
The linen piece I would like to keep intact (perhaps it will become a pocket on a bag?), but the cotton I cut into 3 inch squares and I learned to chain piece on Beatrice. I finally fixed the tension on her, yay!
I don’t know how big this quilt will be (besides not giant). The chain piecing technique really does make it go faster though! As well as using a machine instead of hand piecing, but sometimes it is good to just meditate on things while stabbing fabric.
Unrelated to all of these happy things–it is really hard to not feel only despair over the horrible things happening in the world right now. I am angry and sad and still hopeful, but it is a painful kind of hope. I am taking time to care, to witness, to help where I can, but I am also making sure to keep something small and joyful in my days, because without it there is no point of existence. I wish I and the weight of words to convince people in power to stop causing the suffering of so many.
One last thing–I wrote a poem a couple weeks ago. It’s short but full of feelings:
Today I am all embers and rain.
Why? Why? Why?
My heart is too full and tangled.
Is it allowed, to grieve
a living thing?
Even my joy is sandpaper,
but still the hope does not die.
“It was a long day”, written April 25 2024
The Fiberary 
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