Here, There and Just About Everywhere

The weekend before last was a rare weekend when the kids were with their dad and I wasn't teaching. I went up to the Fiber Revival (http://www.fiberrevival.com/) and took a shibori class. Yeah, I didn't know what it was either. It's a Japanese word, and I think the latest meaning is felting into shapes. Like tying objects in before felting to get different textures. There's an effect where you knit a scarf in alternate rows of wool and silk, then felt, and since the silk doesn't felt, it gets pulled into lacy shapes--really cool. The festival was at a beautiful old farm, where I saw my first fall leaves on the ground. Not hard to believe when (here visiting the Cape today celebrating my dad's 70th birthday) the highs were in the low seventies. I also made it up to the Lowell Farmer's Market where I bought some mysterious (to me) Asian vegetables and over to the Lincoln Farm tour.

This weekend was the Women's Herb Conference in New Hampshire. I feel so filled up--drumming, dancing around the fire, workshops on plants, folk singers. Sophie's favorite part was learning how to weave wheat. Rebecca liked the herb walks. The conference is on 700 beautiful acres with a lake for swimming. The whole thing was as always, very inspiring, and I have all sorts of herbal projects in mind now, from making acorn flour with the kids to more wheat weaving to getting Honey off Advantix and onto an herbal flea and tick and making some herbal cordials and planting an elder plant. (Last year the conference motivated me to make mead and elderberry wine, which is still fermenting and needs to be bottled!)