A Gal Named Cinda Lou

Uptown Westerville has some pretty neat shops but most of them close at 5 pm so I don't get to look very often. We grabbed pizza at Pasquales this evening and then noticed that the retro shop A Gal Named Cinda Lou was still open. It's such as fun place. They have 50's, 60's and 70's vintage clothing, jewelry, housewares and good selection of vinyl records and CD's. The resident Boston Terrier, a handsome youngester named Henry, enthusiatically greeted us as we entered the shop and proceeded to follow me around the entire time. (Probably because I let him slobber on my cheek, chew on my hand with his little needle teeth and I took his picture, petted his belly and made over him like he was my own). Andrew found the CD Heart Shaped World by Chris Isaak for a couple bucks so he was a happy camper too. We listened to it on the way home-not bad. It's worth stopping in to look around if you are going through town.

Alex, Gracie and their fabulous Snow Bunny

This might be one of the cutest things I have seen in a long time. My friend Sharon sent me this picture that was in the Bismarck (North Dakota for anyone not up on their geography) Tribune-its of her daughter Alex and her friend Gracie and the snow bunny they made for Easter. And to think I was griping because we have snow flurries today.

Petty Theft

As we were strolling down the nature trail yesterday afternoon at a local nature preserve (hard to believe in light of today's change of weather) I spied a tufted titmouse fly from a hole in a silver maple tree with a bit of fur in its beak. I told Andrew he should put the camera in the hole and take a picture and maybe we would see some baby birds. He did and there was a sleeping raccoon inside the hole. The titmouse had been picking fur from its back while it slept. Look close at the photo and you can see where she's been picking.
Cracked me up!

Snoopin' around...

Sleeping coon.

Osage Orange as a Natural Dye

An Osage Orange tree (aka hedge apple) that fell down in a recent wind storm is providing the materials for two projects I have planned for some time. One of them is using the wood as a natural dye for my fiber projects.

Today I dyed some Wensleydale and some angora yarn. It looks fabulous. Andrew was milling the wood for the other project I mentioned and he saved about 12 cups of sawdust for me.

Here's how I dyed the fiber. (Directions based on those found on Joy of Handspinning). I filled a pan with about a gallon of hot tap water and 4 cups of osage orange sawdust and let it simmer for about 2.5 hours. I then filled a big pot with 2.5 gallons of water and added 2 ounces of alum and .5 ounces of cream of tarter as a mordant. These amounts were based on the weight of the yarn per the directions I followed. I put the wool in this pot and simmered it for 1.5 hours.

After it was done simmering I drained the mordant off the yarn. I then put the yarn back in the pot and strained the wood chips off the water in the pan and poured the now yellow dye on top of the yarn. Be really careful not to spill any of the dye as it stains everything it touches and even left a yellow tinge in my stainless steel pan. I let the yarn simmer for another hour in the color and once it was cool I rinsed it briefly to get the majority of the dye off and then again in water to which I added a cup of vinegar. After thoroughly rinsing so that the rinse water ran clear I rolled the yarn in a towel to get out the excess moisture and hung it outside to dry.

The color stayed bright and I am happy enough with the result to want to
go to all that trouble to try this process with another type of wood. You can see that the two different fibers came also came out as two different colors.
The angora that I started with was bright white and according to crayola it is true yellow. The Wensleydale was more of a cream color to start and its called dandelion.

Down the Darby

We took our annual first Saturday in April canoe trip today. After a nippy morning we had a glorious day on the Darby Creek. Designated state and national scenic rivers, Big and Little Darby Creek are home to 98 species of fish, five of which are endangered in Ohio. Forty-three species of freshwater mussels live in these waters, eight of which are on the Ohio endangered list. The Big Darby is a less technical paddle than the Little Darby so in the interest of not dumping on a cold day we opted for the Big just in case.

Among the birds we saw kingfishers, wood ducks, and herons.
We also saw a queen snake, a beaver and many turtles.

The virginia bluebells were blooming high up on the banks.

Here's Kirk coming down the creek in his new (from last summer) kayak.

The sycamores, also referred to as ghost trees, really stand out against the blue skies.

We stopped on a gravel bar and photographed the shells of several species of freshwater muscles (also called clams) that I found strewn about. As you can see they vary in size, shape and color of nacre. Possession of certain types of freshwater muscles (live or dead) is prohibited by law. Poachers have cleaned entire (somtimes endangered or near extinct) populations out of their natural habitats in rivers and streams in the south in order to collect the shells which are later cut into "seeds" and sold to the cultured pearl industry for the purpose of being implanted into oysters to produce pearls in those parts of the world that culture them. In this photo are several species including: fat muckets, pocketbooks, kidney shells, wavy rayed lamp muscles, more lady fingers and fragile paper shells.

Freshwater muscles are valuable to the ecosystem and a diverse populations
is indicative of an extremely pristine waterway. Above I am holding a lady finger which has a purple nacre. Most of them have a white pearly colored nacre.

Here's my collection from the day. An antique bottle with a rusted on lid, a piece of antique class with its copyrite and smoothed edges and some natural fiber from a cottonwood tree.

Window Treatment

Thanks to everyone for all of the wonderful suggestions on the
window treatment for the book nook.



I decided on denim with an accent made from the same fabric as the cushion.
(For now the horizontal blinds have to stay).
I used a spring tension rod (very handy) to hold the valance in place.

I think I may do denim pillows with coordinating edging as well.
As for the dresser and desk in that room - its looks like they are going to get sanded and refurbished-stay tuned. The inspiration for refurbishing came from the site, Design Sponge, noted on my friend Carrie's blog.
*(Disclaimer-this is full of dangerous ideas-like I need more projects)

Here's a close up of the fabrics.

Toad Trillium

Ohio has a stunning variety of wildflowers that are becoming abundant as the weather gets warmer. It's fun to watch the progression of the blooming from the first wildflower (the skunk cabbage that I talked about previously) through the asters in October and even witch hazel in December. This is one of the early blooming wildflowers, toad trillium, and in the bottom photo you can also see blood root (smaller white bloom). Andrew took these images at work today. Aren't they beautiful flowers?