Inspiration is a funny thing.  It can be all around you in the colors and patterns and textures of life, in the juxtaposition of items you would never put together, in the buds of spring, the drifts of snow, the heat coming off a hot engine.  Or it can just be gone and you fear you'll never find it again.  I've spent the last part of winter and this early spring with not much inspiration.  As I've gotten older, I find I'm much more influenced by the weather than I ever used to be.  When it's been dark and gloomy for more than two or three days, I start to droop.  The sun brightens everything including my mood and my inspiration.  But we've had a lot of gloomy, raining, windy, stormy days this year.

On President's Day we had glorious sun.  I was just getting over a horrible cold and finally felt like I was up to venturing out in the world again.  Peggy and I met our friends Nancy and Janet for a fun day of shopping.  One of the places we visited was Yarntopia in Katy.  Yarntopia is our most favorite local yarn store.  Sheryl and Amy, the owners, are wonderful, funny and first class enablers when in comes to knitting yarn.  After months, or is it years?, of inspiration-less plodding through life, I found wonderful yarn that will be my next shawl.

After Janet had to head home and Nancy went back to her wonderful goats, Peggy and I stopped at the Lone Star Loom Room, our favorite local weaving store.  Once the inspiration is really all around you, you just keep seeing things that look wonderful.  I found Cottolin (60% Cotton and 40% Linen) that made me smile and some wonderful hand painted linen that was stunning.  So here are my next kitchen towels:

I feel like a shadow has been lifted.  I have three great projects ready to go.  When?  Not real sure.  Life keeps interfering, but they are now officially on the list and I'll get to them soon.  Inspiration is pretty cool.

Woad is a wonderful plant.  It is the historic Northern European source for indigo, grown there for hundreds of years until other sources of indigo made their way westward from the far east.  Woad doesn't have an much indigo in it as the Japanese and far eastern indigo plants but is a hardier grower in northern climes.

I have to tell you why I'm so thrilled to have woad growing here.  Last spring I bought a ton of plant seeds, mostly mixed wildflower seeds that will grow happily here in Texas, but also dye plant seeds.  Coreopsis, woad, madder, marigolds, purple basil, fennel - basically every seed I could get for a plant that gives color.  I also had sunflower seeds I had bought intending to plant them for my goats.  Goats love sunflowers.  All parts of the plant - leaves, stems, seeds, flowers - are good for goats.  You get the idea.  I had lots of seed.  The wildflower seed packets said that planting in fall is the best way to go.  Well, I have never been known for my patience.  It's all I can do to leave a dye bath overnight.  I know the color is better that way but mostly I can't stand waiting that long.  So here I had all these seeds and was supposed to wait for months?  Not likely.  Most of the seeds I scattered over my newly installed septic drain field.  I thought this would go a long way in encouraging people not to drive on the drain field.  No one is likely to drive through a beautiful field of flowers.  The woad seeds I planted in one of our 7' diameter raised garden bins.  The bins have always been intended for dye plants.  They are behind the studio and I can stand inside and look at them.  And watch my dye plants grow.

So the wildflowers seeds are out front on the drain field and the woad seeds are in a garden bin.  This is May.  Well, last summer was the hottest and driest one on record for decades.  I started off watering daily as the temperature climes.  As the drought got worse, I switched from watering the wildflowers and dye plants to watering the trees.  Fortunately, all the trees made it but I had completely given up on my newly planted seeds.  The drought ended with the winter rains.  Lots of winter rain.  And cold.  Much colder than normal.  Then more rain.  This is a good cycle for most wildflowers but what about my woad?

I checked the drain field area and sure enough, I have wildflowers coming up.  Texas Bluebonnets and lots of other things I can't recognize yet.  I'm hopeful we will have lots of wildflowers later this spring.  Then I checked the garden bins.  Eureka!  I have woad plants!

Woad is an enthusiastic re-seeder.  It's considered a noxious weed in the western US where it can take over vast acreages in only a couple of seasons. Interestingly, if you let it go to seed, you don't get any indigo.  The normal plan is to plant it early in the spring and harvest the leaves throughout the summer.  Once the first frost comes, no more indigo.  If you leave the plant to overwinter, in the spring it will bloom and produce prodigious seeds.  For dyers it makes sense to let one plant go to seed for the next years crop but to pull out the rest so the woad won't take over your garden, or yard, or the county.

So the question is.... is my woad in its first year or in it's second?  We will see.  If it goes to seed, I've missed the indigo.  If it doesn't, I'll be harvesting leaves this summer.  I think I'll order more seeds and plant them next month.  That way I'll have my own home grown indigo this summer.  Cool!

I love to teach spinning.  Peggy does too.  It's a wonderfully gratifying task.  Of course, we are enablers when it comes to almost anything associated with fiber arts.  We really do want to take over the world.  It's just magical to watch someone who is all thumbs to start with, begin to understand drafting our the fiber so you get the size yarn you want and learning to add the twist and make real yarn.  For most people, there is an initial frustration with the process.  It's hard to get your hands to do all the things they need to learn to make yarn.  Like any skill, it requires practice and initially patience to build the muscle memory that ultimately lets you spin without really thinking about it.  Just like riding a bike or skating or skiing.  I've been watching the Olympics and I am amazed at what those talented athletes can do.  I was a mediocre skater as a child and still am amazed that anyone can actually skate back-wards.  I've skied only twice in my life, both times as a full grown adult, and am in awe of the downhill racers who fly down the mountains.  These are, of course, the best of the best in their chosen sports.  But spinning is just the same.  You start out frustrated and with practice you get better and better.  I've been spinning for about 5 years and have learned enough to make pretty good yarn.  I'm no where near the best of the best but I love the process and I keep practicing to improve my technique.

We tell our students that you always start out with three days of swearing before the light comes on and you begin to understand and be able to actually do what you are trying to do.  There are exceptions to this, of course.  Our friend Willie is a spinning savant.  He was spinning better yarn in about ten minutes than I was after six months.  If he wasn't such a great guy, funny and creative, we would hate him.  This points out that everyone learns at a different rate.  Willie is a massage therapist, working on both people and horses, so he has honed his sense of touch to where he can feel the subtle differences in the fiber he's spinning more easily than most of us.  Anyone can learn it but it takes most of us more time to get there.

We were supposed to teach spinning at our local yarn shop, Yarntopia, tonight.  We've postponed it a week because of the winter weather advisory issued for tonight.  We are expecting cold rain changing to sleet and snow.  The weather changes quickly down here.  It was 70 degrees on Sun, 60 degrees yesterday, 40 degrees today until the cold mass of air gets here later this afternoon, then below freezing expected for tomorrow morning.    It's not horrible weather in the grand scheme of things but it could get ugly.  We have had more than our alloted three days of winter this year and I, for one, will be happy to have the temperatures in the 50's and 60's.

I'm off to the studio to try and finish the linen dresser scarf I'm weaving for my daughter.  I'll post a picture at some point so you can see what I've been working on.

Stay warm and safe.