fibergarden

It’s time…despite the gorgeous, warm weather today, winter is coming. Clocks have been turned back, days are shortening. The garden, which was overtaken by the late summer burst of weeds two months ago, has begun to succum to the cold. The last remaining beauties unfold, to be overcome by the browns of winter in no time. Here is a short photo essay that will have to carry my mind through the winter.

From September, in my parents garden. A dark chocolatey sunflower that I picked and put a bit of Ampelopsis (porcelainberry vine) with, for the contrast of those wacky blue berries with the unbelievable dark brown velvet of the sunflower:

Late blooming dahlias…a gorgeous pinky mauve color–hubby’s plants:

Real fall-blooming Saffron Crocus from our herb ‘circle’. I picked the stamens once to use in a dish, but it was so much work. Now I understand why saffron is so expensive!

An Anise catterpillar, eating a piece of bronze fennel. They turn into a type of swallowtail butterfly. A few weeks ago they were here, fattening up. A few days later they were gone. Such wonderful colors. I name them Luigi, as I always think of Anise/Fennel as an Italian herb, and Luigi just seems right.

One Freaking Fig–had this plant for 4 long seasons now and I got to eat this one tiny, pathetic, nearly ripe fig from it this fall. It’s finally got a decent fruit set this year, that will never ripen now–too late, too cold. So much for buying ‘hardy’ Russian fig varieties, right? I’ll give you one more season, silly fig, then we’ll decide your fate.

And I leave you with this stunning beauty, the last Chicago Peace Rose in bloom.

Just a quickie post to add a photo of some yarn I’ve been working on. Though I like most of them a lot, it’s not exciting stuff from a really creative standpoint, except the chocolatey brown one that is a scrap yarn. I have to admit that I just love the scrap yarns–anybody’s scrap yarns, not just my own–I love running across them when browsing all my spinning sisters’ sites! Back to the chocolate yarn–I was thinking of calling it “life is like a box of chocolates” because it’s true that when you card up that pile of scraps, “…you never know what you’re gonna get”, when you spin it up! It ended up being chocolate surprise, in my shop…you get the idea.

Anyhow, here is a small benchload of yarn, some for an order to a shop, plus a few that are already for sale on my site. I am working on ’shiny, soft, very usable, long yardage’ yarns, mostly with beads for the yarn store order because that’s what they want, but I’m really aching to do some more outrageous yarn for my own shop and to get the creative juices flowing again before the baby comes in a month and my life is 100% kid-focused for a while.

Hopefully I’ll be back soon and post some garden pics, wip (I’m actually KNITTING a shawl out of silk sari yarn, whoa!), and spinning a whole pound of a gorgeous wool blend to make something for myself–maybe a shrug?–not sure. Also pics from our trip to Rhinebeck as well as our new fibery friend, Andora the Angora (jersey wooly rabbit) who my husband fell in love with and brought home to add to our fuzzy menagerie–we now have 3 matching pets!