deCordova Sculpture Park

... in Lincoln, MA. (Dropped a bunch of work off at the Museum Store there this morning.)





Llove this guy's expression, what is he thinking about? His misspent youth in Bora Bora? Catching the first snowflake of winter on his tongue? Or maybe just the fact that he has a mound of dirty socks that need laundering...)

Letterboxing!

So, yes, I'm supposed to be weaving, weaving, weaving. But gorgeous fall days are gorgeous fall days... So, I spent a good chunk of time in the studio this morning/early afternoon (and will return this evening), then came home to drag everyone letterboxing.

(Church in the middle of Chelmsford - bike path in the foreground.)

What, you ask, is letterboxing? Well, according to the Letterboxing North America, letterboxing originated in England, in the moors of Darmoor. It is "an itriguing mix of treasure hunting, art, navigation, and exploring interesting, scenic, and sometimes remote places. It takes the anceint custom of placing a rock on a cairn upon reaching the summit of a mountain to an artform..." The idea is, people hide a weatherproofed box somewhere, including a log book and a rubber stamp in the box, write out clues about how to find it, and post them to the Letterboxing website.

Hunters, like we were today, have their own personal stamps so that they can record their visit in the letterbox log book, and also keep their own journals to put stamps in from the boxes they find.

Needless to say, the kids had a great time hunting for our first (very easy to find, thankfully) letterbox today - it was right along the Bruce Freeman Bike Path, right near home! (There are 14 boxes hidden in our town alone!)

Bikepath...

Woodlot path along the bike path (that's Carlos, getting the kids out of the bike stroller, wearing his helmet, good boy.)

All ready with their journals...

Up the hill...


To find an old rock wall - and hey, there's the box!


Bella's letterboxing journal (The green butterfly is her stamp - the little red stamp was the one in the box). (I just love her kindergartener handwriting!)

A last peek at the trees (foliage is really just starting here - the mature sugar maples are starting, and those are the trees that have the *really* spectacular color, none in this photo!).

I'm really looking forward to continuing to do this... It reminds me quite a bit of our last trip to the U.K., when I was pregnant with Bella - we spent a good part of that vacation traipsing over hill and dale (literally), compass in hand, finding remote stone circles in England, Wales and Scotland. Looking forward to going to Dartmoor someday to find more circles *and* letterboxes!

Feeling Fallish - and A Marketing Observation

It felt decidedly nippy outside today (50s, blustery clouds, gorgeous)... I like it when I break out my fleeces and my favorite vest (purchased about 9 years ago in Alta Ski Area, and still a favorite!). We stopped to buy some pumpkins and mums on our way home from our weekly jaunt to Kimball Farm Ice Cream with my Mum...



We have moved the goldfish inside from the deck (they lived in the little fountain there for the summer), but the plants and snails haven't come in yet. Soon, I think, Mr. SkiingWeaver just needs to get it in gear. The sugar maples' leaves are just starting to get going here, I'll take some photos when they hit their stride... But in the meantime, I'm enjoying the mums. I LOVE fall. Love it.

OK, time for the marketing observation. I have a couple of different ways of displaying my work in my studio/at shows, but I generally use the Scary Mannequin (so dubbed by Ms. B) both for photo staging and for display...


(One of my favorite pieces ever! Sold it at the Ahts Festival - yay, but also - wah!)

So, I tend to put my largest/most expensive piece on the Scary Mannequin. People do tend to look at it and touch it first, so I make sure it's a "wow" type piece that feels just gorgeous in their hand. And their eyes tend to pop a little when they see the price. (If they *don't* pop, then that's a person I want in my studio/booth, most definitely, lol!) But then when they look at the other pieces... Well, the prices seem a bit more attainable, don't they?

I didn't do this intentionally, but it does seem to work that way, interestingly enough.

Of course, there are always the people that happily plunk down a large-ish amount of money for a special piece without blinking which, of course, works beautifully, too.

Just an observation. YMMV. (YYMV = Your Mileage May Vary)

Apple Picking Trip in New England

Bella and I went on her nursery school's annual apple picking field trip yesterday. Kind of a misty, cool day - a real switch from last year, when it was blazing hot.

Drew is prepared... (Bella thinks he's wicked funny.)



Yum! Though, while we were picking apples, the mosquitoes were out in force - we need a good frost to kill those little suckers off.

Some fall color for niece Timothea, who is missing it while living in the U.K. It's just getting started here...
Classic New England stone wall.

They had a little farm area for the kids to run around in, too, after we picked apples.


Comparing pumpkins with her friend Regan...

Neat. If we ever have a farm, she can handle the tractor-driving duties. :)

A really fun trip, and it certainly makes it feel like fall!

Raining Leaves!

The Weavers' Guild of Boston sale went really well (I sold more than I expected to!), and I will post photos, but, for now, I had to post about the crazy leaf rain out back today...


The leaves are a bit later this year than normal, and we have a Norway maple in our back yard (they have been classified as a weed species, eeks - a normal looking maple, shorter and more full than sugar maples, terrible root system - can't plant anything anywhere near them - and the leaves do change, but not as brilliantly as sugar maples).

ANYWAY. The Norway maple out back has been really slow to change this year, but it finally has, and this morning, after a couple cold nights, as soon as the sun hit the leaves they started just *pouring* off the tree! It was hilarious! About 1/3 of the leaves fell in the space of about a half hour!

So, I plopped Conall into them - we have a set of photos of Bella from right around the same age, also sitting in the leaves, but, here's a couple of Mr. Conall (ten months old today!):



OK, let's see if I can find one from Bella... This is from October, 2004, and she is eight months old, just about on the nose:



That was fun. :) The light was better in the pictures of her. And I probably should have cropped a couple of the ones of him (lazy)... But I do think they look alike, though she had more hair than him! :) (And it was red then, too, obviously, his is light brown, but I think it will wind up darker, more like mine.)

Leaf Peeping

So, my Mum, the kids and I went on a little leaf-peeping drive on Friday - it was a rainy, misty sort of day, which makes the colors look even nicer in person. The leaves are prettier near home - I grew up in centralish Massachusetts, right along Route 2 where the Mohawk Trail starts (which is a *hugely* popular route for leaf-peepers). Just enough of a colder climate that the colors are really spectacular... My Mum's big old sugar maples included (we made maple syrup for years!). Still, they're still very pretty here in Eastern Mass., so I thought I'd post a few pictures.

Not sure if my meager photography skills have captured the colors, but I love this time of year!


Pretty little road in Dunstable, Mass. Muted colors, but I liked it anyway.


Really pretty tree/stone wall - too bad about the power lines. Stone walls meander all over the place in New England - a reminder than 150+ years ago the region was more or less clear-cut for farms, etc.





OK, I took a bunch more, but that's probably enough, right?

Happy October!

Hooray for October! I love fall. :)

And hooray for naps - I actually got a scarf finished, washed, the fringe trimmed and everything over the weekend, and today I managed to take some pictures of it during Conall's morning nap:

It's black, white and fuchsia (so that's how you spell it!) bamboo. You'd think bamboo would stop surprising me - I've worked with it enough now, I know it's going to turn out wonderfully soft and drapey, and yet, every time I'm amazed anew...

I love the graphic quality of this scarf - enough, actually, that I'm planning a baby blanket in black, white and various bright colors. Babies really do respond to high contrast items (my kids both loved staring at these black and white patterned soft blocks that their Tio Ernesto and Tia Lexi gave to them). Not quite sure why baby blankets are always insipid pastel colors. Probably to please the moms - so how about a blanket the kid will like to look at, and that's really easy to wash (hooray for bamboo again), to make Mom happy? Well, we'll see, I'm sure I'll like it, but who knows if anyone else will!

Must scoot to try to get this listed in my Etsy shop before he wakes up...

Productive Thursday

So, Ms. B had her first drop-off for preschool yesterday. Just for an hour and a half - she had a great time. *I* had butterflies the whole way there! Very odd to leave her there, it's the first time she's done something like that on her own... Harder for me than her.

But, on the bright side, Mr. Conall had a good nap while she was gone (after some running around bringing Papi to work - we only have one car, but we'll have to break down and get another soon, sigh, goes against my earth-friendly attitude, but what can you do when you need to be in two places at once and neither is on public transit?).

Anyway, I digress - he napped, I managed to get a bamboo scarf photographed and listed in my etsy shop:

Hooray for sunny fall days that make photography easy!

Speaking of which - it has been *gorgeous* here lately. We've been taking lots of walks - it's been in the 70s (F) and clear for a lot of the week, just beautiful. And we even finally got some rain after the driest August on record in this area (awful, my garden is brown and crunchy). The leaves will be starting to change soon (a few are jumping the gun, the younger maples seem to do that sometimes), and before we know it our backyard will be awash in fall color.

I love fall, it may be my favorite season, though I do love winter, too (obviously)... Fall and winter just feel cozy to me. Time to gather people close, bake pie (I made an apple pie last night with apples from one of my brother Mark's apple trees, yum) and bread, work on projects, go for walks and eventually get out there to ski on the weekends. I do love spring, too, with all the new flowers coming up and lots of plans for gardening (that generally never come to fruition).

About the only season I get sick of after a couple weeks is summer - I don't do well in hot weather and spend most of my time hiding from the sun (fair skin). Thank goodness Carlos loves cooler weather, too, despite having spent his first 8 years in a tropical climate. (And the next ten in Arizona and California.)

Hooray for fall!

Big Girl

Oh my goodness. Ms. B had her first day of preschool today (just a twenty minute orientation, but still...):

(Please kindly ignore the really messy kitchen in the background, just remembered to snap this photo on our way out the door!)