The Loom of Argos

More spinning at lunch time. At least I'm spinning every day, but there are so many other things to be accomplished in the day that the time is limited.

Have to do some work on the fursuit too. Only a week until that story hour thing.

Slow start. Now I remember why I disliked this fiber and set it aside. It's not fun to spin, though the results look pretty decent. Now I'm started, so I'll keep at it.

Goes to work with me tomorrow...

The May flowers are definitely here. My sensitive canine nose is a-tingle every time I step outdoors or even just go near an open window. Though daffodils are past, honeysuckle is just beginning to fill the air with a perfume so thick it nearly blots out everything. In spite of that, I can smell lilacs just starting to really open, and apple and pear blossoms that are beginning to fade already.

There's a spot along my walking path through the woods where wild cherry blossoms can already be detected, though I can't find them. They really don't open for another week or two, and when they do, there will be nothing but cherry in the air for a few days, followed by a snowstorm of tiny white petals.

Then will come the blackberries. That musky scent that just hints of the rich flavored berries to come will hang around for about a week.

I picked several big flowers off the strawberries today. They are a new planting and aren't supposed to be allowed to bloom until July. I guess the idea is that they should grow more roots and leaves first, but I felt bad pinching off lovely white blossoms an inch in diameter. In one case, there was a whole cluster of buds that might have made six or eight berries, but I aborted it just the same.

Around the third week in June, the catalpas will bloom. Their blossoms are like giant snapdragon clusters, white with yellow throats, and a tropical scent to rival real orchids. It's hard to imagine how something like that evolved in the temperate zone of North America, but they are here and they produce prolific blooms for about a week each year.

Cultivated flowerbeds fit in there, of course. Roses and iris will be blooming in the next few weeks. Both are a little erratic in the scent department though. As they have been hybridized and selected for more unusual colors and larger flowers, the rich scents that belonged to their ancestors have often been lost. Still, an iris that retains its natural scent is a lovely thing as long as you don't get your nose too close. Chances are it has a bumblebee inside. Also, many of them stink like sewer gas if you get too strong a whiff.

Laugh all you like at a wuff who loves flowers, but I'm not ashamed of it at all. A flower garden is a paradise for him who has the nose to appreciate it.

The weather today was perfect. Sunny, clear, and reasonably dry. It was a good thing, because I need more dark blue wool for a rug I'm weaving. The best way to get the shade I want is to dye it myself, starting with yarn that is already blue, but not blue enough.

I use indigo to get the color I want. It's a little tricky, but because I've done it many times, I can reproduce the color pretty much exactly. Indigo is why I was glad of the good weather, so I could work outdoors. See, indigo stinks. Or at least, it does while it is reduced to solubility in the dye pot. It smells like shit. Literally.

The wonderful thing about indigo, though, is that you oxidize it at the end by exposing it to air. The smell goes away, and the blue color appears as if by magic. The wonders of chemistry, and in this case, a reaction that was discovered long before anyone understood the chemistry involved.

But I'm getting off on a tangent here. I didn't start out to explain the details of indigo dyeing. The important thing is for you to realize that the dyebath itself is clear, or sort of pale yellow. The color only appears as the wool begins to absorb oxygen from the air, and the process is complete only when the wool is dry. So there I was, lifting skeins of yarn from the pot with a wooden spoon and carefully hanging them up to drip dry, while trying my best to avoid dyeing my own paws or chest and belly fur. It happens, of course, but I always feel so foolish and embarrassed at my own clumsiness. And believe me, it doesn't take much dye to become screamingly obvious to anyone when you've dribbled it on white fur.

Blue happens to be my favorite color. Green is second, but blue is first. It reminds me of the sky, and of open water beneath the sky. It reminds me of the deep, midnight blue of the space between the stars on the clearest nights, right after sunset. It reminds me of periwinkle blossoms, and iris, of blueberries at the height of the summer heat, and of my mother's eyes. It's one of nature's brightest and most remarkable colors, whether you see it in a bluejay feather, a piece of turquoise, or a cornflower. And of all the dye colors, it is one of the rarest and most difficult to achieve by natural means. What an irony.

Indigo and its cousin woad will do the job, of course. They fade with time, washing, and sunlight, but not too quickly. And as I watched my light blue wool turn darker, drying and deepening to a fine, purplish blue, I had to thank our mother earth for the wonderful ways in which she has provided for all our needs, even the vanity of making blue patterns on wool rugs that we will disrespectfully walk upon with our muddy paws.

When the wool was almost dry, I wet it again to rinse it in clear water and left it all hanging to dry overnight. Tomorrow, I will weave the spaces between the stars, not because I created that space or those stars, but because they were already there for me to see, and love, and remember.