Friday, May 22, 2015

friday follow-ups

Just a few brief notes about
things that have been happening here this week.


Azalea and Campion had their first birthday!


Azalea is maturing very nicely:



And Campion is now taller than his mama!



Remember when they were born?


I sure do!


Azalea and Campion, one year ago.
~~~


The porch floor:
it's finished - five coats - and looks good.
Really good.
Now a thorough cleaning is needed, to get rid of the sawdust lingering in every nook and cranny of the porch.
And all the windows must be washed.

This will be an opportunity(!) to try
the extreme-housework-with-audiobook system.
So far, I have:
1) found the 5-foot stepladder, and
2) lugged it from the workshop to the house.
It's a start!

But I'm going to save this task until it's too hot to work outside.
Other than Quite Small Tasks, 
everything happens on a Priority basis around here
and most of my priorities are outside.

~~~

In the Quite Small Task category:
my unstained cherry table gets an occasional application of oil.
I took the opportunity of doing it outdoors this week.



This is a genuinely enjoyable task.


Then I put the little table on the porch.
The room immediately shrank before my eyes!

It will be difficult to decide what goes on the porch.

I'm thinking beloved and happymaking items only.
The cherry table probably stays.

~~~

In other cherry-related news:
I've started a bucket of black cherry soaking for dye. 

Prunus serotina

I've never used cherry before, but Annie Cholewa recently blogged about her experiences with it. I don't know what species Annie used, but probably not the one I'm using.
An interesting experiment anyway.

And in my ongoing efforts to avoid using mordants (which improve the colors but alter the fiber) either to pretreat fiber or as part of the dyebath, I've poked around online and found a mordant-free method involving two separate cherry dyebaths at different pH extremes.
Well worth a try!

~~~

And now, I'm heading back outside to shift some fence panels.
Have a lovely Friday, everyone!
~~~~~