dear cedar

The excitement of the week involved playing a wee morning veggie market gig on Wednesday morning with some lovely friends. we ladies call ourselves "Dear Cedar" and have been lucky to have various beautiful fiddlers join us. This Wednesday we were joined by an old mate of mine, Steph, and my didn't he add a special deliciousness to the morning.
We met a gentleman, Peter, who was kind enough to record a song and take lots of photos. We also had a television crew stumble into the veggie market and upon us, and they filmed us too.
My favourite part of the day was when two tiny girls decided to dance to our songs, and one wee dot was in particular very taken by Steph and his fiddle music, and danced softly and attentively just under his nose, her eyes not leaving the fiddle for a moment! ah, the power of music, the great communicator between souls.
The song in the video, "I wish my baby was born"  is one of my favourites. It is found in the movie "Cold Mountain" (the director Anthony Minghella wrote extra lyrics, according to the CD sleeve notes), though of course the song is a traditional folk song from the Appalachians, no doubt with roots in English folk music. Like many of these songs, there are numerous songs with variations on these lyrics or melodies floating about. It's a melancholy and fragile song, yet so beautiful and plaintive.

shoulder thingy

fresh off the needles: a shoulder cosy for my dear friend who loves sea glass green. I am so so please I chose this project for my first handspun, and so thrilled and enchanted by the greens resulting from the Landscape Dyes chamomile and fern (the second photo is more true to the colour).
it's a very easy knit (took 2 days of occasional knitting): Shoulder Cozy by Churchmouse Yarns
ravelled here

yarning along with ginny

and keep calm craft on with nicole

ferny

ta-da!
my first, freshly dyed-up hand spun skeins! gloriously nubbly and unintentionally thick and thin, which I'm told is quite the fashion. I used some landscape dye shades fern and chamomile. First time dyeing wool too, and oh sooo much fun!

my knitting::the annabel pullover in misti alpaca tonos worsted (leatherly), almost done.
I'm modifiying it, because the length in the pattern was too short for my kidney-conscious girl ("I want it to cover my kidneys...wow),  and she wants length.
my idea is to add a rib in another colour, either grey or bird egg blue...I'm knitting the sleeves in the round using two circular needles.

I found this book at an op shop. Pearl S Buck's The Big Wave. As soon as I saw it, I was struck by what I can only call a memory-feeling or feeling-memory. I can't remember what age I was, but I remember reading this book and it fascinating, or maybe, haunting me. That's all I remember, nothing about the story itself, but when I saw it I had a faint rush of awe mixed with fear, and fascination.
It now waits for me...it's kinda spooky.

also, yarning along with Ginny