The Coming of Winter

Last Sunday when I trudged up the hill the grass and leaves crunched under my feet in the early morning frost. Not that early these days. My summer days of jumping out of bed at five and six AM and climbing the hill to greet the sun are gone until next May. My trips up this hill have become less frequent due to The Larac Arts Festival and set up for their Holiday shop. I have also had a bought of illness; a virus and later the discovery that I have Lyme disease. This past year the fields and woods were loaded with the deer ticks!

As I stood there watching the sun spread across the mountains and valleys, I could feel my worries drop away. In this vast space I feel free, home. A flock of geese had been resting in the adjacent cornfield and now that I am here they stir and then take flight. I watched with fascination as their flight patterns stretched out, spread wide and changed continously as they swirled and headed south west. It reminded me of the moving patterns that herd animals make as they enter a field. See my cast away to the fields blog post last summer and in September.

Today when I walked up the hill, the sun became hidden by a mackerel sky. Even the distant mountains lost the sun. It was twenty degrees and not getting warmer very quickly. I did my warmups and then completed the Tai Chi form, but did not linger to enjoy the view today. I headed home and stacked more wood on the porch. The afternoon should give me a better tme to finish dyeing some batik.

Mirror Image Magic

The sun last evening was brilliant as it edged below the heavy cloud cover. All was accented by a golden light. The leaves that remained on the trees became gold, orange, pink and crimson. As the shadows lengthened, even the grass heads were bathed in the golden light as they rippled in the wind. The Adirondacks in the distance were highlighted in patches of sun and the whole expansive view took on a magical feeling. The sun then touched the mountains and fell below, leaving a sky of low clouds touched by burnished gold.

I returned home to mix more dyes and continued dyeing my batik pieces into the night. The weather is still favorable for dyeing fabric outdoors and I like to dye as many pieces as I can before winter sets in. I'm finishing many large batik that I started many months ago.

All kinds of fabric items are being completed for the LARAC Arts Festival to be held next weekend, November 6 and 7th. Besides the batik hangings and framed pieces I'm working on new scarves, potpourri pouches, silk shoulder bags, small change purses, circle bags and have matted prints of some of my batik work as well as cards and bookmarks.

I'm working on mirror images as you can see from the photos here. Also enclosed is a photo of one of my wood burnings from days in the past. The great god Pan summons the magical figures up from the earth.
Happy Halloween!