busy, busy

I have thought about blogging over the last month or so, but jeez, life has been so busy! In mid-May, we went up to Massachusetts for Hannah's graduation from Smith College. Now that our girls are just about grown, I really appreciate the times when we can all be together.

Smith has lots of traditions. On the Saturday before graduation, they have Ivy Day which involves a parade with the seniors in white dresses and the various groups of alums wearing colored sashes and matching hats and carrying funny signs about what college life was like in their day.

Here are the happy spectators

And here is a dress I particularly liked. Imagine having hips so small that you might wish to accentuate them!

And this was a great chicken bag I kinneared.


Here is our latest graduate! Hannah graduated with a degree in English and she won the Rosemary Thomas poetry award for the best group of poems.

We are all very proud.


One more family group - Monday after Lily had flown back home, we took a break from packing the van & car. It's a good thing we are good at packing - there was a lot of Stuff.

Since then, things at Bluemont have been clicking right along. We finished hiring our summer staff, and a great team they are - but I've spent a lot of time orienting and training and then answering lots of questions. In between, we moved our Miss Ruby into an apartment in DC, where she has an internship for the summer, I attended three year end guild meetings and I taught a weekend of classes for the Albemarle Weavers Guild in Charlottesville - Beam Me Up Scotty, and a pair of lectures on Tweeds, District checks & Tartans, and 18th c. Household Textiles. This was a great group - it was a lot of fun.


There were 12 for the warping class, mostly working in pairs at the warping board and then at a loom.
My friend Sarah leapt out of the way when I approached her warping with a camera, but then she returned for a smiling portrait: Warped, but Happy.

Most recent FO (finished object): Ishbel shawl made with Fleece Artist Sea Wool in the Autumn colorway.



Currently on the needles: a Baktus scarf.

Currently on the loom: bottentacke samples for the Weaving Study Buddies group - you'll have to wait until next post for the photos. These are due to be mailed by July 1st, so I'm away home to weave some more!