Scarfing 3.0, this time with apple pie!

Yes, I spent the week focused on scarves again. This time I just went wild with the color schemes. I used reds, teals, purples and I even pulled out some pinks to complement the purples. That’s pretty audacious for me, since I don’t generally ‘do’ pink. When I was younger, skydiving was outrageous; now it’s using incorporating pink in a scarf! I even created one commissioned scarf. It had a base of grass green with black ruffled edges, and I think it came out really well. Now it’s time to hit the pause button on wet felting for a little while and focus on some scarf pressing. Sometimes it feels like I’m not making enough progress, but looking back I realize that I’ve been very productive—I’m up to 31 new scarves! I’ll be shipping the first lot to St. Josephs, Michigan on Wednesday for display at the Holly Market. I’m hoping that displaying them in Michigan’s snow belt during the holiday season will be the perfect venue for sales.

In my weaving world, I managed to finish the needle-felted carrots I was working on. They’re for a commissioned piece based on the earlier ‘Baby Carrots’ piece, and I’m really delighted with how they turned out! It’s going slowly, but I feel like I’m moving the process along. And in a real blast from the past, late in the week I took advantage of a warm spell to finish up the BEAD (Bloomington Entertainment and Arts District) panels from last year’s Fourth Street Festival! I collected thousands of recycled plastic toys in the four theme colors of the BEAD logo. I picked them up at places such as The Recycle Center and Opportunity House in Bloomington, and 5000 kids and adults visiting the Fourth Street Festival glued them onto four large wood panels. The weather got away from me last fall and I couldn’t get them sealed before the snow flew. Of course I was too busy when the weather was nice in the spring. That meant the pieces had a nice home in our living room all winter, which my husband Jim wasn’t too thrilled about. I think he missed the fact that they added a certain colorful charm to the room. Anyway, I dragged them out onto the veranda and sealed them with a coat of varnish. This Wednesday I’m hoping to get a second coat on them and send them off to their new home.

On Thursday, more big things started to happen when Grandma flew in from Michigan. She always needs a project, so we got her painting a long-neglected wall and baseboards at the top of the stairs. Boy does it look good now! Friday night we all went to watch the boys test for their blue belts in Taekwondo at Monroe County Martial Arts. All went well, and the boys are sporting their new colors and have bellies full of reward ice cream.

Saturday was the big day for everyone with the boys out of school all day. We made it to the Farmer’s Market early and got two big pumpkins and a big batch of winesap apples. The pumpkins went on the front step and the apples went into a delightful pie—did I say I like pie? At least I like all the pies my sweetie makes for me. In the afternoon we drove to Brown County to get a bit of a color tour, but sadly the trees seemed to take the ‘brown’ county part a little too seriously. We then stopped in at Zaharako’s ice cream parlor in Columbus for some cool refreshment - a nice transported back in time to when life had a slower pace. The day was topped off with a visit to Bloomington South High School to see their performance of ‘Fiddler on the Roof’. It was well done everyone had a good time, even if we got home waaaaaay past our bedtime. But now I’m going to have some of the songs running through my brain today. If I were a rich man…

Until next week…

Martina Celerin