Spring comes to Bloomington!

Our first decent spring temperatures arrived this weekend, with temperatures in just peaking over seventy yesterday.  We have daffodils all over, a few hyacinth, and a smattering of color from scilla, chiondoxa, wild tulips and few other little treasures.  After a long winter, when the temperatures go up I know it’s time to get out and… dye yarns!  I had a whole bunch of skeins waiting to go and huge containers of RIT dyes on the shelf.  Not only do I get the colors I want, I feel good about the fact that they’re made in Indianapolis.  They’re non-toxic, such that they claim you may dye in your cooking pots.  That’s not something I would ever do, but it’s reassuring to me that the dyes aren’t nasty.  

Of course my color of choice right now is green.  I’m envisioning making a large piece for the summer art fair shows similar to a commission piece I did last year.  I just enjoyed its presence in my art studio.  The best part about the completed piece was lying on the ground and looking up into the tree canopy, which made me feel like it was summer.  I need a big batch of green boucle yarn as one of the half dozen or so yarns I use to crochet into the leaf clump shape.  I also need a lot of green yarns to create the green grasses and forest understory.  After a winter of weaving spring pieces I was getting a little low on crunchy greens.  I ended up dyeing skein after skein of greens and I’m delighted with how the whole project turned out! 

In other art news, my life has been too busy to launch on big weaving projects.  I hung my Walking Through Gardens exhibition at the History Center and distributed rack cards all over town to promote the show.  I’ve been helping to organize this year’s Bloomington Open Studios tour.  That will take place on April 27^th and 28^th this year.  I just learned that my primary greeter (Tommie) will be off at an Academic Superbowl event that day, so I might have to go to my ‘sixth man’ (Jacob).  The Trashion-Refashion show is coming up on Sunday, April 21^st, and I’ll have my Re-shirts for sale.  It’s at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater again, but this year I’ll be in the audience enjoying the show instead of creating new designs.  I did start experimenting with some spring sweater petals, which I want to display at the upcoming Artisan Showcase, a part of the Midwest Cultural Tourism Conference that takes place April 22 at the Bloomington Convention Center.   

When I looked at the muted earth tones colors I felt like they all belonged in the fall and winter seasons, not spring.  I pulled out some bright, cheery colors that came out of a project I did with a Boy Scout troop earlier in the year.  On a whim we tried overdyeing some wool sweaters.  It turns out that the results were perfect for spring sweater petals, and making more sweater petals made me happy this week.

On the home front, Jim and I went out to dinner at the Uptown on Friday and then on to the Bloomington Playwright’s Project.  The dinner was delightful and the new play, Ampersand, was wonderful.  It was funny and full of twists you didn’t expect.  The ending, which had some grim aspects, really was perfect and heartwarming in its own right.  The young actors were good, but the father stole the show.  On the way home we had to stop in to close down BluBoy with a decaf espresso and a shared caramel ganache brownie.  Mmmm, what a nice evening!  

 And in case you were wondering, a peach pie appeared this week!  I’m told that there is only one more pie filling fruit unit in the freezer (another peach pie).  I’m sure that’s a mistake.  If not, the rhubarb better kick it into high gear and start growing, because I’m not a patient person when it comes to pie!

Until next week,

Martina Celerin