Orange Blossom Time

There is nothing sweeter than the smell of orange blossoms.  It wasn't until I moved here and was lucky enough to have an orange tree in my own front yard that I realized that it takes one full year from the time the blossom provides its sweet scent until the orange is ripe and ready to eat.  However, our tree is now covered with both blossoms and oranges.

A branch loaded with oranges ready to pick

Oranges and blossoms on the same branch.

Lovely orange blossoms.  They are pure white and waxy in appearance but the important thing is the fragrance which permeates the whole yard.

The Sun Is Shining

After all the rain lately, it was wonderful to get out in the sunshine this morning and take pictures of the Vireya (tropical rhododendrons). The one above is Sonny's Brother and the one below is an unnamed seedling.

Bored Puppy

This is what happens when one's puppy gets bored.  The towel is one of the dog towels and was rescued before too much damage was done.  The crazy hair cut is because Mom took after her with the scissors when the clippers decided not to work.  We still need to get that hair shorter.  In case you didn't know, it rains a lot here.

Masquerade

Sometimes we collaborate.  Glenn and I work in very different styles and seldom work on tasks together.  It is what has helped keep us married for almost forty four years.  But once in awhile, we get a wild hair to do something together.  And that is what happened this year.

He belongs to The Big Island Woodturners and they have a major wood show each spring.  This year it is starting in February.  We decided to enter a piece that used his wood turning and my fiber arts.

He turned and painted four masks and finished off a willow branch.  

In the meantime, I was busy on the loom.  The shawl that was to be the background for the masks had a warp of silk yarn that I had purchased when I was in Tokyo four years ago.  It came as a light beige and I wanted purple so I first had to dye it.  This was the first time that I had dyed commercial yarn.  I was pleased with the result.  The weft was a very fine silk yarn that Glenn purchased for me when he was in Okinawa.  This picture is of the shawl when it was on the loom.  The fine gold threads that you can see scattered in the cloth were also silk that Glenn brought back from Okinawa.

It took me a little over a month to weave the shawl.  I had some slight problems with keeping the tension even and tight, but nothing compared to an earlier project that I did.  To see that project you can go to the Hawaii Handweavers Hui gallery page.  It is near the bottom of the page. 

Here is a picture of the finished shawl and another of a close up of the shawl.  I was pleased with the final result which was a gauzy fabric of purple and blue with just a hint of gold.

Finally it all came together this past week.  Here is a picture of our finished entry for the wood show.  We are calling it Masquerade.

And The Rains Came Down

Now I live on the rainy side of Hawaii Island outside of Hilo.  We get rain.  But there is rain and there is rain.  Tuesday night, we got over five inches.  Our rain gauge only goes to five inches.  And a section of the road that leads to our house washed out.  Our road is gravel on top of lava and it comes down a rather steep hill.  If the rain is heavy enough, the water rushing down the hill takes out the surface gravel leaving gullies a foot deep and a foot wide.  But that was Tuesday night.  

Friday night it started to rain again, and it rained, and it rained, and it rained.  This is Sunday morning and it is still raining.  I'm not talking nice soft Pacific Northwest rain.  I'm talking tropical downpours at about an inch an hour. 

 

Our buildings sit pretty high and Glenn has done a good job of making a path for the water, but yesterday most of the area other than where the house sits was under water at some level or another.  The section between us and the street was a small river.  As you can see from the picture above and this one, that river was flowing at a rate that it was creating water falls.  It was about 18 inches deep and varied from six feet wide to a space that was probably twenty to thirty feet wide.  

We have two lots and buildings on both lots.  The area between them is grassy with banana plants on palm trees on it.  This is what it looked like yesterday.  We not only had river front property, we also had lake front property.

Well, it's a rainy Sunday and looks like it will stay that way.  I can't get my car out on the road and the Mayor is asking everyone to stay home.  I think it is a good day to pull out the spinning wheel or some other fiber tool and find a nice glass of wine.

Want to join me?