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?

I'm A Big Girl Now

Keanani wants you to know that she's a Canine Good Citizen and she has the paper to prove it. She passed her test on Saturday. We had a little problem with the walk on a leash because she wanted to pull me to get to the good smells from all the other dogs, however she managed to behave herself enough to pass by the skin of her teeth. It also took multiple commands on the down before she got there. The rest was a piece of cake. She is so mellow that all the stuff about letting people touch her, or walking through a crowd, or having a loud noise go off were simple stuff. We obviously have work to do. The training never really stops, but she is doing well.

However just so I continue to know that she is a livestock guardian dog, we are also getting to the I'm deaf stage and the if I don't want to, you can't make me stage. She has also learned that she can bully Kip. Yesterday, Kip had her beloved squeaky toy and Nani took it away from her. I'm not too worried about this because she will then turn around and give Kip a toy to make up to her. They will work it out. In the long run, Nani will be top of the heap even though Hoku currently still holds that spot. We have made great progress since I posted last when it comes to inter-dog relations. The exercise pens are a thing of the past. All dogs are in the house together when people are there. We do not let the three of them be together without us because Hoku and Nani gang up on Kip. Just like kids – three's a crowd. Nani and Hoku spend their days together in the dog yard and they enjoy each others company.

As you can tell from the pictures, she is growing by leaps and bounds and she has become a beautiful young lady. She turned eight months on Friday, July 13^th. I had her weighed at the vet's the next day and she came in at 78.5 pounds. To the best that I can measure her without help and/or a wicket, she is 24.5 inches high at the shoulders.

I still can't believe how lucky I am to have this wonderful dog sharing my life and my space. I had given up hope of having an LGD again and then here she came. Thanks you again, Clarence, for this wonderful addition to my life.

What A Hat!

Some time back, I posted a picture of some dyed fiber. It took a long time but that fiber finally turned into a hat for my friend, Judy. If you would like to see what it takes to go from hunk of fiber to a finished hat, please take a gander at the on line magazine Fiber Femmes. You will find it at www.fiberfemmes.com My hat was a featured article in the March/April issue.

And Here's Keanani!

How Does Your Puppy Grow?

It's been three months since Keanani came to live with us, and what a three months. She has grown. She is now about 46 pounds and 21 inches high at the shoulders. That means she has caught up with Kip and will soon weigh as much as Hoku. She has about three more inches to gain Hoku's height. She was spayed on the 4^th and promptly pulled out all of her surface stitches the night of the 5^th. So she lived the next five days when I couldn't see her and nights in an Elizabethan collar. Like all dogs, she figured out how to eat and drink with it and how to make it as obnoxious as possible for her human family. Nothing makes more noise than an E collar banging a crate side at two in the morning. Her adult guard hair is coming in. I've been fascinated watching it arrive. It started at her tail and has now covered most of the middle of her back. I didn't notice a pattern of guard hair development on the Pyrs but that was probably because I was too busy to take the time to notice.

We have made it through much of the teething without any horrible damage. Some dowels on my card weaving loom now have teeth designs on them, but knock wood all spinning wheels have been ignored. My books have taken the most damage; because I was too slow moving them out of the way, the spines of a number of books have been crunched. So there have been times for hitting myself with the rolled up newspaper and saying “I should watch the puppy; I should watch the puppy.”

At the moment one of the favorite “toys” is the fountain on the lanai. I can hear her now making a wet, watery mess as she plays in it with both front feet. She could be into worse things; and if she is like the Pyrs, this delight in water will go away with some maturity. As a matter of fact, having the experience with the Pyrs is a great sanity producer. I keep saying, “She will be an adult LGD; she will be an adult LGD.”

We haven't completely integrated her and the other two dogs, but we are making progress. For the most part, she and Hoku can be together with supervision. The supervision is just because Hoku can still play too rough for a puppy. Kip is a different issue. She is like the mother of a two year old who screams “no” but never carries through. Nani knows Kip won't carry through so she harasses her unmercifully. We have to move in to spare Kip. We do have time with all dogs or Nani and one dog together but we still have days where she is in her exercise pen to keep her separate from the other two.

Last Saturday, she graduated from Puppy Obedience. That means she can play with other puppies without being a problem and she has a small glimmer of what sit, down, come, and heel mean. Stay is still not really part of her vocabulary at all yet. We work on all of these daily as they fit into her normal activities. At the moment, sit is the most understood. By the same token, she is an LGD and she already can decide to blow me away if something is more interesting than my command. Also right now we are into the “terrible two's” where every command from “Mom” is met with a “NO”. With consistent training this shall pass just as it does with human children, but right now it is a pain in the neck.

At the moment, my biggest problem is our first walk in the morning and the last walk at night. We have Cane Toads, lots of them; and they are extremely toxic. They hide during the day in cool, damp holes, but at night, they come out to feed. They are often on the driveway and paths that we walk and they jump in such exciting ways. Every walk in the dark is a challenge as I try to spot them in the flashlight before Nani does. They taste terrible and usually a dog will spit them out immediately; but if they swallow one, it is lethal. My Pyrs ignored them. Maddie picked one up once and spit it out so fast that I hardly knew she had it in her mouth. She then gave me the dirtiest look because I hadn't warned her. I'm hoping that Nani will get to where she too ignores their existence. Hoku now at almost four has finally gotten so she doesn't go after them at every sighting. In the meantime, I have to be vigilant and Nani gets her neck yanked periodically.

She goes with me to Aikido every Tuesday and Thursday. She is a favorite of the children that train there, and the Bichon's are at least tolerating her. She also went to church with me on Holy Thursday. She was cabled during the potluck dinner and behaved extremely well. And when crated during the service, she went to sleep. As she gets more obedience training, she will go with me to other places. However, my ability to take a dog with me here is limited by the weather. If she can't be with me at all times and the outing is during the day, she can't go. Cars are too hot here for a dog to stay in them safely. But I hope to take her more than I have the other two. We shall see.

All in all, she is a delight. I am still feeling so lucky that Clarence found me with that email, and she entered our lives.

Keanani and Friend Kip

What A Puppy!

Keanani came to live with us two weeks ago. Her name means white beautiful flower among other things and the meanings for the parts of her name are white for Kea and beautiful, pretty, glorious, splendid, and beautiful flower for Nani. For me, she filled a large hole in my heart that was labeled “big white dog”.

I had lived with Great Pyrenees for twenty years, when I lost the last three within four months in 2003. Pele and Maddie succumbed to the ravages of old age at almost fourteen. Karlo left too early at eleven with bone cancer. I decided to be practical and not get another. There were none to be had in Hawaii. Importing them was at best time consuming and loaded with paper work and at worst a long drawn out process that wouldn't bring in a puppy. Also the heavy coat was not fun to deal with in our wet, wet East Hawaii climate. No I'd be practical and get a short haired dog.

So Hoku, Rotweiller – German Shepherd mix, and Kip, who knows what mix, entered my life. They came with some traits that I would rather not live with but that can happen with a mixed breed. In general they have been great dogs and they add to my life. But they are not big white dogs nor are they livestock guardian dogs. And when you've lived with a livestock guardian dog, nothing else quite fills the bill.

Then in mid November, I received an e-mail. There was a litter of Maremma puppies about an hour and a half north of me. Puppies! Here on the island! LGD puppies here on the island! I immediately e-mailed the breeder. Yes, I want one. Please. Then the waiting began, and I counted the days until two weeks ago when she arrived.

Now I remember why one should think before one takes on a puppy – sleepless nights, piddles on floors, holes in clothing. But I also know why one wants a puppy – puppy breath and puppy kisses. The grin when you walk into their sight. The total delight on finding some thing new in the yard to pounce on. The joy as a ball of fluff comes racing to you full tilt and skids into you as they try to stop but not soon enough.

Keanani requires all the work of a new puppy. But what a delight she is as she learns and loves and totally becomes part of our lives. Last week she went visiting at the Dojo where I train in Aikido. We walked in the door and she was at once surrounded with six children, six adults, and two Bichons who were telling her that it was their territory. She sat back next to my legs and surveyed the situation. I gave her a couple pets and she walked over to Sensei Tina who was sitting on the floor and sat next to her with her head on Tina's leg. After receiving some pets from Tina, she decided she was ready and she began to work the room. She went from child to child and adult to adult. She tried to convince the Bichons that she was OK, but they were having none of it. Everyone commented on how calm and mellow she was. She was totally curious about everything and everyone. She was confident and ready to face whatever came her way. She was everything that a Livestock Guardian puppy should be. Next week she starts puppy class in the local park. I am expecting her to do well. In the meantime, she keeps me on my toes and delights my days. And she is letting me sleep all night now.

What a puppy!

Serendipity

Serendipity: the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely. This describes my latest dying adventure. I needed some silk for a weaving project. An initial search of my stash didn't produce anything that struck my fancy. I checked out out a couple of vendors online and again nothing jumped out at me. So I decided to dye my own fiber.
I weighed out four ounces from the pound of Tussah that was in my stash. I had in mind a red orange but with more red than yellow in it. But when I weighed out my dye powder, my scale decided that it wasn't going to weigh accurately for me. By the time I realized that I had more yellow than made sense for the color I had in mind, it was pretty well mixed in with the red powder. (Note to self: Weigh your powder out individually so you can put the extra back in the bottle.) I mixed the weighed powder with 12 ounces of hot water. It was a pretty color but not as red as I thought I wanted. So I added a little more red powder. I emptied my red bottle, and still it looked a little orange. Oh well, let's go for it.
I had soaked my silk roving in water in preparation for following my favorite method of dying small quantities of fiber. I learned this cold pour method from "The Twisted Sisters Sock Book" by Lynne Vogel. I divided the roving into four pieces and followed the same procedure for all four. I laid plastic wrap on my newspaper covered counter and placed the fiber on the plastic wrap. I then took the squeeze bottle that contained my dye mixture and poured the dye onto my silk. I wanted a pretty heavy saturation so I tried to not leave much in the way of white showing. I sprayed the fiber with full strength vinegar and turned it over. I applied more dye on the back side and then wrapped the fiber in the plastic wrap and placed it in a colander that was in my dye pot. The large dye pot had about an inch of water in it. It also had three rocks that I use to keep the colander above the water level. Once all four packets of fiber were in the colander, I turned on the heat. I brought the water up to where it was just barely simmering - letting off steam but no bubbles. I set the timer and let the fiber steam for twenty minutes. The heat was turned off and everything sat in the pan overnight. The next day, I rinsed the silk and lay it out to dry.
And the color. Here is where the serendipity comes in. I didn't get the color that I had in mind; but the color I got is beautiful. I call it Orange Sherbet. It will make some beautiful yarn for some project but not for the weaving project that started the whole thing.
Ironically as I was working with the dye and looking at the color that I obtained, I realized that I needed a much more neutral color for my weaving project than either the color I had in mind or the color I obtained. So back to the stash. I am now spinning some beautiful gray/silver colorways from Carol Weymar (www.thesilkworker.com). The yarn from it will work perfectly for my weaving project. More on that project later.

Orange Sherbet

Weavers Of Worlds and Dreams

I've spent the last four days with people who weave dreams and worlds with words. The Writer's Weekend near Seattle was a combination of work, excitement, and laughter. Attendees included the elite of the world of books, editors and agents, along with those wonderful inspirations, published authors, and those of us who hoped to find that magical moment that might push us across the great divide from unpublished to published writer.

You who are out there struggling to publish that first book, story, poem or play might be surprised to learn that agents and editors are really human. They laugh; they impart information; they become exhausted; but most of all, I found them to be incredibly patient with all of us as we asked question after question both in and out of the workshop sessions.

My conference experience went stratospheric when an agent said, “I want you to send me your book.” It took all I had not to scream right there in the room. Someone was willing to give my book a serious read. Those are words of gold to an aspiring writer. Another golden moment was when an editor spent her lunch hour helping me to understand the workings of her publishing company and assuring me that my manuscript wasn't lost in the piles and piles filling the acquiring editor's office.

Old friendships were renewed and new friendships were made. Long conversations were held over drinks, during meals or while standing in a hall holding up the walls. We laughed, some of us may have cried and all of us were inspired. It was a wonderful, wonderful weekend.

Now the work begins. I'm winging my way back to Hawaii with words singing in my head. I have a manuscript to send off and a new one to start. Would I change things? Not for the world. Words are alive; life among them is magical, and my journey is just beginning.

Color, Color, Color

I am starting on a new fiber adventure. I have dyed my own roving before, but I've never blended multiple colors together to form a yarn that was totally unique and my own. I'm following the information in Deb Menz “Color In Spinning” and doing lots of playing. The colors above are my choices to make my yarn. The wool is Blue Faced Leicester from Ashland Bay. The white is dog hair. I'll keep you posted as to my progress.

Memorial Day 2006

Kea`au, the town I live near, is a small plantation town. Although most of the old plantation buildings are gone, the plantation people are still here. This area was a Japanese camp. Most of the plantation workers in old Hawai`i were separated by race. One of the oldest churches in the area is the Buddhist temple. That temple has hosted an interdenominational, inter-cultural Memorial Day service since 1946. This year I attended.

I find that the two holidays set aside for our veterans are honored more here than in other place that I have lived. Maybe because so many of the people here are immigrants themselves or the children of immigrants. I was told by one of the Japanese Americans that on December 7, 1941, many citizens of Hawai`i but especially the Japanese had only minutes to decide where their loyalties lay. Think of it – your mother, your father, maybe your wife and children were in Japan and you must decide in an instant how you are going to live out this war. And most of them threw their future with their new land. The 100<sup>th</sup> Battalion of the 442<sup>nd</sup> Regimental Combat Team was made up of Japanese Americans from Hawai`i. Because they were not trusted, they were sent to the European war where they became the most decorated battalion who fought in WW II. And some of them did not come home. (Check out this web site for more history on these remarkable young men - http://www.katonk.com/442nd/442/page1.html )

These were the names first read in the roll call of honor at the service. The roll call progressed through the fallen from Puna, our district, for the Korean Conflict, the Vietnam War, and the current conflict in Iraq. With bagpipes playing Amazing Grace in the background, each name was read and a member of the family, or the community representing the family, took a bouquet of antheriums to the Veterans Memorial which was already decorated with large bouquets placed by many Veterans organizations. It was a stirring moment that for me was the center of the whole service.

Yes there were patriotic songs and speeches but having those names read and seeing the families come forth really spoke to me of what this and every Memorial Day is about – a time to remember our history and honor those who walked that lonesome road for all of us. My father was a veteran from WWII, the Korean conflict and Vietnam, but we were lucky. He died peacefully in his sleep at the ripe old age of 82. I pray that will be the fate of our men and women in uniform today.

At Home In The Jungle

It's almost noon and the trade winds have died to almost nothing. This Pacific Northwest gal is sitting here doing a minor grumble about the weather – sticky. But it's hard to do more than a minor grumble about the weather here in paradise. It really is never too hot nor too cold and our humidity, though more than I like, never reaches the levels of much of the South, Midwest or East Coast. Puffy white clouds are floating in and will back up against the mountains soon to cause rain in the higher elevations. We may not see any.

Last night we had a termite swarm. They are early this year. I hate them. Besides the damage they can potentially do to the house, it means lights out as soon as we see them. If they have no light to be attracted to, they are less apt to land and settle in. So I'm reading my book by flashlight under the covers after going to bed at eight o'clock. Talk about flashbacks to teenage years.

Today we put in a new water system. We live in an area with no public nor private, as in community, water supply. Our water is supplied by what lands on our roof with the rain. It is collected into a large tank and stored for future use. This means that my water is literally rain water soft but there are possible hazards from contamination. So today we added a new system that runs the water through two filters and then an ultraviolet sterilizing process. We drank the water before this system but I'll feel more comfortable doing it with this change over.

We live on six acres of barely controlled jungle outside of Kea`au, Hawai`i on the Big Island. We are about eighteen miles from the Hawai`i Volcanoes National Park. Our land is covered with ohia, palms, guava and a variety of other trees. We also have a large collection of orchids, anthiriums, tree ferns and vireyas growing on the property. Vireya are tropical and sub-tropical rhododendrons. The picture is of the vireya Veryl Ann and it was hybridized by Mitch Mitchell of Volcano Hawaii. And yes, it was named after me.

Our family consists of myself, my husband Glenn, two dogs Hoku and Kip, and a flock of eight chickens. Hoku and Kip are what we call poi dogs here in Hawai`i. Anywhere else they would be called mutts. Hoku has Rotweiller and German Shepherd in her but I think she also has terrier in her mix. I always swore I would never live with a terrier and I find that all the behaviors of Hoku's that drive me nuts are those that I can attribute to terrier in her background. Kip is a bigger mystery because she was found wandering in the forest near Volcano but we think she looks like she has a lot of Australian Cattle Dog in her. She is our self appointed watch dog and overall cuddle dog.

So now you know a little bit about us and where we live. Oh and the fiber part. My creative passions are worked out in two areas – fiber arts and writing. You will hear much about both as this blog continues.