Serendipity

Our local thrift store (a hospice thrift store -- all proceeds provide free hospice care to anybody living in this county!) is having its end of the season sale. All clothes 50 cents. Everything else 75% off. I've been eyeing these plates for many months, and yesterday I snagged them for a quarter each!

 I love the old French farmhouse drawings.

 I admit the real reason I bought them: they are microwave safe. So many of my old blue-and-white plates cannot be used in the microwave.

 I always buy these Pyrex ramekins when I see them, especially these larger ones. They were also a quarter each.

 This is Julia's latest art, a German Shepherd. After she left for school this morning, I found this leaning against the dresser in the back bedroom. I'm sure she'll give it away to some person I don't even know at school, so before it goes away forever at least I got a photo of him.

Isn't he handsome?
Over on the farm blog, I mentioned the free -- quite serendipitous! -- wood chip mulch that is coming our way. Adam has been moving it to the garden via the wheelbarrow. He says it is simultaneously a LOT of mulch (as he's wheeling it) and not very MUCH mulch (as he's spreading it to see how far it goes). Isn't that the truth?

 Perhaps the biggest serendipitous blessing on the planet is simple plant reproduction. You have a plant. It multiplies all by itself. Then you have three plants, and you did absolutely nothing to get them. Meet my aloe:

 I took it to the hoop house plant hospital and nursery, and voila!!, two baby aloes were born.

 I've always felt that people who make money simply by helping plants reproduce are some of the cleverest humans on earth.
Today I begin a new weaving project: long panels for our front porch.This end of the porch faces east and gets so much sun in the morning. I want long woven panels there to give shade.

I like beachy colors -- green, blue, white. All these yarns are cheap leftovers in my yarn stash. So these panels will cost me next-to-nothing and clear some room in my yarn bags.

Ignore that Lorna Doone cookie. She has nothing to do with weaving.
I started warping up. Here are the colors. I was slowed considerably by some very knotty and naughty white yarn. Argh.

 Because this is a long panel, I'm warping from one side of the dining room to the other. See?

So Adam and I are doing a little bit of the Limbo Stick today. We are no longer limber, that's for sure. Rolling all that yarn up on the loom was a huge task. It's by far the biggest weaving I've done. I'll let you know how it comes along.