PA Barn Loom-click image for larger view

I would like to find it a home, perhaps an historical society etc that could restore it and use it in demonstrations. All I ask is that you pick it up and take it away. It is on the third floor in Philadelphia, PA. I have no idea of its provenance and neither did my friend.
If interested, contact me at: beth@emmott.com

Bob visited with Joe at work and photographed along the coast while Margie and I headed north to meet Sally and Pam at the Maine Botanical Gardens for this years Garden Hoax. Words don’t do justice. It was misty (as all our garden events seem to be) giving the garden an ethereal feeling. We’ve been to lots of terrific gardens but this was different. It was a Maine Botanical garden. Where elsewhere beautiful flowers are planted to create vistas and swathes of color and texture, here the texture is of Maine. It is a garden in a forest.

Pam and I are in the rain in this pic Margie took
and House in the children’s garden with a cat fence!

Back to Margie and Joe’s for a bowl of home made chowder (what else) and the next day Bob and I headed north to Waldoboro where we stayed at the Blue Skye Inn, visited Pam and David, and ate Ginger Ice Cream in Thomaston (my mother has always raved of the Ginger Ice cream she ate in Thomaston, ME as a child in the 1920′s).

Alpaca

Bought alpaca from an Alpaca farm to card with some wool I have for spinning—this winter’s stress reducing project! and then home driving in one of this summer’s wild rain extravaganzas.

Short and sweet and lots of fun!

Manx Loghon wool being spun and finished skein

The Distaff Side

This structure is based on an accordion book with separate back and front covers, allowing it to be read front to back and then continued back to front on the other side. The first side features my mom, her mom, two grandmothers and a great grandmother. Each image opens out to reveal additional information about each women. The back side lists known women alternating with block prints of a distaff.

Sketch Books

Irish Rainbow

I don’t have internet access where I’m living so these posts may be a day late.
YESTERDAY
Lots of driving through a incredible country side—The Connemara, on the west coast of Ireland. Hedges 10 feet high of fuchsia, mountain sides glowing with golden Broom and purple Heather, orange flowers everywhere. )The roads are very narrow!
Left Clifden and drove the “Sky Road” which goes high in the hills overlooking Ballymakill Harbor and the Atlantic.

Very Narrow roads and even a castle!

Lots of ponies—this is a great area for ponies!

There are a number of handcraft shops but most are pretty touristy, BUT, Cottage Handcrafts in Mayard, Co. Galway is far and above the others I saw.

Then back to the N59 through Letterfreck to Leenaun—more magic —lots of sheep, lots and lots and lots of sheep! At Leenaun we stopped at The Sheep and Wool Center where they had sheep shearing, spinning and weaving demos. I bought a small bag of fleece to spin when I get home. from a Manx Loaghtan, which is a rare four horned sheep – pretty natural tans and browns.

Lots of sheep—this is a great area for sheep!

By then we were running late and so we headed straight to Ballycastle with a quick stop in Westport to find a mac machine, get gas and call Ballinglen.

We met Una, who took us to our cottage, I unpacked while Bob drove back to Ballycastle to get supplies for supper. He went to Polk’s which has everything. It’s a grocery store and bar combo and meets most basic needs. he came back with wine, pork chops, carrots and parsnips, and, my mother will be pleased, Irish potatoes. We feasted by candle light, looking out over fuchsia hedges, past fields with cows grazing to the North Atlantic!

Abandoned Weaver’s nest.