Posts from the ‘Art’ Category
Peony encore
Our post of a pink peony was warmly received so I thought an encore would be appropriate. Among the many peonies which populate the gardens about the house we have but one white individual – and it’s a beauty. Although the petals are pure white, the diffuse light of the heavily overcast morning conjured a golden glow from the deep recesses of the corolla.
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Pennsylvania sunset
It’s been raining, again … and that’s a good thing. Our water table had just begun to drop, the hay had begun to flag, and fire warnings had been raised in some of our surrounding forests. Although it’s been wet, we haven’t been idle; we managed to get seeds and transplants into the garden, and the trimming of hedgerows proceeds apace in anticipation of our first cut of hay. Just after dinner yesterday evening we were treated, to our delight, to a view of the setting sun through (ever so briefly) clearing skies.
By the way, this image was taken using the sweep panorama function of the Sony DSC-HX9V.
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Peony
Named for Paeon, student of Asclepius, Greek god of medicine, the Peony is known to produce a number of compounds with medicinal properties. Beyond that, Peonies are beautiful – that’s plain and simple.
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Warholesque
I have commented before about the sorts of post processing employed in the preparation of images for this blog. In particular I said that adjustments are limited to those which could be made easily in the darkroom and include changes to brightness and contrast. While doing evening chores yesterday we noticed that the needles of a large White Pine stood in dramatic contrast against the quickly darkening sky. I couldn’t resist creating a tetraptych in the fashion of Andy Warhol.
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Mimetics
It was sunny yesterday and I took time to photograph the Hollyhocks which grow just outside the barn. As I reviewed these images, the parallel between the reticulated pattern of venation of the plant and that created by urban sprawl and the development of housing subdivisions struck me. This convergence, between nature and a human construct, is nothing new … the parallels are much studied and comprise the field of Biomimetics. The terms mimetics and mimesis describe art, or other human constructions, as they reflect what is good, useful, efficient, and beautiful in the physical world. [Examples of biomimicry include Velcro and burs, and Kevlar and spider silk.]
It is not my habit to quote from Wikipedia (I prefer original sources and sometimes view the internet as the academic analogue of fast food) but will make an exception in the best interest of efficiency. The following is taken, with some modification, from Wikipedia: Through the course of 3.8 billion years, nature has gone through a process of trial and error to refine living organisms, processes, and materials. [The author means to point out that nature is subject to the laws and outcomes of the process of Natural Selection.] The emerging field of biomimetics has given rise to new technologies created from biologically inspired engineering on a number of scales. Biomimetics is not a new idea. Humans have always looked to nature for answers to both complex and simple problems. Nature has solved many of today’s engineering problems such as hydrophobicity, wind resistance, self-assembly, and solar energy.
Nature has had it right from the beginning … if we would simply stop to listen, we’d be a whole lot better off.
[The street view on the right, of south-west Florida, was captured from Google Maps. Views of this sort were the subject of a Boston Globe piece at Boston.com.]
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Farm equipment
Farm equipment … especially old farm equipment … speaks volumes when you take time to listen. Clicking any of the images in this gallery will take you to a carousel view, ESC will bring you back to this post.
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Starling
A Starling has been working to establish a nest in the barn. Several times this week, upon entering the milkroom, I have been greeted with an explosion which was her confused and disoriented attempt to leave the room, post-haste. Although the bird must have gained entry through the open door, she apparently forgot this in her effort to exit quickly. She flew about in confusion, bouncing off the walls and windows. On Thursday I was greeted by a pile of glass – that Starling had opened one of the windows the only way she knew how. I picked the shards from the floor and set them aside. Today I noticed, in the darkened room, that they reflected images of the nearby trees and afternoon sky.
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Flower power
The weekend weather was gloomy with overcast skies and river mist until early afternoon. To my surprise however, these conditions proved optimal for capturing the botanical riot which are the gardens surrounding our home. Old fashioned varieties of Poppy, Iris, and Columbine were at their showy-best. Clicking an individual image among those in the gallery will take you to a carousel view, ESC will bring you back to this post.
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Farm cartoon
In celebration of the end of shearing for the year, the following might be appropriate. One of our daughters is, we think, quite the artist. She has always been particularly skilled at capturing expressions in animals. Her genre of choice is the cartoon; the one below was drawn more than a decade ago.
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Fleece 101
Once, when visiting friends, Joanna happened to be working on a knitting project that she had brought along. When the visit was nearly complete one of our hosts asked, “Joanna, what have you been doing all this time?” “I’m knitting a sweater,” she replied. Our host took out his wallet, handed Joanna a twenty-dollar bill, and said “Here … go and buy yourself a sweater.” To this day, she has neither forgotten the event nor forgiven the comment. Joanna has been knitting for more than 30 years, she has been a spinner for most of that time, and she raises wool in support of her art. There is great satisfaction in crafting your own clothes – entirely from materials that you have raised and processed. Wearing a sweater, hat, or perhaps a pair of socks that once grazed your back pasture is quite something. Doing this has been Joanna’s passion, it has been our shared passion, for nearly a quarter century.
We started shearing the flock this week … one of the yearly events that we both look forward to and dread. We look forward to harvesting new fleeces and to seeing what that crop yields; at the same time we do not relish the chaos which results and physical labor required to realize such a harvest. Because we have culled our flock intensively, the naturally colored fleeces which it now produces are of the highest quality. The subject of this post is fleece quality and how it is judged.
Fiber Diameter. Wool fibers are measured in microns (µm) (millionths of meters … one micron is equal to ~0.00004 inches) and may be identified by size classes which range from Fine (<17-22 µm) to Very Course (36-42 µm). For comparison, an average human hair may range in size from 50 – 100 µm. Fibers taken from one of our Shetland ewes ranged from Fine (18.75 µm) to Very Course (50.0 µm); the majority however were classified as Fine and Medium. Finer wool fibers may be spun into finer yarns which may be used to produce finer, lighter, more delicate articles of clothing or fabric.
Crimp. The term crimp refers to the waviness of the wool fibers which comprise the fleece. Do you remember, from high school physics class, the meaning of the terms wavelength, frequency, and period? Wavelength is the distance between wave crests, frequency is the number of waves per unit time (or distance or length, in the case of wool crimp), and period is time (or distance or length) per wave cycle. In terms of wool, good crimp translates to waves of high frequency (many per unit length) and low period (minimal distance per wave cycle). Good crimp allows for good loft, or lightness, openness, or fluffiness of the yarn which results. Yarns with lots of loft are soft and comfortable to have next to the skin.
Together, fiber diameter and crimp are important measures. Wool fibers that are finely crimped and of small diameter can be spun into finer yarns. Fine yarns attain greater lengths for any particular weight. Think of the type of yarn you’d prefer to use for undergarments as opposed to that which you’d use for a rug or window treatment.
Color. Shetland fleeces come in natural colors ranging from white to brown to black. The North American Shetland Sheepbreeders Association has identified eleven colors in all. For more information about the taxonomy of color in these animals as well as a discussion concerning color patterning in Shetlands follow the link to NASSA.
There are other aspects of the fleece that are of more or less importance to the fiber artist depending on the particular application. Wool fibers may be described by the degree to which they show luster. Luster in this case has the same meaning as in the vernacular sense of shine, sheen or gloss. Some wool fibers have lots of luster while others do not. Shetland fleeces especially may be double-coated meaning that they are made up of two sorts of fibers – soft, relatively short, and crimpy wool fibers (which have lots of loft and little luster) and coarse, long, and straight hairs (which have lots of luster but little loft). Finally, different fleeces may be characterized by differences in staple length which is a measure of the length of the wool fibers themselves. Handspinners will know that wool of longer staple is easier to spin.
This image shows a bit of a fleece taken at shearing earlier in the week. The edge at the top is the cut edge which lay close to the animal; the tips at the bottom were exposed to the weather and are sun bleached as a result (some folks cover their sheep to prevent this – we believe it adds depth to fleece color which we appreciate).
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Foundation (2)
As promised, I drove by the relic foundation of a bank barn situated along the banks of the Susquehanna. I did so as the sun cleared the top of Bald Eagle mountain. Although the light wasn’t quite right I stopped to walkabout and to take a few photos. I like the image below. I imagine the expanse of adjacent tree canopy mirrors the gambrel roof that, perhaps, once was. A tangle of vines now frames and ties windows together as a sill once did. Although a small bit of mortar is missing from between the aged field stones, the foundation seems sound enough, plumb and true – a genuine testament to the skill and workmanship of more than a century ago. I will continue to visit this place, perhaps the color and subtle brilliance of an early spring sunset will better illuminate stonework, reveal hidden detail, or more dramatically highlight this graceful structure.
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Rorschach test
I have thought often about the motivation and intent of this blog. Sometimes I think it’s about pretty pictures; sometimes about tips and techniques of livestock husbandry; sometimes about sustainable living in a rural setting; and sometimes about metaphysical ramblings. Oftentimes I think that a post of pretty pictures, without accompanying text of substance, is of less value (when compared to the other sorts of content which appear here). Anyway, we took a walk along a favorite section of the Pine Creek Rail Trail today and I had my camera with me. My favorite photo of the day is the second one below. The reason I included the first image was to provide some sort of evidence that the second actually depicts patterns produced by light on water. There are several steel truss railroad bridges that cross the creek along the Rail Trail; the first photo shows the shadow cast by the truss onto the surface of the water below. As I was bracketing exposure to make the shadow stand out a bit more I noticed the sunlight sparkling off the rapidly moving water - the wind was blowing a bit as well, adding yet another variable to the equation which resulted in the flashes of light. The second photo shows the result of this interplay between light, water, and wind. I have commented, elsewhere, on the equipment used to capture the images which accompany these blog posts. I use two point-n-shoot cameras, a Nikon CoolPix P7000 and a Sony DSC-HX9V. Concerning post processing I use GIMP v2.6.2 and try to limit myself to simple adjustments of brightness and contrast. Although it may look as though the colors of the second photo were manipulated – they were not – the effect was generated entirely by an increase in image contrast.
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River mist
Our average high temperature for today, March 17, is 49°F; the temperature at 4:54 PM was 75° – a new record by two degrees. All of this warmth has combined with the cool waters of the Susquehanna to produce some impressive river mist. At 1000 feet above sea level Pairodox is a bit more than 400 feet above the Susquehanna so we don’t usually experience the mists but the adjacent river valley certainly does. We were on our way to take a look at the field stone barn foundation mentioned in an earlier post when the setting moon over misty fields drew our attention.
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Foundation
On the Susquehanna flood plain not far from a Bank Barn, which was the subject of an earlier post, there is an old field stone foundation (also of a Bank Barn). I admire this structure for the same reason I admire many old things - because it speaks to me about its past and consequently causes me, often times, to reflect upon my own current situation. Each time I pass it I am reminded of the unforgiving effects of time and what a colleague once called Entropic Doom. I stopped to visit the place this morning, hoping to explore it for the first time and to take a few photographs; the light wasn’t right but I did manage a few images including the one below. I often have my camera with me as I travel; I promise to keep my eye on my Old Friend over the next weeks and months. When the morning light it right – I’ll stop; when the evening light is right – I’ll stop and attempt to capture the spirit and mystery of the place. If you listen carefully to the image I have yet to capture I think you too will hear my Old Friend speak of hard work, losses managed, successes celebrated, and lives lived.
