Colorful berry blobs

I made so many tote bags

Spring is here! I am out on a daily blackberry hunt again, digging and pulling up all the little blackberry sprouts I find. I am trimming the Wood’s roses along the edge of the driveway and planted some of the trimmings and roots along the Abe Ditch Berm. Right now I can see a house (or song?) sparrow and a red-winged blackbird eating at our feeder together.

I printed twenty-four bloberry bags for ECCC. Sold a few. If you want one of the totes, shown below or one of a random color, send me a message. I will be putting these for sale online soon, but you can snag the one you want now.

This was my workstation. It is my grandma’s old quilting table (not so old as to be nice). And that was my test tote. It is a thicker cloth than the rest of them. I rolled out the fabric paint on the class on the left. I love that stuff (“stuff” being color mixing with cyan, magenta, and yellow).

I had to do lots of test prints on paper to make sure it was going right. That’s a stack of the totes before printing on the left. They are quaking at having to see their fate.

Oh man, forgive the mess, but do feel sorry for Abe. I exploded the entire downstairs in preparation for ECCC. But here are all the totes laid out to dry overnight. In the morning, I gathered them all up so we could sit on the couch. After that, I drew little faces on each one. It was so fun!!

Most of the purple

The other purple and the red

Look at that! I caught up! There’re about three books I can’t find links to because I think the title changed. I will look into it more.

• Silvohorticulture by Andy Dibben and Ben Raskin (Chelsea Green, January 2025)

• Song of the Blackbird by Maria van Lieshout (First Second, January 2025)
  Love the font. The book is also very good.

I’ve got bunches more classes coming up at The Jansen, so keep your eye over there. We had a lot of fun the other weekend making fake plants!

I finally read a book. Well, graphic novel, but still, that is a book. Principles of Uncertainty, which I heard as a recommendation from something I was reading or listening to. It is a diary of sorts. Musings. With delightful illustrations. I was hooked from the first page, featuring a dodo bird.

I hope your day gets better from here!
-Angela

P.S. Wally greets . . . Nope that’s an apple. The apple I dropped in the driveway when I jostled my lunch basket while dropkicking a pinecone for Wally to chase. That’s two large pieces of gravel stuck in the bottom. (Cosmic Crisp, if you were curious.)