American Bittern

This is an American Bittern.   We saw her at the edge of one of the back roads on Goose Pond SWR this week.  She posed quite nicely for me to snap a couple of pics.  

Mostly I was there to take pics of the marsh, but the place never disappoints.  It's a feast of sound and light and even on overcast days like this one, it's beautiful.    We're still trying to identify some distinctive bird songs we heard. [Edited:  Turns out it was a bunch of common snipe.  Spooky.] Spring is a great time to visit.

Here's another view of the bittern.

The marshes are beautiful this year.   Lots of water and lots of birds.  Everything is greening up fast.

We saw a lot of Canada geese and coots, a couple of northern shovelers [so pretty!], an otter, some blue winged teals and assorted lots of other birds we didn't take time to identify.

So Much Fun

Thanks to everyone who came to The Fiber Event at Greencastle this weekend.  We saw many good friends and enjoyed seeing the projects everyone has made since last year.  We met many new people and really enjoyed getting to know them and talking about yarn.   The new layout of the show was wonderful and both customers and vendors were pleased with how easy it was to see everything and move around.

There was only a little drama this year when 20 minutes from home on the way to the show, our truck died.   As in - quit right there in the middle of a very rural road in Owen County at 6:30 in the morning.   An hour away from the show.

Thank heaven we had taken both cars and I was right behind in the jeep.   Lily and I took the jeep, already stuffed with the yarn, on to the show while Eric and Claire tried to figure out what was going on with the truck and find a way to get the booth structures, tables and trees to the show as fast as possible.    It was a very long 3 hours for me, waiting at the show, wondering what to do with 30 bags of yarn and no trees.  [Other vendors and I had a plan!   We'd pull 6 -8 or so of the fairground's tables out and use those.  Our booth was right next to the place where the tables were stored and other vendors offered their extra table covers.   I love these women!!]

Long story short, after Lily dropped me and the yarn at the show and drove back to Eric, and our wonderful neighbor brought her truck out to help, we were able to get the rest of the booth to the fairgrounds 10 minutes before the show started.   Yes, there was a lot of crazy rushing around, but many other vendors lent a hand setting up while Claire and Mary put the the trees and racks together out at the truck.   We were up and selling in record time.   And it was crazy busy for the first couple of hours.   Once things calmed down, I was able to pretty things up.  By late that afternoon, you'd never have known anything goofy had happened.

By noon, Eric was able to get the truck towed back to our favorite mechanic in Bloomington without selling our firstborn [Lily was happy about that] or his right arm [Eric was happy about that].  We just heard a little while ago that the truck's fuel pump had died.   It's a pricey fix, but not hard.  That truck was going to die this week anyway.   It's good that we were all together when it happened and that nothing really bad happened.  We were able to rent a little UHaul trailer to get things home in from the show.   All is put away now and we're good to go.

Many, many thanks to all of our friends at the show who stepped up to keep me calm [I was definitely not calm!] and help us get things ready at the very last second.    The Fiber Event has wonderful organizers and vendors.  This is one of the reasons we have been doing it for almost 20 years.   We love this show!

Fiber Event at Greencastle, Indiana

I've been scrambling the past few weeks to get ready for one of our favorite shows of the year, April 15-16, 2016.  - The Fiber Event at Greencastle, Indiana.

It's a great show.  Beautiful area, super friendly vendors and customers.   We always meet the most interesting people there and we learn something new every year.



I've got a lot of yarn in a couple of new colors this year.  Here's one of them - Blue Peacock.  I hope you can stop by the booth and see it yourself.   We'll be in the Community Building.

The Fiber Event 2016
Greencastle, Indiana,  Putnam County Fairgrounds
Friday April 15,   10:30am - 5pm
Saturday April 16,   9am - 4pm

Free parking.  No admission fee.

Beck Chapel

This is a little practice piece [4.25 x 5.5 inches] I did for a cityscape painting class.   Beck Chapel is at Indiana University, deep in campus next to the Union Bldg.   It's one of the loveliest and most peaceful places on campus.    I gave this piece to a friend who just celebrated her 41st anniversary - they were married in this chapel in 1975.