To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket--safe, dark, motionless, airless -- it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

C.S. Lewis

Feeling inexplicably sad and a bit bruised today. It will pass.

Am happy about one thing: Last night I cast on for one of the scarves from Victorian Lace Today. Love that book! And I got through the first three pattern repeats on the first border before quitting. I haven't been knitting at all, so it feels really good. Plus, I love this wool! It's the laceweight Swedish yarn from my Dye-No-Mite swap partner in lovely greens/burgundy. I'll post pix of the scarf in progress later, but for now, here's the yarn (and all the other goodies she sent).



In the meantime, I've started Round Two of the Textiles Postcard Swap on Swap-Bot. The system won't let me create a graphic for it, so for now this will have to do as the link. The first swap was great fun, although I admit to stressing myself silly about how to make my postcards. They turned out fine in the end. I heard a few others felt the same way, so the only new rule in Round 2 is No Stressing!

Here are the postcards I made.



They turned out stiff as a board: I used diluted white glue to adhere the fabric to the cardstock, then hand stitched through all of that. (Ouch! Couldn't find my thimble.) Then I pasted a spare blank postcard on the back for the address. I think that besides being heavy, they're probably almost "nuke certified," as G. would say. I know one of my cards has made it through the post; so far so good.

One of the best things about the swap is that I've learned a lot from the other participants about fabric PC construction. I'm not a sewing or quilting person, so I didn't know about Timtex and hadn't thought about using a foam core for the cards.

If you're interested in seeing some of the postcards, go to FlickR and do a search for "swapbot textiles postcards" or "swapbot fabric postcards," and then make sure you're set to view most recent first.

The thing weighing heaviest on my mind right now is whether or not to go to Girdwood for the Forest Fair. It's a gargantuan three-day outdoor music and art festival that draws crowds from all over Alaska, and I've had a booth there for the past three years. It's actually a lot of fun, and I'm guaranteed to make a lot of money: about a quarter of my entire yearly sales, to be exact.

But it is a daunting amount of work, especially for one person. Thinking about the 7-hour drive in an unreliable pick-up truck, and then having to unload everything and set up the EasyUp all by myself (again) is just... almost too much. I don't mind sleeping in a tent and using PortAPotties, or feeling grungy and bug-bitten for most of a week. And I love seeing customers face-to-face: Direct sales is the best, and this is one of the few opportunities I have for that anymore.

But I'm just so tired. G. says I felt the same way last year, and I probably did, but I don't think it was quite this dire. I haven't got a single piece of stock made for it, either, and if I go, I'll have to leave next Wednesday. Guess I've got to figure it out today, huh?

Anybody want to come help me set up and tear down?

Happy Summer Solstice

Both the Summer and Winter Solstices are important days for me in Alaska. Because it heralds the return of the sun, the Winter Solstice always brings pure joy. The Summer Solstice, though, is a bittersweet day, a reminder of how quickly summer goes.

We've still got 24 hours of daylight here, but before long we'll be losing six minutes of light each day. Add it up, and that's about three quarters of an hour each week. The change in light is dramatic if you pay attention -- probably more dramatic if you don't. I can imagine looking up one day to find that it's getting dark a couple hours earlier than I expected.

Except that I'm always paying attention to the light. It's one of my favorite things about living in Alaska.

The first five or six years we lived here, we spent every Summer Solstice in the canoe, me paddling from the bow and G. fly fishing from the stern -- backwards, but that's how we do it. I miss that tradition.



Last night we decided to take some sandwiches and folding chairs and sit down by the Chena River for part of the evening. The past few days have been almost unbearably hot: Up to 80F. (Don't laugh! I grew up where it stayed above 100 degrees for days on end, with horrible humidity, and I hated it. After years in Alaska, 70 is warm.)



The evening started under the shadow of a huge cloud. I love the way its shape seems to echo the treeline. I thought it would rain, but eventually the cloud just moved away, probably dropping its rain somewhere miles from us.

The light turned golden after that, as the sun slanted low.



I've noticed this summer we seem to have more songbirds than usual. I can remember summers when we would have heard no birdsong at all, but this year the robins have moved in with a vengeance. They were singing and scuffling all around us, and I heard other birds I can't identify, too. I can't think of too many things more pleasant than sitting by the river, watching the water flow by and listening to the birds singing their little heads off.

When we got home, I wandered around taking more photos. I particularly love the midnight blue velvet of these petunias.



Wild roses blanket most of Alaska in June with vivid pink and sweet fragrance. Rosehips feed the birds and animals, and they make a lovely syrup, too.



These groundhugging plants are called "dogwoods" by Alaskans. The flowers do resemble those on the trees in the South, but still, I'm tickled by the name. In the fall the bushes bear bright orange berries.



Like the wild roses, wild irises carpet the land for a brief spell in June. And like so much here, their beauty is brief but intense.



These were all taken between 10 p.m. and midnight, with no flash.

Happy Midsummer, all.

A Midnight Rainbow

I was working hard at my bench, hammering away, when I noticed a lovely rosy glow coming thru the window. On a whim I grabbed my camera and headed out the front door. The first thing I saw was this:



A rainbow at midnight!

I've lived in Alaska since 1994, and the perpetually changing light is one of my favorite things. I've been outside at midnight every summer solstice, and I'm a horrible night owl anyway, so I'm often outside in the middle of the night, summer or winter. But I've never seen a midnight rainbow before.

This one seemed to end at the bottom of my driveway. Makes me feel lucky. And look at that lovely red glow on the birches!

So then I looked around the corner of the house, towards the Northwest, and this is what I saw:



The sky is on fire! Yes, I've seen lots of midnight sunset/sunrises, but this is certainly one of the most dramatic. (If you look at the larger version of this pic, please try to ignore all the junk in the goose play area... That's their kiddie pool and bucket. Messy, messy gooses. But notice how much light there is? This is as dark as it got.)

I've been terribly remiss in sharing all of the delightful swap packages I've been receiving. Life is rather "interesting" at the moment (when isn't it?), and these goodies -- and the postcard and letter swaps, too -- are often the high point of my day. I've put swap photos in my Flickr albums, but I want to write a bit more about the love and craft that so overwhelms me when I open the packages. Soon, I promise.

But go and take a look at Ralph the Turtle, or my lovely Dye-No-Mite package, or the sweet maneki nekos, or the heart pin cushion. I can't help but grin when I see these things.

In the meantime, wherever you are, I hope the joy and energy of the Midnight Sun are contagious: May you catch them just by looking at the pictures!

Bat in Fairbanks...

Bat in Fairbanks...
Originally uploaded by SummerLion

but what kind? In past years, little brown bats have roosted in this birdhouse scorned by the chickadees (its intended inhabitants). Much to the delight of my friend, who is hosting the bat, this year's resident seems to be a different kind, but we're not sure yet. We think it's a silver-haired bat, which has only been reported in Southeast Alaska, not the Interior. Gonna get the bat experts on it soon.

Meanwhile, isn't s/he adorable? And you can't see it, but there's a perfectly good, very nice bat house, made to spec especially for bats, on the same tree. This bat can't live by our rules and would rather scrinch around in a birdhouse. That's good... We can see him almost face to face when we sit on the deck.

Aside from spiders, I think bats may be the most misunderstood creatures on earth... and like spiders, they're one of my favorites. I know they give a lot of people the shivery creeps, but that's mostly because of old myths (that they'll fly into your hair, for instance. Not gonna happen. They use echolocation to navigate, and they're perfectly aware of where your hair is and have no desire to get in it.).

Unfortunately, we know very little about bats, and deforestation and other environmental problems are wiping out whole populations. We're just beginning to understand the important role bats play not only in controlling insect populations, but also in pollination. (This could be critical with the huges losses of honeybees in North America.)

In Alaska, we don't even know whether bats over-winter in the frigid temperatures (as low as -68F in my own experience) or if they migrate, which would mean flying hundreds of miles and crossing vast, rocky, barren mountain ranges. I'm excited to be able to report a bat sighting to help the biologists here get a better picture of what's going on.

Oh: And I almost forgot! My friend made me a bat house last year, exactly to spec, and I hung it on the Southwest wall of the house, on the second floor, where it gets a lot of sun for warmth. Last summer, no joy: no bats. But this year... I think I might have a bat. Haven't seen it, but I think I see guano on the metal shelf under the house. There's no way a bird could get in there, so it would have to be a bat. (Crossing my fingers.) We have an overabundance of mosquitos, flies and yellow jackets, so a bat could dine very well here.

If you're interested in learning more about bats -- and seeing lots of cool pictures -- visit Bat Conservation International.

Swap a Goat (for charity)

I really wish I had thought to mention this swap here before today. (The swap button is on the right.) I hope any of my swapper friends who visit will check it out and sign up; the deadline is June 8.

Here's part of the swap description:

Did you know that a mother in Africa loses a child to Malaria every 30 seconds? A malaria net costs just £5 and can save the lives of a whole family of children.

This is a swap for swappers who are willing to give the cost of one swap (or a few crafting items) to help others. Here is how it works....

There are several charities who operate an alternative gift project....
They work by you giving an online donation in exchange for them sending a person you nominate a card explaining that you have bought them an alternative gift, such as a goat, a fruit tree, an emergency blanket or immunisations for a child. There is a very wide choice. Some charities actually buy the exact item. Others pool the gift money to buy bigger items or to enable them to respond to need. So say if you buy a goat and they have enough goats they might actually buy a sheep. Either way the money goes to someone in need.

The cost depends on what you choose but starts from about £5 so that is all this swap need cost.

Choose a charity you want to support.

Choose a gift you can afford. This is not a competition to show how much spare change you have though - the smallest gift is all that is required and will be a very generous thing to do for someone.

Nominate your swapbot partner to receive the gift.

The charities I have used before allow you to add a message or to personalise the card. If yours does not, wait a little while then send a swap-bot message, email or a postcard so that your partner knows who it was that chose their gift.

It would be wonderful if the swap-bot community could really unite on this one so that we can 'swap for good' as it were. So can I ask you, if you are willing to do this that you publicise this swap. Tell your partners in other swaps about it. If you are a hostess perhaps you could add a note on your swaps to come here. If you blog please mention it on your blog.

I plan on donating to Heifer International, one of my favorite charities. There are several others listed on the swap page, or you can choose your own.

Let's get together and do some good.

(Thanks to Helen Conway for hosting this cool swap.)