Asakiyume mita

This year I'm mainly growing milkweed. Milkweed for flowers, milkweed with the garlic and other vegetables:





In part that's for pollinators and monarch butterflies, but it's also in large part for the super strong, super beautiful **fibers* that milkweed produces. I realized I can put that chambira fiber knowledge to work here with my own, local fibers. I used to have a goal of trying to spin the fibers... in spite of the fact that I've never spun anything. But in the Amazon, they're not spinning the chambira fibers, they're making twine--well I can do that! There are a thousand videos on Youtube of people turning milkweed fibers into twine.

Here are the dried stalks from last year.



And here's some of the fiber:



You separate the fibers from the inner pith, and you end up with long ribbons. They're not pure white like those fibers in the last picture, I think because of the mildew and weathering from being outside. I'm going to experiment with processing fresher stems. The ribbons remind me so much of the chambira palm fibers!



And here it is as twine! I have several little bits of twine now. Next two projects: (1) dyeing it with the madder I've got growing in the yard and (2) making bracelets!

Message in a Bottle

Today's message in a bottle came in three languages: English, Mandarin, and Spanish, and additionally contained a UBS stick on which was a music video promoting a 2002 French film--it was dropped from a container ship somewhere between Hawaii and Vancouver and was found by a marine researcher--on the very day she'd been talking about messages in bottles--bobbing off the shores of Vancouver. The complete story is here, and I added it to the messages-in-bottles page on the Pen Pal website. (There's a pretty good collection there now!)

Milkweed Fibers

I haven't gotten much further in trying to process the long fibers of milkweed, but some of the bits that had broken off I left on my porch, where they were rained on, and the rain washed away more of the chaff, and what was left was shiny white like the hair of the thistledown man in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Alas, this photo doesn't get how glowy shiny it looks:



A poet: Ijeoma Umebinyuo

In addition to sharing poems on her tumblr--powerful poems and lovely poems, harsh poems and honey poems--she also shares thoughts, memories, essays.

"Stay, you are beginning to glow"

"Excuse me, but you cannot have 'Ijeoma' as her baptismal name" --a poem about cultural imperialism, when even names in your own tongue are denied you.

You can check out more of her writing here

. . . And maybe you would like to know how August is doing? August is doing like this...

. . . and this