A.I: A Painter’s Review of My Latest Tools and Superpowers

A.I: A Painter’s Review of My Latest Tools and Superpowers

The much heralded age of AI has begun! Uh, 67 years ago, that is. That was the year that the phrase was coined, anyway. The more it changes, the more is it still as it ever was. Each new amazing technology thrills and enthralls for a time, then, we just incorporate it and go on. 

To be sure, this is a turning point; it is the end of an era, and the beginning of another. 

The original new disruptive technology was the use of language, so say the philosophers. This technology, speech and language, was the great exodus from the “pure” and direct state of being and knowing, so goes the story; the humans’ first step out of the primordial garden. It was the great schism, the crack in the shared mind, the erecting of the first great wall of separation from one another and nature.

But then, we never left this true inner self; we have simply been painting external stage sets for our entertainment. The primal unity is intact; we are just quite fond of our movies.

I am glad I learned to paint and draw with real physical art supplies, because the more art superpowers this cyber technology gives me, the more creative I can be with them. The painting style of those who never played with actual materials seems thin, limited and cartoony to me. The tendency, and ever present temptation, that all of these time saving shortcuts offer, is to urge the artist to become ever more impatient; sloppy, even. 

It happens to me. Long ago I realized that all art is cartooning and caricature. Simplification, in a word. Synopsify; shorten that statement. Stat! These tools only amplify the ability to simplify things, more easily and quickly than ever. After processing with a given effect, a digital painting is inevitably reduced.

More and more items, faster and faster, is better, right? Every act becomes a test, even a competition, for efficiency! The winner is whoever gets the most done, the fastest! The name becomes the initials, the initials become the name itself, only to be further simplified into the logo, which is then updated into a single swish of stroke, or better yet, how about a single dot? 

Ah, the primordial dot, the single, imaginary, conceptual point. The pixel!  We hurdle on, backwards, toward the one celled creature, or the tiny point preceding the so called Big Bang. Except the headlong dash is anything but one pointed. Attention spans collapse. Stillness is a quaint idea, there is no silence anymore, there is no darkness left. Peace, rest and sleep become sought after, highly valued, but almost extinct.

What does art have to say about this? If the medium is the message, art says one of two things: First, emergency! Urgent! Badness, ugliness, unfairness, injustice, fear, sickness, violence! Quick, look how bad it all is! That is an easy one. Say it with big bold black lines!!

The other message is about finding the beautiful and good, and nurturing and bringing it out. This one never goes out of style. It is classic. The beautiful is nested within the very nature which reflects the same harmonies and geometries that created us, that surround us, even the very body equipment with which we perceive the universe. It is that innate, know it when you see it, type of beauty.

Neither message is new, only the tools are new. There is no original art. There is only the updating of the message for each new crop of people, each new language. That is why there can be no true ownership by individuals of their creations, cyber or analog. You did not create yourself, and all you know is in the context of the matrix from which you have arisen. Some artists keep the old ways alive, preserving the methods that have been outpaced by the newer technologies; others race ahead. The art of each new edition of the message stands on the shoulders of the ones that went before. “Whoever thinks an idea can be copyrighted has already forgotten its source”-(does not matter who said that, right?)

So the A.I. takes what we all have done before, and delivers it all, instantly, to our fingertips. And in the case of painting, to look at the history and trajectory of art in our culture so far, we have pretty much spent our repertoire of images. We have reached a stopping point, a jumping off point, to the next level. 

First, we scratched on cave walls, then took that to beautiful painting, but with the limited range of color clays and charcoal available at that time. Eventually we developed a full range of colors and made elaborate paintings and covered the ceilings of lofty arching cathedrals with lavish representations of ourselves and our world. 

Then, came another great disruption: the photograph! So far, this is the best comparable disruptive technology to the new age of art A.I. Suddenly faced with a device which could instantly deliver a likeness of the world, without paint or brush, what then was an artist to do?! Become a photographer of course, said many. 

But others felt freed from the need to do representative art; so Impressionism was born. Carefully representing reality gave way to sharing an impression, to then vent one’s feelings by expression, to then, begin to dismantle the object-observer relationship itself. 

But soon, art and image fragmented even further, into blunt shape and line, and finally, as if to surrender any resemblance to real life, the solid, painted-black canvas slaps the art world in the face. The bleak desert that is the ultimate destination of the abstract art style. The generic object. The sleek, shiny, black square thing.

We had reached an impasse: All relevance gone, so-called fine art collapsed into an exclusive, status defining, game, a kind of exalted, competitive, baseball card collecting for the super rich. Whatever else was left of art, bifurcated, into advertising, in which the skills and talents of artists are purchased to prostitute themselves to manipulate the senses of consumers for corporate profit; or, alternatively, to express the feelings of people who can not realistically expect to benefit from their art, except to enjoy doing it. 

This has led to the current reality for art in which everyone is an artist now, and art is mainly just a business of providing instruction and materials, to children and increasingly, to adults, for enjoyment and self expression. The pastime of playing art is now what sells. Since everyone is now the artist, it is the eyeballs, the art appreciators, which are in short supply! You are lucky if someone pays a few seconds of attention to your art; and you are the one who must pay money, to play the art game. No one makes money doing true art anymore. A few make a living doing a performance, promotion, and glamour hustle of it.

Which brings us to this moment in art, in which the art supplies and the art lessons have become virtually free: my art apps give me infinite paper and paint, and I can find step by step instructions on YouTube, how to draw or paint any way I like.

So it is indeed time for an upgrade, an up-level, a phase shift, a quantum leap. A nice, big, fat, juicy, disruptor. The next step.

So, today I spend the day playing with the new A.I. drawing toy, and here are my impressions: the tool gives us only iterations of what we already know and do, albeit faster. Like saying the same mantra over and over, only faster, like prayer wheels of drawing. Electric, motorized, prayer wheels! The medium averages and simplifies the cultural material, always reducing, rounding off, to the closest common denominator. There is nothing new, just blending and mixing down, like smearing all of the paints in the paintbox down into that inevitable muddy purple grey. There are no new insights, no uplifting new highs. Just quick access to the dreary middle places of everything we share.

There is a usefulness here, though. The true key is still in our artist hands, hearts, and souls. As it ever was. It is the inflection point of choice. The true art of this age of A.I. is how and what and when to choose, from the infinite array, fanning out now, before our eyes. 

It is the age of the art of choosing.

This art of choosing can make use of the superpower of quick rendering of the elements of symbol and language, the essence of cartoon and caricature, the easy mustering of the parts and pieces that we uniquely and creatively bring together. 

Contrary to the often repeated claim, those monkeys with those typewriters and infinite time, can not, and will never, no never, not ever, write the works of Shakespeare or Emily Dickinson. Infinity is fractal, and self similar, but never repeats. No, A.I. will never replace the creatives.

It will only be yet another choice; a tool for us to wield.

Food as Love

Food as Love

We eat. We came together as a species, forming our culture around the getting and sharing of food. So naturally, the giving and sharing of food became synonymous with love and nurturing, imprinted with parental feeding of offspring. 

For thousands of years, our cultural rules about food, such as when and what and how to get and share and eat food were based on a reality of food being basically scarce and hard to obtain.

Food makers, breadwinners, hunters and gatherers were high status roles. Now those who make, serve, pick and farm food are among the lowest paid.

And now, food is abundant. It is still offered freely, only now, by great organized entities, called corporations, that photograph and film happy beautiful healthy people freely eating factory concoctions that are anything but healthy. These gorgeous, persuasive, and well produced movies offer a pale facsimile of love; and counterfeit nutrition!

People stagger around packed with these empty calories, but still hungry because they are suffering from slow malnutrition, yet paradoxically their condition is often combined with obesity, and they are looking for love in many of the wrong places.

Our instincts and cultural traditions still drive us to look for love by food sharing, but now, the way to survive and thrive is reversed. Now, the best way to find and give and share love is to refrain from eating. When a well known health and enlightenment teacher was asked for general advice on how Americans can be healthy, he replied, “don’t eat the food!”

Fasting is as important as feasting, yet we do a daily orgy of feasting due to the unprecedented availability of these colorful faux foods, yet rarely do we stop eating, and give the body a rest. Even those of us, myself included, who eat nothing but healthy foods, find it tempting to overeat, just because to not do so requires that one override basic instincts, as well as the deep cultural overlay that screams, “Eat, eat, eat! Food is love!”

It is not that we cannot use our eating instincts for love anymore. This love now needs to be intelligently applied to growing healthy organic whole foods, from healthy, replenished soil, by conscious, well informed farmers. The love needs to be shared in the form of people coming together to eat socially without violence toward their own bodies, their planet which supports all life, and their fellow beings. This is real love, when it comes to food.

The Bird Drop App

The Bird Drop App

Extinction Events Notification and Bird Population Drops

“The Homo Sapiens have not yet failed. Yes, we are failing, but there is still time to turn everything around. We can still fix this. We still have everything in our own hands.”- Greta Thunberg

Today you really can get an app for anything!

This one sends you notifications every time, on average, a bird dies from human caused disruption of its means of survival. This may be habitat loss, chemical toxins, emf pollution, cat predation, etc. An estimated three billion birds are missing from the waters, land, and skies, that would be here now, but for our human actions, which we can change at any time if we simply want to. Half of the bird species in the US are threatened.

You can set the parameters yourself: a notification every 10, or 100, or 1000 birds lost. The notifications come in at random times.

This can be a real conversation starter, or merely a jolt of consciousness raising. The app then offers you options to respond. You can take action immediately.

Pass the information on to a friend? You land in your message box. Write an email to your elected representative? Here are some talking points, and you go to your email app. Find a group near you? Here are some contacts for your neighborhood. Make a donation? Here are some groups and easy ways to immediately send money. Need some good news? Check out the online chat, with others who report successes in their area.

“Hope doesn’t come from words. Hope only comes from actions.”- Greta Thunberg

There is even a setting for you if you are super seriously committed to making a difference: Every time a species goes extinct, your notification screams in a most disturbing way. You also receive links to information about specific animals or birds in critical danger.

“I don't want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel everyday. I want you to act. I want you to act like you would in a crisis. I want you to act like your house is on fire, because it is.” -Greta Thunberg

Every DAY the world is losing around 150-200 plant and animal species on average. Around 137 of those species go extinct due to deforestation. 

The extinction notification in the app includes not only species of birds, but any species, since the insect population crash, for example, is responsible for the bird population crash in many species. The whole web of life is interdependent. So, each time we lose a species, or ten, or a hundred, the app screams. Unless… you have set up an automatic monetary donation, in your choice of the amount, to help stop the extinction apocalypse. If you are signed up to make this automatic donation, you are instead notified by cheering, applause, or a simple, “good job, keep it up!”

The money then goes into a savings account from which you designate your contribution to be passed on to your choice of recipient individuals, groups, projects, or political campaigns. Each month, you decide where your accumulated donation shall go. You can even give your saved up money to yourself, and buy yourself, for instance, a fair trade organic cotton tee shirt to advertise your alliance with life and health of beings and planet.

The app even offers these, with the words Extinction Event Notification printed in nontoxic fabric ink, above pictures of birds or whole Earth.

Wouldn’t it be great if this app were available? I wonder if someone is building this app right now?

‘’I’m sure the moment we start behaving as if we were in an emergency, we can avoid climate and ecological catastrophe.”- Greta Thunberg

Heartwood Solstice Tree Meditation and Ritual

Heartwood Solstice Tree Meditation and Ritual

Sit or stand straight. Place your hands over your heart, kindling feelings of love, perhaps thinking of someone you love deeply. Breathe for a while into the heart and hands, filling them with this love light. Release the breath intending the energy to go forth to bestow goodness. 

The heartwood of the tree is the central inner channel in the center. Seen from above, it is circular like a mandala. From the side, it is the cylinder of wood in the center of the tree, going down to the tap root, and up to the top of the tree, pointing toward the heavens.

Now open your hands and hold them up toward the sky, sending your love up to the Infinite Creator from whence you arose. Feel your love being telegraphed out from your treesome radio tower to this infinite all One. 

Feel the love being returned to you, amplified by your attention. Feel the fact that you are so very loved and always have been.

Now stretch your arms out from your side, waist high, as if holding hands with others in a circle. If you are in an actual circle of friends, hold hands now. Feel and know that you are in a circle that is actually all around the world, in many dimensions, and not just a circle, but a sphere of friends, both seen and unseen. Visualize this sphere as the world, with a myriad of dedicated helpers and friends, appearing as lights, all over and around the beautiful planet. Send your love and gratitude now, through heart and hands, to this living active network of light workers, as you presently connect with them consciously. 

Know that by your loving intention now, joining with others in this task, that the world is being uplifted and transformed. As this happens, a great shield of protection arises around the project, made with this combined love light of countless beings. It appears now, as a beautiful blue and violet halo around the Earth.

Now, lower your hands slightly, as if to bestow a special blessing on the world below, and all of the beings before you. Let all of the love from the Infinite Creator, and this gathering of your world serving friends, and your own loving heart, flow out to this world in need, at this crucial moment. See, feel, and know it is flowing down to the Earth like a cool blue crystalline rainfall of wisdom, guiding anyone who who wishes it. 

See, know and feel the Earth growing green and healthy, the rivers, the oceans, the air flowing bright and clean, refreshed and renewed. See the beautiful cities and dwellings newly created in harmony with the Earth and with living systems.

Sense that you are of one mind and intention with your friends, connected telepathically by radiant filaments of golden love light, in this effort. 

See and feel the rhythmic dance of healing and reshaping the systems and forms of the world of people. Hold this vision gently as it unfolds before you, like a vast and fragrant meadow of orange and pink flowers opening in a new springtime, dancing in the breeze of a fresh start of a new cycle. See the people of Earth work joyfully together to support all beings, reweave the broken ecofabric, restore the beauty of the Earth that was damaged.

Return now to the heartwood place. Feel the love gently rest in the center of your being. Feel your branches reaching out, connecting blissfully to the whole universe. Feel your roots confident and connected, as one, with the heart beat of the Earth. So let it be.

Steven and the Star People

Steven and the Star People

And He said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you shall in no wise enter into the kindom of heaven.” -Jesus (“kin-dom”: a realm of relatedness)

(The following is a story by a grandmother who did CE 5. Once you experience conscious, invited, human initiated contact with ETs, you will never see the universe and the heavens in the same way again.)

Listen, my children, for this story I am about to tell you is true. When I was little, the world was full of people with airplanes and cars, but no one really was sure if there were other people in the universe. Some people saw flying saucers in the sky, but if they told people, everyone would laugh at them.

Still, there were stories and movies about space people. In some, the star people were wise and kind, but most of the stories were about scary space monsters who just wanted to eat us for lunch. There were many more animals back then. We were so scared of them that we killed a lot of them. Now, most of them are gone, or live in special parks. Maybe people were afraid the real space people would be like the wild animals, like bears or lions, who might try to eat us for lunch. People were confused because they, themselves, ate other creatures for lunch, so why would space people not want to maybe eat us?

One day, a kid named Steven saw a flying saucer. It was pretty. When he grew up, he saw it again! The same one! Space people came out of it and visited Steven. They seemed nice. They invited Steven to visit them in the their spaceship and he said yes.

On board the spaceship, Steven and their new friends talked about how to help Earth people meet star people, so they could be friends. The space people did not want to eat anyone. Steven saw that the space people were friendly and wanted to help us.

And we needed help! Some people were making scary weapons for fighting, instead of trying to live in peace with each other. They made bombs that could burn up a whole city as fast as you can pop a balloon! And bit by bit, the world was burning up from too much fire, and not enough love and caring. 

We burned up trees, and even whole forests. We burned things to make our food, we burned things to heat our houses, and all of the cars had fires inside the engines that made them go. There was too much fire! The air was getting too dirty. Soon, no one would be able to live on Earth at all! We were burning up our own world!

When I was little, the grown ups told us we would have flying cars when we grew up. Even then, there were flying cars, but the people who had them decided not to share them. They kept it a secret. They would not share! Nobody even knew there were flying cars. Then we grew up, and mostly we thought it was not possible to have a flying car.

But we never forgot about the promise of flying cars. Why did the people who had flying cars not share? We all began to wonder. Were they just being mean? Why would they hide them, and keep them a secret? There are never good reasons to keep a secret. If someone wants you to keep a secret, say no!

Those people were being mean. They didn’t care if the world was burning up, because they wanted to sell gas for burning, and get big piles of money. They had a way, way lot of gas, enough to burn up the whole world! (But flying cars do not need gas. They do not need wheels or roads. They do not even need wings. They just fly!) Nothing burns in a flying car, so if we had flying cars, these mean people could not sell their gas! They were being greedy too, because they already had big, big piles of money, so, they did not even need any more than that!

So Steven decided to tell the secret: Steven shouted, “We already have flying cars! We have to stop burning so much stuff like gas and trees. So we will start talking to the space people. They are nice, and they don’t want to eat us, they only want to help us. And they have flying cars, too. And they will share!”

Steven talked to the star people from space, (where there are other planets, that do have flying cars.) Together, they figured out a way for Earth people to call them. Here is how you can do it: Feel the love in your heart, and send love to the star people. Tell them, with your thoughts, that you want them to come and visit. Tell them to come by and say hello, in a way that is safe and fun for everyone; for you, and for them. (It is sometimes not a good time or place to land a spaceship, so be patient) Then show them a picture, in your mind, of where you are, so they can find you. Soon you will see, or hear, or some way or other know they are visiting.

When enough people see that the star people are friendly, we will all get flying cars. And the fires that are burning up the world will go out, the air will become clear and bright, and the animals will come back. And no one will eat anyone any more.

“I’m so close to Heaven, this Hell cannot be mine.”

~ Melissa Etheridge

My Expanding Universe

My universe is getting wider. I dwell here at the edge of the forest for years, unaware of all of the creatures around me. A few months ago, we put up bird feeders that dispense seeds. Suddenly, all kinds of seed eating birds begin to show up. These are birds we have never seen here, though I now realize they have been here all along, since I have matched their songs and calls to their appearance, and I already know how they sound.

They spill a lot of seeds. Soon we have three kinds of squirrels, and some chipmunks too, visiting our deck. All of this commotion attracts an owl, which perches atop a nearby tree, for hours in the evening, watching. In plain sight! Yes, I have heard the owls many nights before, yet I have never seen one here.

I discover a nifty tool for being aware of the birds around me. I already have binoculars, which I tote around with me on my daily walks. They give me visual superpowers. But now I have an audio bird identification app on my phone. I know many of our birds already, but when I turn this app, Merlin, on, and let it listen to the birds on my walks, I am startled to realize there are many species around me that I never recognized. For every three bird calls I may know, the app alerts me to three more. I never knew they were there! I also have an app on my phone that can play bird calls to them, in their language, so to speak. When I do, they often respond, probably out of confusion or curiosity, but still. These are birds that have been there with me for years, unseen, heard but unrecognized, but present, all around, all along.

It begins to dawn on me that the same must be true for the animals around here as well. I know three or four kinds of rabbits live here, but I usually do not see them. My neighborhood is home to coyotes, foxes, cougars, deer, bears, raccoons, and skunks, and a multitude of tiny creatures such as mice, voles, bats, and gophers. And lizards, with iridescent blue tails! Snakes arrayed in colorful stripes. 

There are dragonflies of four colors. Blue butterflies, orange butterflies, red butterflies.

Bright green tree frogs loudly broadcast their locations to one another at night. Tadpoles appear in the pond. Ducks and herons drop by the pond now and then. Eagles, ospreys, hawks, and vultures circle above. Usually we humans are so obsessed with our terrestrial concerns down below, that we rarely even look up to notice them.

All this, and when I look around, it often seems so quiet and still. But now I know; it is not so! The air, land, and water is teeming with life. All these abound, under the life giving love light of our daystar. But we are starting to do more than getting into their business; we are starting to threaten their very existence with our thoughtless and anthropocentric ways. 

Now I carry the awareness that they are all around me, all of the time.

As above, so below; as below, so above. It is axiomatic. So, I raise my attention to the starry night sky: How could it not be also teeming with life? With a gazillion, trazillion, quizillion, stars out there, most of which have planets; some similar to ours, how can there not be other worlds, other beings, other environments, other civilizations! Again, our blinders of attention cause us to neglect to consider them. Do we really need to wait to be told about them by other humans? The so called authorities and experts? No, we can assume they are there.

Actually, we can assume they are HERE. All around us, all of the time, being themselves, doing their own thing, minding their own business. 

Problem is, as with the animals in my neighborhood, we are all in each other’s business, to a lesser or greater extent. The worlds, the realms, the dimensions interpenetrate. We are becoming more and more aware of how we are impinging on the other creatures and environment of Earth, with our destruction of habitat, noise, EMF, light pollution, and toxic waste. But what about the neighbors from our surrounding stellar environment?

Is that really so separate from us? Look up on a dark and starry night, if you can get far enough away from the light pollution that blights the velvet indigo firmament, and you can see pretty much forever. There are no borders, no walls; no little imaginary lines on the map unless we draw them.

This is just as much your place, your home, as any spot on Earth. Stand anywhere on Earth, and you will be able to notice that only your feet touch the ground of this world. The rest of you is already standing in this infinite sky! We know the stars are still all around us in the daytime, even though we do not see them. You are a space being, in time. Reach out your arm, and you literally rearrange the universe. Step back into the part of your mind that is reading this, that is watching those stars, and you are one with Only One in each of us, The One Who beholds it all. 

You are the consciousness peering out from all eyes. You did not create yourself; you are spun from the same stuff, animated by the same spirit as all beings, everywhere.

So when we smart monkeys act on our hard wired, long evolved instinct, and fight each other’s tribes and groups, we are doing our thing. But when we we do it with nukes and super destructive weaponized technologies, we are impinging on the realities and business of those other beings around us. We may call them aliens, but they are not so alien. They are our space neighbors. Our primitive behavior, combined with our advanced weapons that interpenetrate their dimensions, is getting in their business too. The ETs are here because we are a danger to ourselves and others, including, yes, these beings we are not aware of.  But who are certainly aware of us. 

And they are a bit concerned. Ok, more than a bit concerned. It is time for the smart monkeys of Earth to change our ways and be good neighbors, to each other, those above, and those below. It is time to give love and make peace, all around.

For no matter where we place our attention, we are not alone. And we never have been. Don’t fall for the propaganda that they are hostile. That is just our monkey DNA programmed projection. If they were a threat, we would be toast by now! Their forbearance and patient, parent-like concern, and even subtle supervision, is ample proof that they mean only to help, and not to interfere, unless absolutely necessary to protect us all.

There is even an app for this, now, to make friendly contact with our ET neighbors. I have this one on my phone too! All you need, to follow the protocols on the CE 5 Contact app, is your natural, inborn, connection to our shared One mind consciousness, the ability to think clearly, a sincere heart, and peaceful intent. You can of course, do this, without the app, as you are a sovereign citizen of the universe, and never separate. It is time for everyone to become a good galactic neighbor, an ambassador of peace and love, from Earth.

Now I walk around with a new awareness. They are all around me, all of the time. All my relations.

The Pandemic Blanket Series

The Pandemic Blanket Series


After the nine eleven attacks that rocked and shocked the world, I did a series of blankets: security blankets, medicine blankets, and love blankets. It has been many years since I made a blanket, but during the Covid isolation period, I found myself once again, interested in blankets. As we all quarantined and cocooned, I begin to crave the soft enfolding comfort of the gentle and warm hand woven wool blanket.

This year I have been in love with the Shetland breed of sheep. If you have seen one Shetland sheep, one fleece, as they say, well, you have seen one Shetland! The Shetland is an primitive breed, small in size, and big in personality. They are very pet like. They apparently came in more colors and patterns than any other breed. 

As with many primitive breeds, they are not suited to factory use because of the lack of uniformity, and this is one of the reasons they are particularly endearing to me. Some have a double coat, with a soft downy undercoat, as well as the stronger guard hairs; others have a single coat. 


There is a wide variety of types of fur on the different parts of the fleece as well, with some soft or coarse, and some long or short, plus color variations. The color will even transform from one season to another. All, on a single sheep!


 I spin one amazing fleece in which you can clearly see the lamb was born dark blue gray, but then turned white: the first inch next to skin was dark, then changes abruptly to white! At shearing time, this one would have appeared dark on the outside, but was white under that! I learn that this is the trait from which the original tweeds were made.

Some roo: the coat comes off all by itself in the spring, either it falls off in pieces, or all at once with a little brushing or combing. This makes a very soft yarn, as there are no cut edges on the hairs. 




So, as the shows and fairs begin to be cancelled due to the pandemic, I begin to look to online sources for raw fleeces to spin. First I call a Shetland sheep farmer I know in my own neighborhood.  I visit her farm and buy five beautiful Shetland fleeces. Each one is so unique. I am intrigued. Most spin right off the locks, with no need to card it first. The fleeces of a Shetland tend to be small, often, only a pound or two. It is usually not very heavy with lanolin, though.




I also find some heritage Shetland fleeces in the land where my ancestry DNA test reveals some of my ancestors are from. Packages arrive by mail from Northern Europe. So exciting!


It turns out that due to importation restrictions, Shetland sheep can’t just trot onto a plane or boat and move into a farm in the US. Breeders must go to Europe get some semen from a Shetland, and then back breed, for several generations, to the Shetland, by successive mixing with some other breed off sheep that are already here. This fact has led to some interesting diversity that has been introduced to the Shetland name here in the States. It is no wonder they are considered pretty much a different breed from the European strains. 

So as I buy online, I find a very wide variety of traits in the fleeces. Some are curly, some are straight, some very soft, others not so much. My favorite ones lately have been ones that have little ringlets so tight you could curl one around a toothpick. I spin these in a way that keeps the ringlets and features them.


The yarn I spin is loose and fluffy; “woolen” style. I weave squares on a CinDWood potholder style loom; diagonal pattern, not square. The results are loose and fluffy. 

Soon I have piles and heaps of squares. The blankets require many, many squares, depending on the size of the squares. I join the larger squares together by pulling the side loops together into one another. This method requires no extra yarn, but does add a little bit of warping, as the squares tighten at the join. 
I join the smaller squares by actually sewing them together with external matching yarn, using a figure 8 shaped stitch.

I dye over both the dark and light fleece colors. The colors I dye over white are bright and pure. Some of these, I dye lightly, to produce pastel colors. With the naturally dark fleeces, of course, the colors come out in darker shades, and with less dye, the duller shades.

Next it is time for my color compositions. This is the really fun part. Every creative production is, as they say, ninetynine percent perspiration, and one percent inspiration. This would be the inspiration part. 

The first six blankets are monochromatic. Controlling the color is tough. I am so tempted to add more colors, to go full rainbow, even! But I hold my fire. Between the many shades and pure colors and pastels, plus the whites, grays and blacks, there is plenty enough diversity to work with.




But finally, on blanket seven, I can’t hold back any longer: