It's a Wonderful Life

I'm enjoying a late lunch/meal of the day at Manuel's on the patio in what has turned out to be an incredibly wonderful day! After I dropped J off at school I stopped at Thunderbird Coffee and Taproom for the most incredible honey nut latte. and a jalapeño bagel with cream cheese. Replete and joyous, I then took in a two-hour presentation put on by the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension service called To Bee, or Not to Bee. It was a great introduction to beekeeping in this area not only from a climate and horticultural perspective, but also because of the issue of Africanization of hives in this area and how to deal with more aggressive bees. At the presentation I made friends with the woman sitting next to me who raises chickens, whose father has bees, who is considering getting alpaca or goats, who wants to do the master gardener training, and who loves fiber... Kindred spirits! We talked about doing some shopping together at the Best Little Yarn Crawl in Texas and exchanged contact info. The only disappointing aspect of the experience was the absolute abhorrence of the representatives of the local apiary groups to Flow hives, which is what I have (and which I am very excited about). In fact as I read more, a lot of experienced beekeepers went up in arms when the Flow came out. I'm going to just keep my head down (which I am sooo good at), absorb info like a sponge, and make up my own mind.

Yesterday was pretty great too as I stopped off at Helios Fused Glass Studio to return the diamond hand pads Paul Tarlow so kindly had lent me and had a lovely long chat with him. I am very much looking forward to hanging out there and bonding with the others in the local Austin glass fusing community. Fusing Fridays, here I come!

And if all that friendly interaction wasn't enough, I have a FaceTime crafting session set up with Becky tomorrow morning. We're going to see if we can replicate something like our former weekly crafting sessions in Atlanta. I already do my weekly piano lessons through FaceTime and that's going well, so why not the ubiquitous Stitch & Bitch too? Daily, I feel more like a pioneer woman out in my little patch of rural wildness and I embrace the modern version of the quilting or sewing circle. Us pioneers have to take our socialization how we can get it.

Tonight is my first meeting with the Austin Weaver's and Spinner's Society. They seem to be a very active, friendly group with twice monthly meetings--one a program (tonight) and one a social spin (or whatever project you want to work on--they even have a weaving study group that starts meeting on September 22). I am glad to be joining this group because in addition to the super social and educational opportunities, I need a new outlet for all my alpaca roving, and I also have a 60" LeClerc loom I need to sell now that I picked up Martha this summer (the 60" 16-harness AVL production compu-dobby loom).

Now I'm off to have the blueprints for our house scanned and put into pdf for the landscaper who might be putting a green roof over the textile studio. Since we are having our roof replaced this fall we need to know if this is an option first. Wouldn't want to do it twice!