Orchids!

Since I had some nice photos from the annual orchid show at the NC Arboretum this weekend, I decided I had better do a blog post.  

The best thing about the weekend was that my family was here... and here they are:

Now, as for the orchids, I will just share a few pictures for your enjoyment.  

It's pretty hard to pick a favorite.  I'm always amazed at the variety of size, color and shapes!

Signs of Spring in January

I know it's only January 29th and the Groundhog hasn't even yet made his predictions, but today is a beautiful springlike day, currently 71 degrees and sunny, so I just had to go looking for some signs of spring.

And I didn't have to look very far!

The lenten roses don't seem to realize that Lent doesn't start for two more weeks.  Maybe they are predicting an early arrival of Hot Cross Buns.  We can only hope!

We have two plants in our yard, tucked slightly under the deck.  The pink one isn't quite open, but the flowers on the cream colored plant are more progressed.  

The sedum is sending out some green growth.

 This isn't the best of photos, but the mums have some green growth, too.

 The vinca, which grow wild along our south foundation wall have the courage to flower this time of year!

 There are nice little bright green leaves on the roses.

 I meandered down the slope to check on the daffodils, which seem like they are ready to open whenever we get a string of days like this.  See how big the flower heads are already?

 And the iris are up quite a bit, too.

 Since I was at the bottom of the slope, I decided to include a couple of pictures of our little stream.  There are some new sand bars that have formed during the last few bigger downpours and that is changing the course of the stream a little bit.

 I bet the turtles will enjoy crawling up on this mound of sand to sunbathe!

I also noticed that the super market weeping pussy willow plant that I planted last spring after it "bloomed" indoors has a few branches with fuzzy white showing.  I tried, but I couldn't get my camera to focus on the open buds... the lens just wanted to focus on the rocks under our deck which were in the background.  

Likely all these plants will suffer through a few more frosts and maybe some snow before spring is really here, but it is fun to see them showing such promise so early in the year!

Laena and Charlotte

A week ago we were in Charlotte.  We went to meet our new grand-niece, Laena, who was born on 12/19/12 and bring her a quilt.

Then we spent the night downtown, enjoyed a
nice dinner at Rock Bottom Brewery,

and visited a couple of the museums in the city.

The Levine Museum of the New South gave a nice overview of the economy and the social issues that have impacted Charlotte and piedmont region since the Civil War.  Though much of the same story is told in the state museum that we visited in Raleigh earlier this year, we thought that the exhibits were really nicely done and it is a museum well worth visiting.  In their upstairs temporary gallery they had a very unsettling photo exhibit of lynchings.

 I posed under the reflective sculpture in front of the museum of contemporary art, but we chose to visit the Mint Museum of Art and Craft next door.

It housed a nice collection of permanent and special exhibits featuring art of all types.  We enjoyed it a lot and hope to come back and see future exhibits.  We also discovered that our entry included the Mint Museum in nearby Randolph, as well, so next time we will allow enough time to visit both.

Something Sweet at the Grove Park Inn

We had company, so we decided to go to the Grove Park Inn for lunch on the terrace and view the Gingerbread House Display from this year's competition.  First of all, here are three shots of the winning "house" which is displayed under glass in a rather elaborate rotating display.  It's a nice reminder that these edible creations are often as detailed and interesting on the back as they are from the front.  Isn't this door inviting?  

 But the real display is are the Magi on the other side...

 ...and the very realistic pack camel.

 And now some others...

 This decorated tree was actually stacks of circular branches, very intricate.

 And the Holiday Hoedown was another that was detailed both front (above) and back (below)

I can't even imagine how they made these realistic looking canning jars.  The intentionally broken jar is spilling out some very realistic looking cat-eye marbles.

And now, since I'm having some difficulty formatting these pictures with text, I'll just let you enjoy the rest!

The Oriole Mill

Last week several of the members of my bee visited The Oriole Mill in nearby Hendersonville.  Our cohort, Jane, was kind enough to make arrangements for our tour.  We were part of a larger group that was divided into three groups, as we rotated to various parts of the facility.

I've added these photos roughly in the order that we were introduced to this textile operation.  Here is one of the jacquard looms ready to go!

The owner is showing us the Egyptian cotton that she uses in their products.  This particular fiber is chosen because of it's long fibers and resistance to pilling or producing lint.  I was surprised that there wasn't any lint flying around in the air as these massive looms worked.

 This cute "face" fabric was on the loom that they used for our demo.  We got to watch the mechanical shuttles at slow motion to get an idea of how the woven strands get put into place and then got to see the loom work at its usual speed, making the shuttles virtually invisible because they were flying back and forth so quickly.

 This is one of their commercial fabrics on the loom...

 And a closer view so you can see the design a little easier.

 In the design and sewing area we saw racks like this of fabrics they have produced.

 As sewers, we were particularly interested in the sewing room...

 And here is a stack of completed baby coverlets next to the sewing machine that forms and sews on the bias binding.

 The final stop was the warping room.  Each fabric requires thousands of strands of yarn many, many yards long.  Spools of the warp thread/yarn are shown here and they feed together...

 ... and are expertly wrapped around a large drum.  When the proper length is reached, the worker ties off the ends and starts the process all over again.  Eventually these threads will be transferred to a spool that fits a particular loom.

 This worker has a long history working in the textile industry, which used to be an important domestic industry in North Carolina.  About 15 years ago the local textile plants closed as this type of production is now largely outsourced to China.

 Looking through some of the machinery you can see a wall where product samples are displayed.

 Here are just a couple more shots of machines in action.  The strands of yarn made interesting images... I'm not sure my little camera really knew what to focus on!

I do like the way the strands coming down from the header look.  These are the strands that lift specific warp threads so that the pattern can be achieved.  The orange strands will create the pattern and the lighter yellow strands at the end will form the salvedge.  (Autocorrect does not like my spelling of that last word, but I think I spelled it correctly.  It's the narrow band of tighter, unpatterned fabric at the edge that keeps the edges from raveling.)

I thoroughly enjoyed the factory tour.  Though I'm sad that we have lost most of the domestic cotton fabric production in the United States, I'm happy that there are some people who value and are preserving locally produced heirloom quality textiles.