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Cetatea Neamtului

On Saturday, my Shetland “Rainbow” arrived in the post. It’s exactly as I was hoping, with a wide range of bright, but not neon bright, colors. It also finally supplied me with a bit of grey fiber, which I was sorely lacking. Sadly, this braid never had a chance to hang on the wall* as it was promptly disassembled to tuck away into my little drawers.

A rainbow of small amounts of Shetland wool roving shown in the chain braid and broken out into the 16 different colors from natural brown, grey and white through a full rainbow of dyed wool.

I spent a good bit of time over the weekend plotting and planning my next fiber felt painting. I have a whole folder on my computer titled “Inspiration” of a range of photographs, recent and older, which I think might be good candidates someday. But I had to narrow it down to one. I realized I really loved all the oranges and reds which I have, and wanted to do something using those colors. I have this really lovely photograph I took of Cetatea Neamtului, a hilltop fortress, in Romania, as the sun started to go down in the late afternoon. It’s all oranges against a red hillside.

I started with building my palette, and actually sketched this one out a bit with chalk and a pencil on the felt backing:

Selection of wool top in reds, oranges, yellows and some green and blue to create a needle felt image. The yellow felt backing is also shown with the basic outlines of the castle sketched out in chalk and pencil.

And then started working it top down, starting with the sky. I really love how I captured the delicate shades of the sky from the brighter, more pink/orange western side over to the darker bluer eastern side.

Beginning of a needle felt “painting” on yellow felt with sky and castle partially completed.

*The yarn wall is currently a bit sadder as all the lower hanging yarn has been removed due to regular raids by a certain kitten. Little scamp has been waking me up in the morning wrestling with his ill-gotten gains in the bed. No shame.


VOTE VOTE VOTE

If you haven’t put together a plan yet for voting, please don’t lose any time. It’s absolutely critical this year that everybody vote. Think not just of yourself, but friends, family, neighbors, and strangers whose rights matter. Vote at the local and national level for those who understand the United States has system racism which must be addressed and fixed, who believe that LGTBQ+ people are people deserving of the same rights as straight cis-gender people. Vote for those who understand that while we’ve come a long way, women’s rights have not been fully secured yet either.

I’ll repeat some resources I posted a little while back:

If you are feeling unsure how to get registered, learn about candidates and issues, or generally lost, I recommend the League of Women Voters. They have a non-partisan website dedicated to voter resources, VOTE411.org, which can help you figure out what you need to do to get registered (deadlines are looming in most states), and voting options (such as mail-in/absentee ballots, or early voting places). Your local league will often have information on local ballots, including who the candidates are, their key positions, and any other measures on the ballots. This can be especially helpful if your state is one which doesn’t send out sample ballots to voters in advance so you can research and plan your votes.

VoteSaveAmerica also has voter registration resources by state, as well as information on how to get involved in helping ensure everybody can vote, by helping with voter registration, becoming a poll worker, and more. And FairFight is dedicated to fighting voter suppression, which is far and away the greater threat to our elections than voter fraud in which people who aren’t eligible to vote do so, or voters vote more than once.