The SF Flower and Garden Show is going on now at the San Mateo County Fairgrounds. It’s always inspirational to go and see what is happening there. For me, the most striking thing this time is the golden dragon and the garden he sits in – all made of repurposed materials.
The dragon was sculpted with a material called “Darjit”, created with disposed paper pulp and latex paint.
Spring has sprung all over the yard. The cherry tree is particularly spectacular. It’s all abuzz with honey bees gathering nectar. Stand beneath the tree and be surrounded with the hum of hundreds if not thousands of bees busy at work.
I think the bees realize as we do that that blossoms are ephemeral. Minor gusts have carpeted the lawn with spent petals. Rain is predicted soon and with that we’ll lose the blooms.
I think fabric creation and weaving is fascinating. We had a chance in Varanasi India, to see a craftsman manually weaving a jacquard piece of fabric.
The Jacquard Loom was invented in the early 1800’s and drastically simplified making wovens with textures. The cards with the holes in them determine which threads are going up or down. 
Previous to that, the weaving changes would be memorized by the weaver with the harness being manually raised or lowered to make the design….Entirely too complicated to even imagine for me.
Brocades, damasks, and matelasse type fabrics are all made this way now – on power looms that go thousands of times faster than this.
If you remember Fortran decks and punch cards that programmed computers, this preceded and inspired computer programming. It’s one of the first examples of binary coding.
This will eventually be a gorgeous sari – a 6-1/2 approx. yard length of fabric wrapped, pleated and draped.
After all that handwork, I’m glad this fabric will not be cut into pieces.
piecedgoods 