Lovely Lilacs

In my childhood, I have some pretty vivid memories of lilacs. These memories are actually pretty humorous, looking back, but as a kid, they kind of made me cringe. You see, I was raised with a mom who never minded going out and getting what it was she had in mind to get. Every Spring, she was on a lilac pursuit. 

I think farm wives have always had a love affair with lilacs. They would take a cutting and plant it as soon as they arrived, setting down roots in their new home and giving their new surroundings the scent of familiarity. Old farmsteads always had a lilac bush, if not a lilac hedge. For such dainty beautiful flowers, the bushes were really quite large, woody and in the way. You'd have to keep it pruned or the lilacs would continue on their conquer of the world, one farmstead at a time. The beauty of the lilacs was that even long after the farm buildings had gone, the lilacs were still there. 

So my mom knew some abandoned farmsteads where the traditional purple lilacs grew and even one where the white lilacs grew. We'd pick a few bouquets every spring. I would quietly wonder when we'd get arrested and she and my brother would frolic around, picking armfuls of the sweet blossoms. 

One year, there was one of our usual haunts that was getting torn down for a housing development. My mom marched right in there and told them about the story of the lilac bush, and how it was the last bit of living history of the farmstead they were destroying, and that they were changing the face of rural America. All her years of protesting had served her well I guess, but if she could have tied herself to that lilac bush, I think she would have. She loves her causes, God bless her! 

I could have died. I shrunk into shadows as best I could for a thirteen year old and hoped when I opened my eyes, this embarrassment was over! The construction crew told her she should have on a hard hat to be here, but pick all you want lady, 'cuz the bush is coming down tomorrow. 

That was the death of yet another lilac and another legacy, and as those blooms fell to the ground, so did the the hopes and dreams of the farmstead. That farmstead would never again bloom brilliant in spring, or welcome the sounds of a barnyard, or grow food to feed our souls. But it did teach me something important that day, something that has stuck with me in the fifteen years that have passed since then. 

Stand up for what you believe in and have a voice. Tell the story if they cannot tell it themselves. It might be just a lilac, but in this world today, there are far more beautiful things that deserve to be treasured and are instead torn down and destroyed. Things that need us to tell their story. Those lilacs taught me that, and every Spring when they bloom, they remind me again. Whenever I see a lilac, I stick my head into it's heady blossoms to drink of their fragrant beauty. There's nothing like it in the world!

Nothin' Wrong with Yesteryear....

A good woolen mill is at the heart of what I create. If I don't have access to the high quality milling that transforms wool from the sheep's backs into beautiful roving as I know it, I wouldn't be able to create the exquisite fabrics, wearables and wall art I do. It's important that there are local mills transforming local fibers into a product that we can work with. It takes many steps to be able to get the roving I work with; a mill helps to complete this circle. 

Our main mill is Zeilinger Mill  in Frankenmuth, MI and they too are over a century old. I haven't made it up to see the folks there that transform our sheep's wool into beautiful roving, so stumbling upon this wool mill was the closest to seeing some antique milling equipment that I've been. 

The wool has to be washed (scoured) and then dried. It then goes through a picker, a machine that fluffs it up in preparation to be carded. The video above shows picked wool getting run through the carder, and then being made into a large quilt batt. They can also run it through a drafter at the end to thin that batt into the strips of roving we use called roving. Once back from the mill, I do the dyeing and blending for my art and for customers at Esther's Place . 

The thing that astonished me the most was how beautifully this beastly machine ran. Though it looks like a hundred tiny parts cobbled together and all running in chaotic rhythm, it has a smooth peacefulness to it, at the same time. Slow and steady, it runs on the same principles that have kept it running for over a hundred-fifty years. The outside world has changed around it; cars got faster and more fuel efficient; telecommunications got clearer and more sophisticated; computers can now reside on our wrists and run our lives, more or less. While the pandemonium of technological advancement gained momentum around it, this machine kept making; kept doing what it was invented to do. 

Sometimes there was nothin' wrong with yesteryear. While our world demands things instantly, can we find a beauty in the slower, steady pace of times long forgotten? Watching the rhythm of monotony, it can lull us into a place 150 years old, a place that is productive in a simple yet complex manner. How I love the machines of yesteryear! Their nostalgia never ceases to charm me. 

A Custom Blend...

While researching Cedarburg, I really thought I remembered running across something about a working 19th century wool mill. Yet in this wonderful, techno-age we live in, things poof in and out of cyber connection like a dandelion seed drifting on the wind..... they are here one moment and gone the next. We click, click, click and suddenly we are light-years away from where we started, and in a galaxy far, far away. 

So upon arriving in Cedarburg, I began asking around for this "wool mill". I got blank stares, and people suggested a gallery that had a lady who spun yarn on a spinning wheel, or the Cedar Creek Settlement,  a shopping complex housed in a old yarn mill. Both were intriguing but not quite what I had in mind. Was I crazy? Was this mill a fabrication of my imagination? Wishful thinking? Now I was beginning to wonder (and my husband as well, though he did know I was a bit crazy and married me anyways...) 

Before leaving town, we stopped in one last gallery, The Pink Llama,  and while browsing, came upon a little alcove with a sign hanging, that read "Cedarburg Woolen Mill and Textile Museum". The little open sign slung on the banister of some very steep, old stairs, beckoned with a mysterious allure.  The gallery volunteer indicated that we were lucky, there was someone working the mill today and that we could go check it out. 

Descending the stairs, I felt like I was being transported to another time, and another place. I certainly traveled 150 years in that flight of steps, and in the short ceilings and dim lights of a basement work room, I could make out a glorious beast of a machine; the woolen mill I was in search of!