April Showers

This has certainly been a dismal spring weatherwise, rain and clouds almost every day. But of course we are lucky here considering the terrible and deadly storms that have swept across so many parts of the country this month.
We are way behind, only the early daffodils are blooming and the grass is just beginning to turn green. I hope these April showers will bring the promised May flowers.
Meanwhile perhaps some bright orange will add a little cheer to the day.

Daffodil Days

The little crocus have passed but the daffodils are coming into their glory. In my garden the daffodil season lasts through much of April and May - I have very early varieties, many midseason blooms and then the old daffodil poeticus and its hybrids for late in the season. I am particularly fond of the late flat cupped daffodils but love them all, the classic yellows, the split cups, the frilly doubles and all the little miniatures.
And of course I can't resist the jonquillas with their spicy aroma.
Unlike the fussy tulips, these are truly a full proof flower. They are poisonous so the little animals never eat them. Once planted they will come back year after year without any fuss or bother. The only trick to getting flowers every year is to leave the foliage to die off naturally. The foliage is necessary to feed the bulb to make next year's flower so if you cut it off you will get nothing but foliage the next spring. Once it begins to yellow you can cut it off to make the garden neater.
Happy Spring!

Big Skys

Early this week we learned that my friends little granddaughter, who just celebrated her first birthday, is dying of Tay-Sachs disease.
I have been paralyzed with anquish for the family and shocked by the unrelenting cruelty of the universe.
Perhaps it is simply the human condition to react more strongly to the close and personal than to the horror of earthquakes and tsunamis and war, far away and hence less real.
It is hard to find solace, hard to even imagine how the parents of this child can cope and survive the anguish they face.
I have no answers but look to the sky, nature may be cruel but she is also astonishingly beautiful

Eco-Tawashi

Despite yesterdays snow, yes it did snow here yesterday, there are signs of spring. The lovely little crocus in the lawn are my favorite. Despite their tiny size they are probably the most welcome of all my flowers each year. I call this photograph Do You Believe in Magic?
But it is still too cold and wet to do much work in the garden and I am thrilled to have received a much anticipated shipment of Eco-tawashi yarn from Japan.
I ordered this yarn right at the time of the devasting earthquake and tsunami so had little hope that it would ever arrive. But my supplier was not injured and shipped the yarn as soon as she was able to return to Tokyo
This is a very special yarn unique to Japan and used to make traditional eco-tawashis, magic pot scrubbers. It is an abrasive acrylic yarn with deoderizing and anit-bacterical properties.
The Japanese crochet this yarn into lovely scrubbers in gorgeous pattterns.
They are called eco-tawashi because they are used to clean pots, casseroles, dishes glasses etc. without soaps or detergents so are great for the environment.
And they do work like magic. I gave the first tawashi I crocheted to my husband and he has been raving about it ever since. Our glass casseroles look like new and our glasses and pots shine.
I have crocheted them into flowers: roses and chrysanthemums, since tawashis must be beautiful and well as effective. They are available for purchase in my Beadedwire Etsy shop.

My "Studio"

Welcome to my "studio" which is really just our sun room but a beautiful space for photography. The left side of the room has four large windows that face south and there are two skylights to add more light.

You can see my simple set up - I create a "lightbox" using a white umbrella or sometimes a muslim cloth to filter sunlight when I don't want direct sun. Sometimes I have the umbrella right on the shelf, sometimes I hang it from a string acoss the window. All very inexpensive and low tech. I actually got the umbrealla as a freebie from a charity soliciting a donation.

I use the umbrella for product photography with a few simple props. Old mirrors or a white plate and my model.

When I am photographing flowers as in the lily and peony bouquests here I often just go with the light, overexposing to avoid deep shadows and to create a very airy, light feel.

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By the way my crocus and hellebore are finally in bloom though it is snowing on them as a I write. But I am hoping spring will really come soon.

Still Waiting for Spring

My best friend Elaine lives in Connecticut - she is busy cleaning up her garden, crocus and snow drops and hellebores are blooming.
I am so envious, we are still encased in snow and I woke up to hail and sleet this morning.
And of course the dire news in Japan.
So I am dreaming of my gardens from other years and hoping spring will come again, the crocus first of course. My front lawn is full of crocus, I plant hundreds of them each year, hoping to increase the bloom though even hidden in the lawn they are tasty and expensive food for the little creatures living underground. I plant snow crocus, the tiny crocus that come in such an amazing array of soft colors and bloom with the snow drops. The hellebore is probably blooming under the snow.
And then of course the daffodils and tulips will come.

















But for now there is just snow and mud. I have been knitting and crocheting like crazy, working on cotton hats and scarves for spring for BeadedWire. Slouch hats, cloches and skinny scarves.

Irish Days

My husband is Irish and we spent a wonderful vacation in Ireland a few years ago. A magical vacation in a magical land.

One of our favorite places was Tonakeera Point on the West coast, one of the world’s most beautiful secrets. Acres of green meadows overlook sandy beaches and purple hills. Even on this rare sun filled summer day we (and the sheep of course) had this story book world to ourselves.

These photographs are available in my Etsy shop as prints or cards for St. Patricks Day.

































Copyright
For those new to my blog, I began a series of discussion about copyright last week. I am a retired attorney, although intellectual property was not my area of expertise, as an artist I have done research in the area and want to share a little.
Please refer to my last post for a some basic information on what can and can't be copyrighted.

Today I thought I'd dive into a confused topic that has been endlessly discussed in Etsy forums: copyrighting patterns and the products made from those patterns. Sewing patterns, knitting patterns, crochet patterns, felting patterns etc.
There are two distinct questions - can the pattern itself be copyrighted? - can the item made from the pattern be protected by copyright?
The answer to the first is probably yes, the answer to the second is almost certainly no.

Copyrighting the Pattern
Keep in mind that as we discussed last week an idea cannot be copyrighted, only its tangible fixed form. In addition a simple list of instructions cannot be copyrighted.
The copyright law requires "minimal creativity" and a mere list of instructions may not meet this standard. There should be ''substantial literary expression in the form of an explanation or directions'. This does not mean that you need to write like shakespeare but a little more than
1. k3, p.4. would probably be best.
And remember it is the finished written pattern that is copyrighted - how it is set out, explained, illustrated etc. not the idea or process behind it. If someone purchases one of your sweaters for example and creates their own pattern to make the same sweater they have not violated your copyright.
However, if someone purchases your pattern, they CANNOT copy and destribute copies. They can lend the original to a friend but they cannot make their friend a copy and they certainly cannot sell copies.

Copyrighting items made from a pattern.
The simple answer here is that copyright does not extend to the items made from the pattern.
Patterns are purchased for the very purpose of making the item in the pattern.
We often see on commercial dress patterns, books of patterns, and patterns sold in on line stores like Etsy statements that the items can only be used for personal use and forbidding sale of the finished product. Reference is often made to copyright.
But there is nothing in the copyright law to prevent sale of these items. This would require both the copyrighting of ideas and the copyrighting of useful objects - both clearly NOT covered by copyright law. You cannot copyright a hat, which is a useful object, so you clearly cannot copyright a hat someone else made from your pattern.
On the other hand, it may be possible to limit sale of the items made from your patterns under contract law. I don't know of any court cases where this issues has been considered (though there may of course be cases Im not familiar with) , often there is not enough money involved to bring cases like this into the courts. Copyright language should not be used in any attempt to limit the use of the pattern contractually.
Perhaps language like: By purchasing this pattern you agree xxxxxxxxxx.
For any chance of success this language must be in a place where it can be seen BEFORE purchase.

One final thought, remedies for either violation of your copyright in the pattern or your "contract" for item use are limited, so please remember that once you publish your pattern it is largely out of your control.