"Nature Always Wears the Colors of the Spirit" - Ralph Waldo Emerson

11/15/18, 10:39 AM

By: Julie Rockefeller

The gorgeous roving pictured here was hand dyed by Tabitha Gilmore-Barnes.  She is primarily a weaver, but the yarns she spins can also be used for knitting, and they are a joy to work with.

Tabitha draws on her surrounding Delaware County landscape for inspiration. Her marketing slogan is "Bring Home the Colors of the Catskills", and looking at these rovings this morning indeed makes me long for my upstate home, though of course all these colors are not visible just now. 

Just now Winter is demonstrating its reluctance to give way.  The weather is snowy and blowy and gray. The wet cold threatens tender buds and shoots, waging one last battle before Spring bursts full onto the scene. 

Looking at these rovings, I see that special spring green, the one we so dearly long for in February, and all the colors of a glorious Catskill sunrise. Flowers, too, I see. And storm clouds, and rainbows. Hummingbirds, swallows, and butterflies. 

Now I'm wondering if I can show you, though my own photographs, at least one inspiration for each of the colors that Tabitha created: my own "Colors of the Catskills" -- aka the colors of my spirit.