Where Did The Week Go?

It's true. The older I get, the faster time whizzes by. I'm in the habit of taking a shower nearly every morning before I get dressed. Then I feel awake and fit to tackle the day. Sometimes I feel like I'm just going from shower to shower to shower to shower. Does anything happen between showers? Do I actually DO anything, ACCOMPLISH anything, between showers?

Well, I'm just getting that first batch of full-sized sample napkins hemmed and I've made some adjustments on the loom's cables to get a better shed. I've wrestled with the horrible health care system we have in this county, and lost this round. But, my toe is healing nicely. I've run a lot of errands and drunk numerous chai lattes. I've taken advantage of Randy's being out of town for a couple days by seeing 4 movies. (Win Win, Winter in Wartime, The Conspirator, and Jane Eyre, all of which were good.) I found containers for my rolls of paper and my weaving reeds, something I've been hunting for for many months. I've taken Roxanne W. Furrperson to our new vet for a meet-and-greet checkup. I've read lots of bits about weaving and attended my study group's monthly meeting. But it feels like I've done nothing.

Well, better luck this week.

The Full-Size Sample Club

To jump-start my return to weaving, I signed up to participate in an international serviette/napkin exchange. I did this once before years ago. It's really fun. We're still using, on a daily basis, the napkins I received in exchange for the ones I submitted.

I decided to weave 8-shaft broken twill blocks since our local study group is exploring twill this year. I love the look of broken twill blocks. It's one of those structures that can look way more complex than it really is. Appearance-wise, it's probably the closest you can get to damask on 8 shafts.

Since I have a lot of 8/2 unmercerized yarn that I want to use up (it's time to move on to finer and better yarns), I've going to make a whole slew of different color-combinations, all of which will work with our collection of Fiesta dishes.

Well, I'm still getting re-aquainted with my 8-shaft Harrisville loom. It's a quirky little thing. At least I think it's quirky. Maybe it's me that's quirky. And I've never weaved broken twill blocks, so I'm making full-sized samples. It's not that I don't believe in sampling. I do. It's just that I want something to show for it. And I know, from experience, that small samples and the full-sized real item do not necessarily behave the same way all the way through the final wet finishing.

Sooo, I'm in the throes of weaving boysenberry napkins, maybe about 4 of them, with gold and teal stripes. The stripes are the width of blocks, all of which are 1 inch wide and, hopefully, 1 inch square. nnnnvggggggb (That comment is from Stewart.) Of course there is lots of room for variation. It's a good exercise. I'm slowly getting on better terms with this loom. I certainly need all the practice warping that I can get. And, I'll be able to fine-tune a few things based on how these puppies turn out, especially the size of the blocks and the napkins.. Hopefully, the napkins will turn out. Well, that's sort of the point of sampling.

Friday

Okay. Not a terribly exciting day.

Mostly I threaded heddles and I'm still not done.

Randy helped me finish the set-up of the 4-shaft Newcomb which is designed to be a rug loom, but will weave anything. It has a MASSIVE red and black carpet-warp warp already on the sectional backbeam. My father put that warp on years ago and I do mean years. Maybe 20-25 years ago. I haven't a clue what he had in mind other than it was no doubt for rag rugs because that's what he wove. I have boxes and boxes of Pendleton wool strips for rugs that will be perfect for the black and red warp once I figure out how to thread and "tromp" it. It appears to still be in perfect condition. But after those Pendlestrips are woven off????? Well, stay tuned for further adventures. I took Randy out to lunch at Pier 46 to say "thank you."

When we got home, I kept threading heddles. I don't dislike the process, but it does suck up a lot of time because I am not fast at it. Oh well. It's part of the process.

Whine. Sort Of.

Toe that had surgery last week is feeling achy tonight. And I'm feeling whiney as a result. Oh well. Blog for awhile and then crawl into bed with a good book and a couple magazines.

I feel like a hunter-gatherer today. At our monthly weaving guild meetings we hold a raffle. You bring in stuff you don't want anymore (I donated 4 partial cones of red and orange weaving yarns), buy 4/$1.00 raffle tickets (I always buy $5.00 worth; it supports the guild), and put your tickets into paper cups next to stuff you want. I won a book (_The Root of Wild Madder_ by Brian Murphy; it's about Persian rugs), a nice batch of hang tags for selling handwovens, and a wonderful skein of black wool yarn flecked with white that I had to rescue when Stewart and Nicholas just ran off with it (Stewart has a thing about wool and mohair skeins; he thinks they are wild animals). And, I bought a back copy of Handwoven magazine that I didn't already have.

After the meeting I took a Borders gift card that I have on a shopping expedition for the latest copy of Vanity Fair, Stampington's newest Haute Handbags, and a very interesting book by Jeff Sharlet: _The Family, The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power_, although I'm not sure what's so secret about it.

To top it off, when I got home my copy of _The Art of Bolivian Highland Weaving_ had arrived. This is a very exciting (to me) out-of-print book that I found on Etsy for all of $11.00 with shipping. Elsewhere it costs at least $30. And on up. So I was pretty excited to find it at a bargain price. Turns out it is signed by one of the 2 authors, and it arrived with a bunch of weaving patterns and notes from the original owner who was obviously a weaver!

Last but not least, I brought home Roxanne W. Furrperson's heart pills and my toenail fungus pills, and 2 Linn's chicken pot pies for dinner. Linn's is a local company that makes the best pies, both sweet and savory, in the world. We hadn't had Linn's pot pies for dinner in a long time. They are a little pricey, but worth every penny. It was a grand dinner. I also got a multigrain baguette, and made a green salad which I served with a little of that Rogue River Caveman Blue cheese.

To top the day, we just watched an Atlas rocket launch from Vandenberg from our south-facing upstairs balcony.

Okay. Tomorrow I thread those heddles for sure. I promise. I can't wait to start weaving those broken twill block serviettes!

Landscaping

The other thing that's been going on around here is landscaping the areas right around the house, especially on the south and east sides. We hired a company, Sage Ecological Landscapes, to do that work. Design-wise we were all on the same page in the hymnal. Lots and lots of native bunch grasses, some striking agaves, and a few other native shrubs and perennials. Three big California buckeye trees on the north side. And culinary herbs around the birdbath right outside our bedroom window. Sage reworked the flagstone pathway on the south side and added a french drain under the balcony. The guys pretty much finished up today. They were totally wonderful. Friday they'll return to plant my culinary bay laurel tree, a Saratoga cultivar. And they will add more grasses in a couple weeks when those plants are big enough to plant. We generally used smaller plants and put the money into gopher baskets for everything. I think going with smaller plants and baskets is going to pay off in the long run. We bought the baskets ourselves and have plenty left over for future expansion of plantings on the north and west sides where Randy is working of restoring native vegetation. The three men who did the actual work here over the last 2.5 weeks were fabulously skilled and very professional. I'm kind of going to miss them.

I did the tie-up and sleyed the reed for my first batch of serviettes. This is exciting, to be making fabric again. It seems quite magical to me.

Weaving and Stuff

I know. I've not been the daily blogger I mean to be. Stuff on my mind. Politics. Religion. The future of life on the planet, if any. And my big toe.

Ah yes! The big toe! The right one. I've got this cool podiatrist. He's helping me get rid of my toenail fungus. Heading my call to fix problems now while I'm "young" and can still actually reach my toes, he allowed as how he could remove, permanently, the outside parts of that nail. While it hasn't bothered me in years, that ingrown nail did give me a lot of grief when I was younger, so I volunteered to go along with his plans for a little quicky surgery. All went well when he whacked on me a week ago. But it looks like hamburger and is a little bruised and sore. I couldn't do yoga for a week, and even now will have to be pretty careful with it until it heals. Well, whimp that I am becoming, I did volunteer for this one.

Cooking? Venison! Not in TAOSF. Venison pot roast the first day, following a a Cooks Illustrated method for beef. Venison in left-over sauce over noodles the second day. And tonight, risotto with red wine, broccoli, and diced venison. I love venison. I was testing, tonight, Alice's thoughts on using risotto as a base for assorted odds and ends in the frig. I think we're on to something here. I think that risotto is the new meatloaf. Odds and ends used in this risotto: broccoli, venison pot roast, ends of parmesan, odd bit of leftover beef stock, and opened red wine.

Weaving? Yes, I'm weaving again. A large reason for starting to think about building this house we now live in is that I did not have room at our old house to weave. Right now, all 3 of my floor looms are sitting side-by-side in their permanent locations in my new studio. The Harrisville is in use. The Newcomb rug loom is nearly ready to go. And then I'll start working on the 16 shaft Macomber that I've never been able to use although I've had it for years.

What I'm working on is my contribution to The 2011 Occasional International Serviette/Napkin Exchange. I'm planning to make tons of napkins since my goal is to make a bunch for myself as well as for the exchange. My inspiration is our Fiesta dishes, of which we have a lot, both vintage and new. I'm using 8/2 unmercerized cottons from my stash, since I'm looking for casual napkins that will hold up well to constant use and laundry. And, I don't want to buy new yarn! I've got a monster stash to use up! The yarn colors I'm using are all echoed somewhere in the Fiesta collection.

The hard part, of course, is figuring out what sort of structure to weave. I'm starting with 8-shaft, 2-block, broken twill. The blocks are 1-inch square across a 20" wide warp set at 24 epi. The first group of 4 napkins are on a mostly red-purple warp with yellow-orange and blue-green stripes that coincide with the blocks. I'll start with a plaid sort of layout and see what develops. I'm a member of the full-sized sample club.... If this warp works out well, I'll simply use the end of the warp to tie on succeeding warps in other colorways.

In any event, today I made all these decisions and wound the first warp. Tomorrow, the world. Or something.