And suddenly it's October

An entire month. To the day. With no post. How does this happen, especially when I’m feeling so busy? Obviously too busy to blog.

But then I should have a lot to show for it, shouldn’t I? Alas, that is not the case.

In chronological order – or something close to it...

Way back in late August I showed you the striped warp I was beaming for towels. They got woven and listed in my Etsy shop. A few have sold. Trust me when I tell you that part of me hopes that none of the towels I weave at this point sell, as I want to have plenty of towels to bring to the Weavers’ Guild Holiday Sale.

So why do I put them up on Etsy? Because a sale is a sale is a sale, right?
After those towels I put another warp on with all those luscious new colors. More dots.

That lightest colored one? It’s not dots – or at least not just dots. I really sort of hated it on the loom so didn’t make any more wit that type of treadling. Off the loom? I like it and now sort of wish I’d done more. That’s how life goes, right?

Then I quickly put on rayon chenille warp for 2 rainbow shawls.

Seeing these colors just makes me SO happy. And these will be my last rainbow shawls. This is the end of my yellow and orang rayon chenille and I won’t buy more.

Then I wove the two shawls, using black rayon chenille as I’ve done before. After the fact I wish I’d just used black rayon, which is substantially finer than the rayon chenille and wouldn’t have covered up so much of the warp threads. The black rayon chenill darkened everything up more than I would have preferred.

Instead of doing a self hem, I machine stitched on a bias binding I’d made many months (years?) ago of dupioni silk. Then I han hemmed that down. You can just see the corner of it in the photo.

I sent one of the shawls off to the Copper Shop Gallery in East Aurora; the other will go to the Holiday Sale. While those shawls were in the washer & dryer I stitched up the September batch of bead bags.

Then I planned, measured, and beamed a warp for my September hugs. On September 28.

On the 30th I got 1 and 1/3 woven. Today I’ve woven 1 full one, so about 2/3 left to weave. I had to leave the house for a few hours for another obligation, and *hope* I can get that last hug woven before the day is out. I’ll still be late for September, but that’s the best I can do. Besides, this is a self-imposed deadline, so....

Closing shot. While Florida & South Caroline are dealing with Hurricane/Tropical Storm Ian, we’re having pleasant weather here in western New York. Look at last night’s stunning sunset.

October 1st, 2022 |

July updates

We’ll start with a bit of the natural world. Yesterday morning I was heading back from my walk and came upon a man who was staring up into the trees. It was clear he was watching something, so I stopped and quietly asked what was interesting. There was an adult pileated woodpecker (mama? papa?) and 2 juveniles up in the tree.

The adult was very busily working on the trunk, making a big hole and digging out bugs or larvae, and the juveniles were sort of hopping around and trying to imitate the behavior. Emphasis on trying. The adult was seen to feed one of the tasty morsels (s)h uncovered to a juvenile.

Can you see the juvenile poking around the side of the tree near mama/papa?

On to some sewing. I realize I never showed you the bead bags I made in June, so below you have 2 sets: first June’s 10 bags and then July’s. I don’t love the skull fabric, but I’m hoping they’ll appeal to some of the children in the hospital.

As for weaving, since I didn’t finish them until several days ago, I’ve decided that I’ll not call these June hugs. That boat has sailed and I have to admit that I simply missed that target. These are July’s hugs.

Personally, I prefer the bright ones – the second two – but I’m trusting the first will suit someone. These hugs are a combination of bamboo, cotton, and tencel or rayon.

Because I’ve somewhat struggled in distributing these hugs to people with dementia or their loved ones, I added another potential avenue for these. I am a member of my local BuyNothing group, a Facebook based group. As the name implies, the concept is to give away what you don’t need or want and get what you do. I’ve both given and gotten several things. I’m hoping posting in that group will reach people I haven’t yet had contact with.

So as always, do contact me if you know of someone who could use a hug – a woven one.

Now for the closing. I take an urban/soul line dance class weekly. This is an important part of my week, and never fails to raise my spirits. The group is SO positive, so encouraging, so welcoming, so great. This week, one of the core team wore a T that struck me as perfect, so I asked for her permission to photograph it and her. I love the sentiment and this woman.

July 16th, 2022 | 

This and that

Spring is absolutely my favorite season. I LOVE seeing all the new little plants poke their noses through the soil, watching the colors of the spring blooms, the cooler temperatures of spring vs. summer, and I even like doing the spring garden cleanup. Tha last item does take time, however, even when I did a bunch of garden clean up in the fall. So that’s my excuse for why I haven’t blogged in 3 weeks.

I’ve moved some plants, making a new garden area. That’s always hard work and takes time. I’ve prepared the soil and planted seeds. I’ve weeded most of the garden and areas and mulched. Here’s just one pic that I like (I should take more).

This is a silver dollar plant. Also called money plant and honesty plant. And those 3 common names are why I learned the Latin names of lots of plants. So this is a lunaria. After these lovely purple flowers it’ll make seeds, with pods that look like silver dolla and work beautifully in fall arrangements.

I had to take a photo of this house. During Monday’s wind, virtually all the blossoms on their tree blew down, carpeting their law and driveway in a vibrant pink.

I believe the tree is a double-flowered crab. And then there’s this:

For Mother’s Day my sweet and talented son made me a planting table. He’d heard me whine about how the multitude of bunnies eat all the young plants I put in the ground and decided to do something about it. This table is 2′ wide x 6′ long. And it FOLDS so I can reasonably store it in my garage over the winter!

In the pots I’ve put a summer squash and zucchini, yellow wax beans, sugar snap peas, lettuce, and my favorite sweet pepper, Carmen. Then, just for fun I put in a pot each of green and red/purple sweet potato vine and a red-orange lantana. I stuck some nasturtium seeds in with those non-food pots, too.

Back in the house, I finished what I call my happy socks. I knit these from the sock blank I dyed in March.

Don’t they make you smile?
Here’s the ball I’m using for my next socks. I didn’t dye this but like the color shifts.

As I was nearing the end of my 3rd warp of the Ukraine support towels, in my head I was planning what I’d do for the May wove hugs. But I wasn’t in any rush, as I still had 2 of the April hugs in my hands. (Only 1 left now.) That feeling – no rush – felt good.

Then, OH NO!! I remembered that I had promised to weave a shawl for the upcoming Alzheimer’s Association fundraising auction. Preferably in purple, which is their signature color. I looked up the date of the auction – May 20!!! It was already May 12 when I remembered, so there was no time to lose!

I knew I could always give them a piece I’d already woven if I had to, but it wouldn’t be purple. I went to my stash of Tencel yarn I didn’t have what I consider to be a clear/straight purple, but I had lots of red-violet, so that would be the majority of the shawl. I threw in some random stripes of yarns that I had tiny amounts of to finish up those cones/bobbins, and set to work.

Unlike my usual practice of warping for at least 3 pieces, I warped for only 1. Gotta get this onto and off of the loom quickly.

I auditioned at least 6 different wefts for this one, and was surprised at how ‘fussy’ the warp was. Few of those weft colors looke great with it. I ultimately chose a medium blue, trying to shift the overall away from the red a bit and toward the blue. Then weave, cut off the loom, twist the fringe, wash, dry, & hard press.

Someone is coming to pick it up momentarily, so I snapped some shots quickly.

And this morning I dropped off my 10 bead bags for May at the Weaving Center.

May 18th, 2022 |

Moving forward

If you’re visiting hoping to see photos of the gifts I made for Christmas, you’ll have to wait and come back. My visit with my frien got postponed so I’m still not sharing those and spoiling her surprise. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have anything to show you!

I’ve continued to knit for donating to people who need things. Just one hat-and I probably won’t knit more unless they are requested-and 3 pairs of mittens. Two are for primary-aged kids, one for toddlers. More mittens on my needles, this time for elementary-aged kids or adults with small hands. I’ll keep knitting mittens until the weather warms up dramatically.

I’ve also done a fair bit of work preparing for my 2022 Christmas cards. I spent a bunch of time deciding on a weave structure, planning it out for the number of ends I need and centering the design. Just 185 ends. Wanting to stick to my stash yarns, I decided on 20/2 mercerized cotton, sett at 36 ends per inch. Doesn’t take long to measure out the warp or get it on the loom.

I downloaded an audiobook, planning to listen while I wove. Well. Since this design is weave-as-drawn-in, that also means 185 picks. It therefore requires far more concentration than I can achieve while listening to a book, or even listening to music that wi

tempt me to sing along. So I stick with NPR. Still, I learn that I can’t weave more than 3 cards at one sitting or I lose my focus. N biggie; I don’t need these for 10 months. Although of course they can’t tie up my loom that long.

Now it’s time to start auditioning wefts, again sticking with the colors of 20/2 cotton in my stash. I started with a light-ish blue. No enough contrast. Plus I wasn’t beating hard enough so the design was elongated and unclear for that reason as well. Next I wen to a very dark purple. Both too dark and beat too firmly.

Moving on. Here’s a nice Christmas red, beat to just about square. Yep, this’ll work. I wove 5 of these.

I didn’t want to weave 30+ cards exactly the same, as it would be even more challenging for me to maintain sufficient focus. So dug out a Christmas green. That worked, too, so I wove 5 green.

Then I found a slightly darker blue, although it’s slightly thicker at roughly 6,000 yards per pound compared to the 7,200 yards per pound of the 20/2. So I couldn’t get this color quite square, but I was okay with that. And although it’s not my favorite color combo, I wove 5 blue.

Woah! I found a small spool of gold metallic, so wound a bobbin with that and the gold 20/2 and checked it out. I liked it so wove 5 of these, as well. You can’t really see the metallic in the straight-on photo, so I took one at an angle, too. I also couldn’t get thi design square as the gold & metal together are thicker than 20/2, but again was okay with that.

Because I liked that, I tried using that metallic thread with the red yarn. I definitely preferred the red on its own, but wove 2 cards with the red & gold because I’d wound a bobbin with that much thread.

Then, since I like the gold with the metallic, I figured I should try the gold on its own. Meh.

So I wove an additional 4 (so far) cards in just red.

If you’re counting, that’s up to 27 cards. I don’t need many more. But it’s clear that I have A LOT of warp left. I haven’t yet decided if I’ll keep weaving this design or just cut it off and toss the remaining warp. It’ll depend on where I am mood-wise when get to that point. I’ll weave one more red, then I want to try one with just metallic, then...we’ll see.

It’s a real change for me not to worry at all about the fact that my selvedges are sort of ugly. They won’t be seen.

January 16th, 2022 |