Sightings and musings for Monday then weather

 Out early on the deck Monday morning before it got too hot 

First zinnia bud

Any minute now the hibiscus will burst out 

Here comes a bell pepper 

Sorrel. Those three heart shaped leaves go with it.

This is a potential lucet stand in 

I thought, speaking of fiber arts tools, you might like to see a few of mine.

A set of Schacht spindles 

Left, spurtzleur, spinning tool, right 3D printed spindle 

Some of the yarn I've spun on the 3D spindle. It has a nice balance 

Left,  hand carders, right, handmade tapestry handloom, bottom, set of hand made weaving sticks 

I wove this bag on a cardboard loom I made, and used the weaving sticks to make the strap.

Left handmade shuttles, right, silk spinning supported spindles 

I wove this scarf on the back strap loom I improvised from dowels, PVC pipe and a bathrobe belt, using the shuttles you see above.

Left nostepinne, yarn winder, right darning egg, glasses for scale. I've done quite a bit of visible mending using the darning egg.

I've used all these and taught using some. You can substitute large drinking straws for weaving sticks, good for kids, because the handmade wood ones are $$.

There's more, and more items I've made for use, but this is probably all you're up for just now.

All these tools are great to handle, especially knowing someone else made them by hand. It's all part of the pleasure in process. 

It took me, Impatient Ida, a long time to learn the joy of slow deliberate movement, and I'm still learning. As you see, three substitutions already while waiting for my lucet.

One thing that's common to all the handwork I've done including fine art, is the joy of certain moves. 

Lifting a  print and seeing the margins, likewise taking the painter's tape off a water color. Adjusting the weaving sticks as you go. Making that repeat turn with the lucet. Letting the drawing pencil drape across your hand. Giving the spindle a twist. Doing the return row of Tunisian crochet. Packing down the row of weaving. 

There's so much life in the process.

Happy day everyone, enjoy process, it's good.

Then evening happened 

Speaking of the magnetic properties of water and other things

 But first the winnowed storage area 

Quite a bit of this stuff is Gary's. I've always left this door unlocked so neighbors can borrow and return tools rather than buying them. So other tools have migrated here to join mine, for the same use.

Sunday morning on the  antfree deck.

Everything's booming now and there's been rain, always a help. It's such a pleasure to just sit, look, listen, breathe.

About lucets, here's a gallery of what occurred to me just now and what happened after that. Here's the grabber just innocently hanging about.

Look at the working end

Too big for yarn, why not rags

A rag rope, wobbly first try. There are a couple of slight drawbacks, one being the grabber is designed to hold on, not let loops slip off, and another is the unwieldy length of it.  Also the size of it, which is why I tore cotton strips rather than wrangle yarn. And you need a hole to start the yarn through, so I had to improvise there. Other than that, Mrs Lincoln.

But all in all, I think this was a good adaptation. And the process, slipping loops over, is like spool knitting, except that you turn the tool a one-eighty to create each new loop.  

Now I need a real lucet. But meanwhile I made a cardboard one to try 

Notice I put the hole in the wrong place. Then I made another one higher up, and that worked better.

I need a wooden lucet, to keep the tension steady. You can see the irregular loops where the cardboard kept buckling, didn't hold tight enough. But it was okay to learn on. And with a polished wood tool, the yarn will slip over the horns better and feed through the hole smoothly.

I learned a lot from these two experiments.

Happy day everyone, learn something. I think the results are less important than the fun of trying something like this braid -making, where you're developing skills.  You're doing what people did in medieval times.  

Exterminator and lucets and fleece

Saturday was about noise and drilling and hoses dragged through the house and smells and debris. And about sorting the mass of items that came out of the storage unit.

I moved the portable ramp into the house along with the other medical equipment. And I Freecycled this portable folding seat 

Happy taker. It's going camping with him. I used to take it out for plein air painting when I didn't know what I might find to sit on.

Later a couple of neighbors helped me sort out a bunch of garden stakes and set the ends in a bag to keep them organized.

Things took an upward leap after the house had been decontaminated and John the Exterminator left.

 I'd admired these maple lucets online. The maker's wife passed on my compliments to him. I've been looking at handmade lucets for ages.

Next her husband offered to make me one if I paid the shipping! I instantly accepted. That definitely improved my day.  

Again I did a search on the etymology of the word and again found it's of obscure origin. Meaning someone lost the bit of parchment it was written on by the only monk who knew, and since then it's been one big coverup.

This is wool day. This library request arrived 

She's hugely readable, a yarn expert, also friend of Franklin Habit, which speaks well of both of them. 

It's her adventure with a massive bale of cashmere-fine merino wool fleece and what happened after it came into her life.

Happy day everyone. You never know what might come into your life and improve your day.

Speaking of trans, I saw an interview today with a trans man who explained a lot of things very frankly and kindly -- the interview was their idea. 

One thing they said was that it's kind for cis people to specify their pronouns, because because it takes a bit off the "otherness" of trans people doing it. I liked that enough to go to my bio on that platform and insert she/her into my self description.

Just sayin'.

Friday and a frog. Exterminator prep Also indigenous fire culture

Friday morning brought this slug, evidently the one responsible for the holes in the leaves 

I flung him far into the trees, plenty there for him.

And the pond walk yielded birdsong, frog sounds and this mushroom

And here's one of my frog friends, not too worried about my presence. I wonder if it's like young rabbits, more curious than alarmed.

I got back with the Exterminator John for my quote and found he'd sent it days ago, never arrived, not in spam, trash, nowhere. He re-sent it, expensive job sigh, I approve, he's coming Saturday morning. And asked me to empty the storage closet. Oh. Nobody available to help, so I did it. 

The view from my front door, there's more round to the right 

Some of that is dumpster bound, some Freecycle bound, it's a good opportunity to winnow anyway.

Thursday brought a Fowler Museum online presentation  I'd forgotten signing up for, good thing I also signed up for a reminder.

Lovely young graduate student presenting her Master's project, a current exhibit at the Fowler Museum of UCLA, and this Zoom presentation.

Here you see left a plant untouched by fire, growing less fully. On the right, opened up by fire, it grows freely and provides basket fibers.

Left is a sand painting depicting night and day, right sparks of fire and flowers together

The poem is set out to depict the mountains of the poet's childhood

The poppies are California icons and they flourish after fire.

The presenter, from a long line of basket weavers, is now far from her home territory, and is learning the style of her adopted region, but she plans to return and continue in the tradition of her family.

This exhibit is part of a movement to reclaim the cultural fire practices of indigenous people, and further to reclaim them for the women and queer people who have been excluded from their own practices, reserved for straight men. It's a double task. 

For centuries the indigenous people tended the land using fire to cultivate and protect it, until colonized. Then fire was outlawed and the wrongheaded Smoky Bear campaign to eradicate even useful fire resulted in the current undergrowth and kindling situation ending in massive out of control fires.

Fire, life, renewal and art are all part of the indigenous tradition.

If you're anywhere near the Fowler Museum, this would be worth a visit.

Happy day, everyone. Everything is good in its place. I'm still looking for mine.

Meanwhile this came in the mail with the perfect card for the likes of me.

Thank you J, perfect deck reading to get my mind off termites.

And I updated the daily bouquet