Forsytes, Freecycle and Floor cloths

I'm currently watching this 

It's a good production, wonderful interiors, costumes, carriages, all that, and great casting. It takes some liberties with the original plot but it works anyway.  

Francesca Annis looks a bit youthful for the matriarch,oddly, since she's actually about the right age in real life, but her facial acting expression is wonderful, great communication.

The Forsytes Saga is the gift that keeps on giving. I've seen at least three productions on TV, all good.

Meanwhile back at the maker space, I checked the weaving of the proposed floor mat and realized it could be slippery. So I rethought and made the pieces into kitchen cloths instead. 

It's good cotton, so it will work. And now I've got all I needed from this yarn, so today I'm passing the rest on to a keen knitter anxious to get hold of it.

There were any number of potential takers on Freecycle, and it's going into grateful hands.

I'm looking for takers for any or all of these items 

And there's another folding bookcase as soon as I can get it downstairs to take a picture. It's like the other one I Freecycled recently, in fact it can be stacked on it

And this will probably get a taker

I use a steel, so I don't need it. Someone will be happy, I expect.

The less stuff I have around, the better I can breathe. The house looks bigger, too.  Ed addition: both knife grinder and bookcase had takers within minutes.

I was up very early Sunday so I improved the shining early hour by baking banana bread, with a bit of coffee essence added in. 

Second Sunday breakfast. That's Chobani yogurt, plain, on top. 

And here's a local warning from the county prosecutor's office (?)

The thing is they're warning about phishing, links, all that. And they give a link to find out more. I'm not clickin' no link!

Happy day everyone, so much good stuff around, hopeful about the elections, including the Alberta referendum.

Concierge Misfits, tiny bouquet, silk art

The seasons seem to be colliding, not unusual for this time in this region.

So I nipped out and picked the really last tiny bouquet of the year.

Jeff the Misfits Driver, is now giving me personal concierge delivery. He rang the doorbell, and asked where was best for the box indoors. This is above and beyond, so my appreciative words to HQ must have got back to him. Nice guy. 

Strawberries to go with the yogurt, and now Chris has told the story behind Chobani, I'm happy to buy it when it's available. Next week my old standby is back though.

Apples are the usual midmorning snack, one of those habits that get permanent. The cream cheese was one of those sold out items I put on my wait-list and got lucky. Excellent on that seedy oaty bread. The birds like the bread, because I shake out the emptied bag and they get the seeds left in it.

The cold brew coffee is an experiment, to see if it works hot, too. And as a possible flavor in baking.  The fudge brownies are just because it's been an exciting and tiring few days, or some such malarkey.

Bananas are for breakfasts on toasted seedy bread. 

And I made a giant quiche, not much cheeses available, so it's Parmesan and feta cheese, with a lot of scallions, garlic, kale and spinach and the usual ten eggs. I reheat by broiling for a minute or two, really good. This week my cheeses are available again so I'm stocking up in my next order.

I also made a large pot of soup, using broth from the chicken, and a lot of the three bean salad plus potatoes and chicken pieces. Between this and the quiche, the week's meals are fast food.  The three bean salad and dressing worked fine as soup ingredients.

I'm so pleased with the bathtub. Contractor Mike tells me the tiling and painting will be done by end of day Wednesday. 

Door in place but not screwed down 

Door out, in the usual way I'll use it. I tried stepping in, and that step means only a small distance to raise my foot, and I can put both feet on the step. Inside there's enough height that the shower curtain will contain the water.

Meanwhile the stair-lift is in use carrying stuff up. I needed to take the filled gallon containers of water from outside before frost gets here, and they needed to be available for the upstairs plants, which I'm terrible at watering. 

So the chair carried them up for me, so easy. I can carry one in each hand but it's not a good idea to climb stairs without holding on to a rail.

While I was upstairs setting up the water, I remembered Ellen was asking about examples of how the silk transferred images worked. So I found these, all hanging around upstairs. 

This is a silk transfer of a scan of sashiko stitching and a painting, overlaid images.

Here the appliqued dancing shapes are cut from a silk transfer. They're appliqued onto a silk square I dyed.

Parts of these soft sculptures are pieces of image dyed silk. There's also molded and painted handmade paper. 

So there's a few of the ways I used the fabric. Collectors now own some artworks with pieces collaged and stuffed, in hanging works. 

It occurs to me now that if any US blogistas (sorry, can't run to out of country shipping) want either of the 2D pieces as a little present, let me know. The sculptures can't travel, though.

Meanwhile I'm eagerly awaiting some new really tiny looms from an English artisan for a different experiment in weaving. Also two more clamps from the Woolery for more successful long warp weaving with the frame loom.

It's all good. I couldn't get the Mary Pipher book on aging Pixie mentioned, but I did read Women Rowing North.

It's easy reading, anecdotal, with ideas you can think about and try on for size. I'd recommend it if you're comfortable with the Noah's Ark mindset. 

Meaning the assumption that everyone has a partner, and that singles ought to just get.on and get one. She gives almost no recognition to the large and growing population of single ageing women and the issues they face. 

Some are widowed, some divorced, some never partnered. Their lives and plans are very different from the partnered, particularly straight partnered, who seem to comprise the world she's addressing.  And most of her subjects are statistically likely to be alone in their last years.

But given that caution, there's still quite a bit of value in reading it. I wondered if she'd written this back in her Ophelia book days, explaining how dated it is, but, no, pub date 2019. So I did give her a fair try.

Anyway, happy day, pick out the parts of books and life that work for you and go for it. 

Sez Ted and Big Ursy and Pony and Ursula 

Bathrooms, Textiles and Tea, late and early flowers

The Bathtub Adventure is in progress, after landing on a week with long-standing medical appointments I had to rearrange. It is ironic that the work to make the bathroom accessible, finally, conflicted with actual health care appointments. 

It's gone very well, and here are a few interregnum pictures. The insert is now curing for 48 hours, and on Friday it will be finished then tiling and painting will follow.

Chunks cut out of the tub

The insert door is to make the tub work for tub bathing. It locks and seals in place by hand, no tools needed

Those gaps have caps when it's finished, to look more streamlined and be waterproof 

Similarly here's the door in place without caps, until it cures completely.  The step is wide enough for your foot, also has a skid proof finish. So you can get in and out with minimal striding, no reaching your foot over the step.

Mike is a lovely craftsman, leaves everything looking beautiful, not a speck of dust when he gets done. 

He's very pleased that after much searching he was able to get tiles to match closely the ones in place. They don't make them any more, and we're only retiling a section around the toilet where some tiles got broken, helpful amateur work, don't ask.

Anyway he went to the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store in Pennsylvania, donated a lot of door hardware and tools and found half a box of the right tiles. Score! 

Today we still have a few late flowers 

and these arrived, for next spring, to be planted near the front door 

They're blue, so I'm hoping for a mass of blue as I come up the front path.

Once again I need to weed that same old patch, now with different weeds from the ones I pulled earlier. I was going to do this tomorrow but had a labor saving idea.  

I checked the first expected frost. Late next week. So that's when I'll pull the weeds, so they don't return this year, and plant the bulbs. Also finally clear the flowers from the patio, since their season will definitely be done. 

Textiles and Tea was unusual this week, with Neil Goss, a true free spirit, an environmental artist, who forages, dyes and weaves works to leave outdoors and eventually join nature. 

He also teaches and creates gallery work, but his outdoor pieces are really his mainspring. He likes community participation in his weaving, here at the backstrap loom he built from a bunch of sticks in traditional fashion.

He does have a traditional floor loom in his studio, a Macomber, on which he created a number of the pieces you see. His work all has a personal narrative but it's not vital to know it in order to get a lot out of seeing it.

When he does a weaving residency, he invites people to take part, add in items, try their hand at weaving, a great test of a weaver's patience and control issues, as he notes. 

He's a generous person and artist, and very aware that he's a white man working in an indigenous women's art form. He also acknowledges the Cherokee people who lived in his region on the land which is now his home.

Check him out. He's a force of nature.

Speaking of art, I just Freecycled this material to a local artist who's very excited to try it out.

This is paper backed silk chiffon which can go through the printer. You peel off the paper and have a beautiful transparent image to work with. 

I used to scan and print sections from my watercolors then use the silk in stitching. It's a marvelous visual experience to have your own work apparently floating in air, released from its original form.

Now that I have none of the electronic equipment needed, and have moved on, it's fun to give another artist a try at it. It's like image transfer raised to a new power.

Happy day everyone! I hope your day is raised to a new power, too.

Sez Ted and Big Ursy and Pony and Ursula