Tfg indicted and other good things

 Finally an indictment, probably the first and least, with the Georgia AG and Jack Smith probably bringing more and bigger.

So

And so say all of us.

The loom has half dozen possible takers and will probably be gone by end of day.* It was never my choice, pushed on me, and I tried it. So the loom itself is no great loss. It never was my style, but I think you should try even counterintuitive forms.

*Update. Picked up shortly after 9 am. Swift action 

It's also not the best design out there. I notice that all the tutorial videos I've found are using different, better designed and user-friendlier looms. 

The Beka videos are about assembling it, and there's one, not very helpfully done one, on threading. Most of the action shows the back of the operator, his hands covering what he's doing, etc.  Anyway, I think I gave it many chances, so I'll weave other ways, on my other looms,  as I usually have. Another weaver can enjoy it.

However, I'm coming to terms with the current situation, regardless of the  equipment design,  and hopeful that this is only a small part of life going forward. This is a very small loss.  There's such a lot to enjoy.

This afternoon is the knitting group, so I'll be looking for great work there, also baby pictures from a member who recently went to see her baby granddaughter. 

Happy day everyone!  Warm Puppy to you.

Photo AC 

Hard realization, decision and Misfits

Two more unsuccessful attempts to thread the loom and wind on the warp have made me realize I simply don't have the cognition for this task. 

It's frightening but I suspect true. Something I managed fine a few years ago is evidently now beyond me. I simply can't consistently repeat the movements correctly despite all the counting and the reminders I've put in place. The last attempt was better, but not usable. 

I wonder if it's the same thing that stopped my Arabic study after that virus.  I couldn't retain the learning as I went well enough to progress.

I suspect now there was some left brain cognitive loss, though it didn't seem like a serious virus at the time. And there's a chance it will lift. 

Meanwhile I decided today's winnowing is -- a loom! I expect someone will like it and get pleasure from it.  There's no point in keeping it lying unused. I can do other forms of weaving, and probably will.

Here it is on Freecycle.

I had a lovely day otherwise, making Shakshuka, from the Meghan's Together cookbook.

As you see

 

You poach the eggs on top

Till they're done however you like them.

I didn't have green peppers the recipe used, but I used onions, garlic, scallions and leeks, which worked out very well. Served with flatbread, and they also suggest yogurt but I didn't have any left today. The flat bread is to mop up the sauce, vital.

This is supposed to be a breakfast dish, but I think it's a great lunch. Could be brunch, too.

And the Misfits box came

The fettuccine will go great with some of the extra Shakshuka, instead of flatbread. I have other plans for the sausage, probably relating to soup since we continue to have soup weather.

So this is where we are. Beautiful sunshine but cold, in 40s with a wind, so I'm back to a warm coat, scarf and hat for walking today.

I'll mention the cognition thoughts next time I see my doctor, just to alert her.

Meanwhile how about a puzzle?

This will probably leap out at you. Or not!

Happy day everyone,   Struggle on!

Weaving journey continued, current events and nostalgia

Yesterday I donated the waste warp yarn, in small pieces, for nest use if birds would like it

This morning I thought I'd finish up the warping I started last evening, and the first part was looking good.

So, after a break to stretch my back, I did threading part two, ready to roll the threaded warp onto the beam, then  to prepare the weaving area to start weaving.

All the videos show a second person at the warping peg end, after the warp's off the peg, holding it steady to keep the tension while the weaver rolls the beam you see in the foreground. I don't have a second person, but the Book Lady said use a dumbbell in that case. Which you see there.

I was getting cautiously optimistic at this point.  Then I found that the rolling wasn't working. The top part of the warps rolled and the lower ones flopped about.

I studied the situation, then realized I'd missed a crucial part of the previous threading stage. And I think that's what caused the problem. 

Not fixable. Soooo, I cut the whole Kitten Kaboodle off the loom. Again. Rolled it onto a fat dowel which has had many uses.

I can use this for weft or for another small weaving on my little handheld tapestry loom. Tomorrow I'll try again. This yarn was better, so there's that.

My life is devolving into Before and After the RHL.  To think this was just a spur of the moment idea a couple of days ago... it's developing into a spur of the year idea.

But by the time I succeed, I'll be really really good at it.

Speaking of being really good at something, this sticker now on my fridge, shows just a few of the inventions created by African Americans.

Then I went and spent the afternoon with a fun group, my first time there, discussing current events. About a dozen people, some men who, blessedly, did not try to dominate the discussion. It's weekly, at another library, where I used to go to a knitting group which is no more, since the pandemic.

I noticed several people were masked, though it's no longer required and was a room with plenty of space. So that may become a regular event on my calendar.

And here's a picture this week of a scene well known to me in childhood. It's a village. It's called Great because a couple of miles away, there's Little Ayton, known locally as Canny Atton.

That's the River Leven. There was a wonderful ice cream store, which I went to later, when we'd moved and I only visited when a nice older relative took me. Homemade ice cream, local cows. 

We'd sit somewhere near here to eat it with one of those little wooden spoons out of a paper cup. Captain Cook, the explorer, was a boy here, too, but I don't know if he ever got ice cream before he went to the coast at Whitby, to go to sea aged nine, as a cabin boy.

Happy day everyone, what did I do in the mornings before heddling happened? Enjoy your day.

 

Weaving journey Day Two, and other issues

I just thought I'd do a few establishing rows of weaving this morning before anything else. Famous last words.

It's now several hours and learnings later, and I had this attempt

Which was very awkward to manage, couldn't seem to set up the loom resting against the table and manage the raising and lowering of the heddle at the same time.

Then I ran into warp tension problems, probably because of my cockamamie, I mean unconventional, way of winding it. 

So after much unavailing effort to fix a couple of warps which were determined to be loose, and the discovery that I'd threaded the heddle upside down.. I'd forgotten there was an up and a down.. I decided to consider this an excellent learning experience and cut off the work from the loom, to start better tomorrow.

Of all the videos about this loom I've watched, not a single one mentioned that there's an up and a down, nor that it's vital to thread the heddie right way up so that the ears on the top can rest on the blocks at the side, to create the up position.  

That's why I couldn't get going, too difficult to change the shed without a proper resting heddle position, and get an open clean shed to slide the shuttle through without fouling the warps.

So here's not just a pathetic little chunk of weaving

It's a user manual for me. It reminds me about warping better, not improvising so much, about threading the right way, and that I didn't much like this yarn combo. The grey is sticky, catches everywhere, so I'll try a different warp idea when I continue tomorrow.

This didn't yield much product, but I'm a whole lot more knowledgeable now, ready to do better tomorrow. I also learned to stay calm and unhurried throughout a tricky process, a good thing in itself. Pema Chodron must have left her mark!

No Textiles and Tea this afternoon, because it's a guest who weaves coffins from willow, a marvelous green and respectful part of death, but, after the last couple of days, I think I'm not quite up for studying the art of casket weaving.

Meanwhile, winnowing has taken a related but different turn. Yesterday I upcycled a couple of things and I'm rediscovering items I haven't used.

The loom was one rediscovered thing, yesterday, and last evening and today here's this

Here's the warping peg for tomorrow's fresh onslaught. I realized that though my c- clamps have vanished, my pasta maker has a handy clamp. That, a sturdy wooden knitting needle, and a roll of masking tape, make a diy warping peg. And afterwards they can return to their regular programming.

And here's today's refind

My old radio, since my favorite radio station keeps annoyingly dropping its online signal, unearthed and in use again. The sound beats the tinny version on my phone and tablet, too. 

So, though nothing left the house, nothing came in either, to supply the listening and weaving needs. You might call it prewinnowing.

In the middle of all this, the morning email meditation from Richard Rohr, and a couple of other sources, was about giving up the illusion of control. This caused me to give a bitter, hollow laugh,  considering the context in which it landed.

Happy day everyone, we're not in any danger of imagining we're on top of things, last time I looked!

But then there's this 

Remember last fall when this was planted across the street and Steve identified it as a flowering prunus?  Yesterday it burst out in pink blossom. Ta-daaa!

Well, we more or less got weaving

What with recent weaving references online, and Caro rocking her rigid heddle loom, it all reminded me that I have one . Then Modern Daily Knitting yesterday featured a self taught rigid heddle loom weaver and her scarf.

 I borrowed the book , ebook from the library, she recommended,  last night, started reading right away. Then woke this morning thinking must try this, must try this 

I never actually tried to have a rigid heddle loom. It was donated to the embroiderers' guild, who promptly turned it over to me, figuring I'd probably try it, and nobody else was interested 

I really like the compactness of the rigid heddle loom, so unassuming you can put it away.  And promptly forget you own it.

 I spent some time trying to figure out the order of business with it, supplied myself with the missing heddle blocks after I found I couldn't really thread it otherwise. 

Then I found I needed a sleying tool to fish the warp threads through the heddle, didn't have one, but found a very fine crochet hook did the trick.

I made this wallhanging, using all kinds of threads and little experiments. 

Then I got doing other things and the loom just sat, until today. 

Anyway, this morning I figured here goes with the math needed to figure out how much warp will be needed for a scarf. I found this, very helpful

I was operating with a few deficits. I no longer have a studio with a big worktop for clamping a warping c clamp to. I appear also to have lost or winnowed all the c clamps. And I had to work around this.  I've never had a warping board,  nor a warping peg, but my improvised clamps worked okay.

So here's the doings

Grey mixture cotton knitting yarn for the warp, some variegated knitting yarn for the weft. Nice shuttle, handmade by some artisan, lovely to handle. You can make shuttles from cardboard, and  I have, or used butterflies which I've tried and didn't like in this application. Nice for small tapestry though.

I spent quite a while just finding the tools and remembering how they went, then figuring out how to create a warp with the limitations at my disposal. 

One of the limitations was that my left hand kept locking up and going out of action, from overuse. So I had to keep stopping to work the joints back into place, but oh well.

Here's how I managed, in stages, using bathroom grab bars and a three pound weight , see how many parts of my life contributed today 

At this point the dumbbell is keeping the tension while I get lunch.

Using the grab bars involved cutting off the warp at both ends, rather than having a loop arrangement.  Next time I  know how to do it better. 

It made keeping tension harder, a lot of adjustments, but threading the heddle easier, all separate warp threads 

So here's the current state of play

And tomorrow is another day! If this turns out to be an actual scarf, acceptable and wearable, it's going to the Sock Ministry. 

This evening I'm knitting. I know how to do that.

Happy evening everyone, I spent the day wrestling with thread so you don't have to!

Words and weaving, Milton Avery, Miss Marple and cardboard carving

Late out of the blocks today, mainly because I thought I'd done my post. I hadn't. I'd only thought about it. Oh. 

I found a great word for Joanne and other weavers, from favorite etymologist Haggard Hawks

You don't have to be a weaver to recognize this situation, but it's more  vivid if you are.

Today was about laundry, changing the bed, even washing the blanket, a sign of spring right there.  

About spring -- the juncoes haven't left yet, meaning they're not convinced it's spring yet. They're even overlapping with the arriving redwing blackbirds and summer robins. 

I noticed quite a crowd of them in the trees with blackbirds and mourning doves, when I was out walking this afternoon. Sunshine and 60s, rain back again tomorrow.

I got back to the cardboard carving this afternoon, and here's where we are up to now

I have to see what should happen in the upper part, the mountains and clouds, to balance the foliage in the trees and buds on the foreground plants. 

I also need to do more foliage after I've thought about it a bit more.This is really fun to work on, figuring out which ideas to pursue and which not.

And, on to a true master, Milton Avery, the painter's painter. This is a fairly early work, i think, but the vertiginous raking viewpoint is there

And his color choices, much more subtle than at first glance.

I was also thinking  more about actors in roles already well known from books and found that a whole lot of actors have played Miss Marple

Some of the names surprised me, but of the ones I've seen, in movies or TV, I  think Joan Hickson is the definitive one. She was also favored by Christie to play her. 

Next comes June Whitfield on radio and audiobooks, very astute portrayal. 

Next Geraldine McEwan, after I got used to her and dialled back the expectation of keen intelligence Hickson had brought, 

Then, far behind, Julia Mackenzie, who didn't seem to grasp the role at all, playing it like a little know-it-all wiseguy.  But to be fair, she played Ariadne Oliver in radio productions and was very good.

And sadly last,  Margaret Rutherford, really miscast, the movie set up like a slapstick horsey comedy idea. She tried gallantly to save it, but I think it was doomed.

Those are my completely unhumble opinions on this vital, gripping,  topic.

In other contexts, too, some actors simply own the part. Like Harriet Walter playing Sayers' Harriet Vane, and Edward Petherbridge playing Peter Wimsey. 

Or the Sherlock Holmeses Sandra mentioned. And Hugh Fraser playing Captain Hastings, back in Christie. And performing her audiobooks. Or Jonathan Cecil performing P.G. Wodehouse audiobooks, pitch perfect.

Which brings us to suppertime, and this morning I'd microwaved a couple of sweet potatoes I'd had for a few days and didn't want them to shrivel before I got to them. 

They were all mashed and spiced in the fridge, for whenever I decided what to do about them.  So supper was an easy salad of hardboiled egg, cilantro, parsley and sweet potato in a pita bread.  I do like a meal I can pick up and eat while I read my current Barbara Pym.

Happy day, well for a few of us, evening, everyone.  Enjoy unexpected combos where you find them.

All star cast, cast off, and castoffs

Ages since I did a movie matinee, and today was heavy rain all day, no walking, so I found the 1978 version of Death on the Nile on Freevee.

It's a mad gallop down memory lane of old actors, Peter Ustinov,  David Niven, Maggie Smith, Bette Davis, Mia Farrow, even Olivia Hussey got in. 

The scenery is wonderful, production values high, and the clothes, dresses, tailoring, just great.  I expect we all know the plot -- wealthy young woman is murdered on a Nile steamer, which is packed to the gunwales with suspects.  Ustinov is Poirot, with Niven as his sidekick, Colonel somebody.

Great fun to knit by and here's the result, one sock, two views 

 I've cast on the second sock now.

I also did paper file winnowing, and have a couple of pounds more paper to recycle now

 A productive day, all told. And in case the actual spring weather ever gets here, a bit of Beatrix Potter to remind us what it might look like.

She was more than a children's book writer and illustrator.  She was also a sheep breeder and judge, and was the driving force behind bringing back the ancient Herdwick sheep breed to the Lake District, Cumbria, to be exact, where it survives and thrives still.

Just another multi-talented person known mainly for only one of her taients.  She also fought for the preservation of Cumbrian farms and the way of life of the farmers and shepherds, some of whose families have lived on the land and been good stewards for a thousand years. 

Happy day everyone, enjoy your evening or whatever time of day it is when you see this.