New friends, Textiles and Tea

This morning was about stitching my pages, just folded back wrong sides together, and stitched around with embroidery floss.  The slot and tab thing happens later.

Here are three pages, one side then the other 

Then the afternoon was Tuesday Knitting Group, and since school was out today, we had the pleasure of a little girl starting crochet, while her mother looked on. 

Another knitter taught her the start of Granny squares, and I found a sample of them in my bag, to show her, this notebook with gs covers, seen from both sides 

It's my purse notebook, made when I had a surfeit of embroidery floss.

And while the granny squarers worked, 

the mom and I had a great convo about Indian textiles. She knew quite a bit about the kawandi I'm interested in, also kantha stitching and Gujarati stitching, the kind with the tiny mirrors embedded, so we were very pleased with each other. She took a picture of her daughter with me before they left, very cool 

Other chat ranged over young people starting crafts, artists and musicians finding everything new all the time, how knitting is not work, it's entertainment, wire jewelry,  and more. Cheerful, no apocalyptic chat. 

Then home to Textiles and Tea with Demetrio Lazo,  a wonderful weaver and dyer from a long family tradition in Oaxaca, who teaches as well as makes massive rugs in traditional and newly creative designs. He has children one of whom is already committed to a career in weaving in the family business.

He teaches weaving and dyeing workshops, as well as producing sought-after work of his own

look at the size of this rug loom. He says its really a dance to manage the harnesses. A rug takes about three months.

This makes a person want to sign up and rush to Oaxaca to do this dyeing workshop. Natural and synthetic dyes, including cochineal and indigo, which grows in Mexico.

and the last entry here is a reference book he uses and approves. It's the one you see above, open on the loom to the design he's working on.

I have to cop to falling asleep and missing a bit, cup of tea in my hand, narrowly averting a spill, but it had been a busy day one way and another.

Then supper, which looked pretty good considering it consisted of odd things lying around. Sweet potato tortillas under a  bed of steamed spinach, poached egg on top, roast potatoes.

I find a great way to get potatoes tender inside and all crisp outside is to microwave them whole till tender, then dice and roast them in the toaster oven. Seasalt, black pepper, olive oil great.

Happy day, everyone, mine was wonderful.