Weaving thrills and spills, and other Friday stuff

Today I needed to get out for various errands -- pick up movie from the library, leave donation at the food pantry, mail out art at the post office, and the first friend I asked came running over to explain why she couldn't drive me! 

She's suddenly dealing with multiple doctors for sudden multiple issues, serious stuff, and today was a doctor appointment an hour away. I didn't know she was in this situation, and she was so sad, said she'd much rather run errands with me! But she did get a sympathetic ear anyway and I think that was good. So Gary came through, and all was accomplished.

 I've been trying to get my weaving started, having decided to remove the threaded piece that came with the loom, maybe use it some other way. 

And I ran into every beginner issue you can imagine, and some you can't. 

From finding one of the pattern warps, important one, was too short and having to replace it, not easy wrangling all the threads to replace one, to accidentally sliding the heddle off the end of the threads and having to rethread almost completely, to rethreading wrong, to being interrupted at a critical point to help a neighbor with some information, it was thrills and spills.  

And the thread isn't packing down well -- it's braided rather than plied, next time I'll know. My hands kept locking up, making it really tricky to do fine threading and getting the tension right. In the yarn. My own tension was pretty high.

However, I persisted.

And it's under way. I've learned how to stabilize the warp threads -- that's what those knitting needles are about -- and to follow the pattern you see on the right. You can see the diamond shapes starting to appear, yay!   Vroom, vroom.

In other news I heard of a shawarma spice blend yesterday, to go with tofu, so I made some, had all the ingredients to hand, 

And I'm doing a test run for supper

I like my own mixes.

Happy day everyone, mix your own. Spice, martini, whatever floats yer boat.