Tuesday Mad Rush Day

No knitting group because Handsome Son drove me to the ENT to get my hearing and hearing aids retested. I'd been missing words and getting more tinnitus. 

When I called Monday I expected to be offered an appointment maybe December, but they had an opening Tuesday, I'm guessing a cancellation, so I seized it. I want medical appointments all done before winter.

Full hearing test later showed very slight loss compared to last year, but she changed out the tiny cables in the hearing aids and that fixed it all up. No need to see her again till next June.

The building her office is in was probably a seventies build, one story, glass roof, many plants, some growing in the ground left open when the place was built. Benches like an indoor park.  I like it as a doctor's building, seems very green and friendly.

I swiped this picture off a realtor's site, because I forgot to take pictures, but this is accurate.

Then home to the lunch HS had picked up for us, and a great chat before he left to get on with what was supposed to be his day off.

Then Textiles and Tea with yet another powerhouse of a weaver, painter, retired architect 

This bag is made of samples she wove, like knitting swatches, while planning big pieces. She learned leatherwork in order to make it!

 Here's a painting adapted to weaving on a TC2 Jacquard loom, computer assisted to enable the weaver to set up thousands of warp threads to create fine detail.

This is a 90 year old lady being joyful at the eclipse of the sun 

The blue and green garment is fully formed on the loom, no seaming, no stitching, just great design and flow. 

The piece is about New Orleans, and was designed to show there, hence the Mardi Gras bead motif. The occasion was HGA's 2026 Convergence in New Orleans.

This is award-winning yardage made in a very compressed time frame, a few days.  She's deciding what to make with it, open to suggestions.

 

Here's her planning for a complex piece 

And a realistic woven rendering of a painting.

She's thoughtful and did a great presentation. She dyes her own yarn, in addition to everything else.  Definitely worth going to her website for more.

I was just thinking about dinner after that when I had a sudden unannounced visit from two friends who used to be neighbors and were in the area that evening. 

That was great, a couple of the very few people who can drop in and take their chances and it's fine. 

We had a rapid exchange of news, and they admired and played with the stair lift, checked out the narrowband weaving on the table, then we did the required selfie before they left. 

They call themselves my pretend daughters, being HS' age, though friends of mine.  It was a great surprise and I was so tired when they left, but good. 

I didn't ask their permission to show the pic, so take my word for it: two vibrant and beautiful Indian women and a tired old white lady between them!  

One of them had moved away to reduce her work commute, and now her job has moved here. So the commute has reversed itself, and she tells me I'll be seeing her more often.

They'd parked right where they used to live, as if they'd never moved, just as a joke. I love these guys.

So that was Tuesday and today I'm recovering. So much peopling. Lovely, but I'm done for. Happy day, enjoy whatever ends up happening, often things we hadn't thought about.

Textiles and Tea, Misfits, Knitting group, third party Freecycle

I made it to the knitting group this week, bringing my new portable weaving.

M brought her wheel and was spinning some bluefaced Leicester and silk roving. I made a video for the YouTube channel which caught her explaining the process. 

Here's my new little weaving, a seamless pouch for my phone. The loom is the side of the box my Ashford loom clamps came in.

You see how you weave round and round to make it a seamless tube.

Such talent in this little group. Chat fell into many tributaries rather than group, for various social reasons.

Home again for Textiles and Tea with high energy 

She's an English woman, former professional oboeist, now wildly creative weaver and teacher, currently based in southwest France, in this great studio/teaching space 

 Here's her latest book, full of fearless ideas and philosophy 

Behind her are stalactite forms woven in a variety of threads including paper

She pursues seemingly impossible results and gets them. When she teaches, she limits the group to two or three so as to give maximum attention to each person's journey. 

I asked her if high jinks pretty much summarized her life and adventures and she cheerfully agreed that was a fair assessment.  I've rarely seen a happier more joyful worker, who tackles steep learning curves with total energy. 

Meanwhile back on earth, Wednesday saw me in the cardiologist office 

Shortly before being seen by a procession of nurses, nps, and the cardio, all of whom told me I was doing well and needed an annual ultrasound, or something, come back in two weeks. 

I notice my doctors now all have a walker at the scale, good thinking. Stepping onto that wobbly platform is a fall waiting to happen.

Then Misfits arrived so early today I never saw the driver, being upstairs getting dressed.

A couple of items were out of stock, dandelion greens and salty chocolate mix. Too bad about the greens.. 

I ordered a couple of starkrimson pears, of one of which I gave a sample slice to contractor Mike, who made a note. He and his wife are once again eating healthier, so he was glad to learn about a pear he'd never had.

The carrots are partly cooked for future quiche purposes, with the rest of the kale and maybe mushrooms from the freezer.

This is why I stocked up on the various cheeses. They're not in stock often, so I seized the day. Lunch may be a tuna melt, haven't had that in a while.

The strawberries will accompany the favorite yogurt, now back in stock. And maybe a smoothie or two involving bananas. Black beans to go with other pulse foods in the house. 

The bathroom is almost complete, soon to be usable again. I'll be glad to get my house back. I haven't seen so many people in years, more than I need really. 

The knitting group, all the doctor personnel, Handsome Son, who's always welcome, contractor Mike, neighbor who brought over a fall chrysanthemum, on and on.  My social cup is overflowing and I need recovery time. 

I put up a "spotted locally" Freecycle notice about this bicycle 

I know little about bikes, but I see the chain is rusty and needs attention. Maybe someone will want to rehab it.

Happy day everyone, well done, Alberta,  and everyone keep pushing for the good people. Most countries are in a right wing wave just now, and resistance is required, 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