Rain, bands and Misfits

Lovely heavy rain for hours, now lighter,  and it's soaking in as fast as it falls. We needed this.

While I'm awaiting Misfits, I finished a couple of short band experiments. You see how the pattern reverses, and how changing the weft color influences the design.

Jeff brought the serum, I mean groceries, today

Already all stocked up with food pantry offerings, no cans this week. Lime juice to beat up in yogurt, q v., Envy apples, because the apples Sandra recommended are being sold in 5lb lots, a bit too much even for me, plums either for eating fresh or for crumbles, depending.  

Red wine vinegar for a change,  because the three bean salad used up the last of the distilled and apple cider vinegar. Tuna for tuna melts with ketchup, favorite rapid supper, bread for same. I had used the last piece in the house, the olive bread,  shortly before this delivery.

Raisins for reasons, including upcoming granola bars, vanilla likewise, sadly McCormick, all I could get, but I do need vanilla.  Crumbled blue cheese for omelettes and various other thoughts as they occur. 

And the rain brought out the first sweet William! Two more to go, everything in moderation in this little garden. 

Left of the top of the blue glass thingy, red and white group of flowerheads. It's raining too hard to get closer just now, so you may have to take my word for it for the moment. These are from a seed mixture I flung around last year.

Breaking news, rain stopped, so pictures ensued

Sweet William and sage, present and future.

They're a terrific idea for a band motif. I wonder if I can figure it out. Hm. 

Happy day everyone, nature reminds us we don't have to do everything. The sweet Bills are coming out, sage is starting to flower, honesty going rapidly to seed, and I just get to look and say, well, how about that.

AARP, band joy, honesty and another loom looms

Another hot day, but rain is coming, good, despite my early morning water carrying, the plants are dry.

Early morning, the honesty flowers are developing seedpods. 

I'm going to have a great harvest this year after nothing for several years for my collection. And note the shadows on the fence, sun reflecting off the window and back, creating silhouettes.

Today's band adventure was a happy one, finally achieved a band with much better pattern definition, consistency and even selvedges, always a beginner's downfall.

 

This is the result of all the deadends I explored accidentally yesterday.  I'm really pleased with this because I knew how to fix it and make this work.  The sticking out ends get trimmed off when it's off the loom.

And there was another healthy thing online 

I did it and stayed awake and active for the whole hour, a big advance on last time when, you may remember, I fell asleep during the quiet meditation-with-birdsong break.

As usual the teaching was excellent, the technical support left a bit to be desired. This time the sound level was good, the lighting adequate. 

But whoever was pushing the buttons left me in the waiting room for nearly ten minutes. I was there well ahead of time, but missed the entire intro and she was well underway before they opened it for me. And maybe others too. 

What I got was very good, and sorted out my tired shoulders and back from the weaving, so me I am not on on the complaining, as one of HP's aides used to say.

And well, I did order that little loom with the easier heddle, largely because I found out something vital -- the way it's constructed, wing nuts connecting the parts, you're not limited to the length of the loom.

You can unscrew the end member, and clamp it as far as you want from the rest of the loom, to accommodate any length of warp.

Like this

See the further end,  with wing nuts? That can come off

 

and be clamped as far as you want the warp to be. Then you roll up the end plus warp threads back to the rest of the loom and fasten it on again. 

Then as you want to advance the warp you loosen it, turn the woven end to pull more warp into use, tighten again.

There's a method where you don't even take the bar off, just loosen it so you can rotate it and feed threads on in groups, then pull them to the other end of the loom, tighten and weave.

Cool. I'll try both. This is a game changer, and why didn't I think of it..

This loom is for different kinds of threads and projects from the bandweaver.  No end to my plans at this rate.

Happy day, and happy discoveries, everyone.

 

 

Weaving frenzy with gardening and a dino

The bandweaving continues with a leap ahead in skill. See current output plus WIP on the loom.

Left the first try where I found I needed to rethink yarn choices. The white thread is braided and doesn't pack down well. Middle the second brave attempt, where I was defeated here and there by difficult to read variegated yarn. Both these ended up looking like even weave, not the goal. Warp faced is the goal, where the vertical threads are visible, the weft, horizontal threads hidden. But I hadn't figured out how to get there.

The work on the loom is where I finally realized that there was a starting move I hadn't grasped,  which drew in the threads to get the desired warp faced weaving. Clever me. Finally.

The interesting thing is that this happened when I was setting up for a different weft design, which I love, clasped weft.  I found it is impossible with this corrected weave because it needs to be a weft faced weave.

It cracked me up to realize that trying another weave for a nice change from struggling,  accidentally solved the problem of the previous two. Chance favors the prepared mind! Also no matter what serious endeavors I undertake, comedy breaks through.

Anyway after this exciting session I thought I could do a bit of gardening, weather warm enough, cloudy. The henbit has died back enough that the bees have moved on, so I pulled it out, not too hard, and I just got done when I was surprised by rain.

Bag of debris ready to go out under the trees.

That amount of work is about my limit today. Good thing I have a small area.

I'm reading, as always, currently a reread of Cluny Brown, comfort reading while I stress about paperwork.

And in the intervals of trying to upload vital documents, when my phone decides to drop the Wi-Fi signal, I've been known to play Dino.

It fits the need for speed, usually I'm done in a couple of seconds when he lands on a cactus.

Happy day everyone, don't land on a cactus. On the other hand it might take your mind off your troubles, sez Ted and Big Ursy and Pony and Ursula 

Saturday was wall to wall rain

So I read and watched YouTube and read and wove this, ta-daaaah! One side then the other 

I learned a lot from doing this, and I'd really like one of the shuttles the Durham Weaver uses, which is multipurpose -- shuttle, pickup stick and beater all in one. I was juggling several makeshift ideas to do what it does in one pass. I must find out what it is.

Anyway I'm quite pleased with this first try.

And I had an afternoon matinee with Alec Guinness 

What a marvelous movie, Guinness playing multiple roles, well, an all star cast. 

Happy day everyone if wet.

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.

Ready, set -- wait for loom

I spent much more time than I expected choosing threads, cutting, untangling, organizing, untangling, threading, changing my mind, unthreading, untangling, rethreading, and now I'm set. I only need the loom to arrive. This is to be a short band in yellow and white, pattern in yellow, background in white. 

I paused to set up a ride for next week's one year checkup for Hippolyta. A year already.

 And to watch a couple on the path, carb loading ahead of mating and nesting.

And to fill in an endless online medical questionnaire ahead of the orthopedic appointment. They ask the same things over and over. 

I feel like shouting DITTO! SEE LAST TIME I TOLD YOU! I'M STILL MISSING ORGANS!  THEY'RE STILL DEAD! after the tenth time of being asked for my surgeries, and all the causes of death of my whole family of origin, parents and six siblings. Don't be the survivor, folks, there's a lot of paperwork.

And I needed to keep up my strength so I carb-loaded on shrimp pasta, followed by a strawberry shake.

Cold today, frost last night so I'm back in warm gear for walking. 

I got one artwork packed ready to send tomorrow. Another has been claimed, and I need to figure out materials for shipping for that. And a couple of others have been requested by an excited lady who neglected to give me her address. That gives me time to pack them though. The art winnowing is going nicely.

Happy day everyone. I have a lot to learn about bandweaving including my usual trying to keep the threads organized. 

I wonder if some YouTubers edit out the parts where they're crawling around retrieving dropped ends and combing out knots. I do like this new heddle though. It feels good to be threading it.