Scarves, socks, supplies and soup

Today I finished the scarf, and here it is.

Now I'm planning the next. That was a good piece of learning. And today, using Joanne's family darning mushroom, I repaired my  sock, which had developed a hole around  the toe

Fairly wobbly darn, which became invisible when I put the sock on.

Meanwhile, since the weaving isn't portable, I started a new pair of socks for the Ministry, so as to have something to bring to the knitting group.

Then I had to sort out yarn, to find washable wool for the next ministry scarf. 

This looks like a good supply, but, reading heaps left to right

In the box are miscellaneous small unlabeled amounts which I can't use for ministry knitting, don't know if they are machine washable.

Next cotton remnants, socks okay, maybe another pair, scarves no, not warm enough.

Next a small supply of super wash, which can be socks or scarves, good. Next definitely not, hand wash, dry flat is for my use only, can't expect anyone else to do it.

And that's about it. As you see, I'm eking out the black yarn in stripes because I have a good supply of the (terminally boring) grey, but not much black.

So that's where we are.  Next parcel to Sister M. will be the scarf, which to my surprise, is nice enough to give, and two pairs of socks.

Yesterday I also finished

And recommend it as a well written, passionate auto, written with a ghost, they all are, but with a genuineness about it and great narrative ability. I've heard part of the audiobook version read by him, and his narratives talent really shines.

It's sad to read his struggles, despite the seemingly golden good fortune of birth and wealth, quite a bit of which is illusory.  The endless pursuit by the gutter press which printed literally thousands of slanderous articles and hundreds of books, none with permission, from the moment his mother died, when he was 12, is stunning.  

Then on to the savage press coverage of his biracial son's birth, with images and descriptions that I wouldn't repeat, so vile.  The scurrilous articles about Meghan can't be repeated here.

And his father cancelling his sll important security detail, while another source leaked his location, it's all so House of Cards, it's stunning.  

In the 24 hours after the news broke that he but not Meghan would attend the coronation, one single newspaper rushed out over 30 articles attacking her. One paper. 24 hours.  This is on top of six years of non-stop spying and hundreds of unauthorized books , thousands of unauthorized articles.

I think one Netflix show, one Winfrey interview and one book, are a very mild and courteous response on his part. He doesn't criticize his relatives, just relates his puzzlement over their actions and words. He criticizes the media. 

I'm glad he not only has established safety in the US but has made the press and the family who colludes with them, grasp they've taken on the wrong people. 

He's probably the most capable and intelligent of his family,  and has a great partnership with a strong woman. That's the good part. It's a long but readable book.

Here's the immediate supply

by the stove, left olive, right avocado. You can see color differences. 

The main supply is kept in a cooler place, behind a closed cabinet door, light not being very good for oil. They come in dark glass bottles, too.

While we're in the kitchen, here's lunch

Red lentil flatbread with cream of butternut squash, carrot and sweet potato soup. 

The garnish is lemon balm, which I think is in the mint family. It grows to world domination, but is a great lemon flavor for all kinds of food, such as lemon chicken, lemonade, any place you want the flavor of lemons.

Happy day everyone, enjoy your weaving, whatever form it takes!

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!