Kittygons Almost Done

Day 233: The Kittygons quilt is almost done! All that remains is the outer row of partial hexagons along one edge and a few on the side I'm currently stitching. The back side shows the stitching best. Each dark green center has a "daisy" in the middle, and hidden in the hexagons somewhere, there is also a bee (not shown in the image). I like hiding surprises in my quilts! There were a few issues along the way with this one, notably that my sewing machine began acting up when I was about halfway done with the piecing (now fixed), so some of the seams weren't stitched firmly. As I've quilted each hexagon, I've fixed the loose bits by hand. Note that this was made as a machine-sewn quilt top, then batted and backed with muslin before I put it on the quilting frame (as opposed to "quilt-as-you-go" where each block or piece is made and finished individually). Merry has already decided it's his.

Ragged Robin

Day 232: A couple of years ago, my sister-of-the-heart Patty sent me some seed from her Ragged Robins (Lychnis flos-cuculi). I planted most of them in an enormous pot just outside my kitchen door, with the remainder going along the west side of my house. The following spring, I saw rosettes of leaves developing in the pot. "Hm," I said, "those must be Ragged Robins." They didn't bloom that first year, so in order to prevent myself from pulling them up as some sort of weed, I stuck a label in the pot. When the second spring came around, I was happy to see stems with buds rising above the rosettes, and sure enough, they bloomed. I let them go to seed in the hopes of having more, but as such things occasionally happen, the label faded or went missing, and at some point during the winter, I apparently decided to weed the pot. At first when no Ragged Robins came up in it, I blamed critters, but then a niggling memory suggested that I had indeed been my own worst enemy. I was very sad, very sad indeed, and moreso when Patty posted pictures of her Ragged Robins and asked me how mine were doing. But all was not lost! Remember I said that I'd thrown some seed down on the west side of my house? I even marked off the area as a "no-mow" zone. There are only a few, but I still have Ragged Robins.

This story puts me in mind of one from my childhood. My father was a diligent weeder, and decided to help my mother by pulling all the thistles out of her flower beds. Unfortunately, the "thistles" were in fact her Oriental poppies. I don't think she ever forgave him.

CITO The Mountain

Day 231: I rarely geocache these days, but there is one annual event I don't think I've missed in sixteen years: CITO the Mountain. "CITO" stands for "cache in, trash out." Trash pickup is always minimal in Longmire Campground, with the real purpose of the event being the set-up of canvas tents which are available for use by summer volunteers. I serve as one of the supervisors for the work teams, and since so many of the participants are returnees, I generally just leave the crews to do what they know to do. There are always a few hitches which require intervention, but for the most part, experienced hands do the job quickly and efficiently while teaching newcomers the process. Today was no exception. We had one of the best turnouts ever, and the weather was perfect right up to the last moment when it began turning colder and a few sprinkles fell. This may well have been my last such event as a Volunteer Coordinator. Kevin and I both plan to retire from the Volunteer Program at the end of September.

Halfway Heddled

Day 230: I've reached a milestone. I have half of 1024 heddled threaded. But back up a bit. I had to MAKE almost all of those 1024 heddles as well, tying them out of crochet thread, seven knots per heddle (two each to make three square knots, and one for extra security at the top). This is just the prep work, folks. The actual weaving is going to be a piece of cake because it's a traditional 2/2 twill. That means it's easier to thread than a lot of drafts, just 1-2-3-4 over and over. I still verify at the end of each colour repeat because it's easy to pick up a heddle from shaft 2 instead of shaft 3 when you're dealing with a forest of heddles. I've caught two errors where I did just that, but it was quick to unthread and re-do the sequence. Better to find out now than when all 1024 are threaded! I've always maintained that threading is where a weaver's true talent is demonstrated . Any dingbat can treadle properly if they don't let their attention wander, and errors are usually relatively easy to fix, but a thread in the wrong heddle can mean hours of work lost and needing to be redone. Verify! Verify! Verify! In this case, it's easy. For example, for every big yellow block I should have six heddles threaded on each of four shafts. When I'm done threading the block, I check. If one shaft has five and another has three, I goofed somewhere. The same principle applies equally to colour sequences or pattern repeats. At the end of each "unit," verify to be sure the right number of heddles are on each shaft. It'll save you major headaches in the end.

Weaver's Worst Nightmare

Day 229: For the last several days, I have been living one of a weaver's worst nightmares. When I went to mount a new warp of expensive, fine (16/2) Scottish wool on the loom, I dropped half the cross.

For those of you who don't know, the cross is what keeps the threads in order. It is established when measuring a warp onto a warping board, and before the warp can be removed, the cross must be secured with ties or separators of some kind. I generally use little pieces of cardboard, inserting one on each side of the cross, then tying the ends together. In this particular case, I had wound the warp in two pieces (one on each of two warping boards). During the transfer process, one of the ties came loose, and one piece of cardboard slid out. Luckily, the second one remained in place. Even so, the cross had been free to "travel" down into the remaining warp, but fortunately, the wool was fairly "grabby," keeping it more or less in order. The operative words in that last sentence are "more or less." I still had to re-establish the cross without further tangling the threads. For obvious reasons, Merry was banished from the Loom Room for the duration. It took many hours to complete the job to my satisfaction.

The "grabbiness" of the wool worked both for and against me. It had kept the cross from becoming too tangled, but at the same time, it had a tendency to snarl at the lease sticks as I tried to wind on, especially in the section where I had manipulated it. An inch at a time, I coaxed the warp through the lease and onto the roller. The last photo in the series shows a perfect cross. It wasn't easy getting to that point, but patience prevailed. I'm still threading heddles (1024 of them!), but when I'm finished weaving it, this piece will be a shawl in my family tartan, McLeod of Lewis...a "bucket list" project which would make my mother proud.

Loaf Pan

Day 228: All too often, I have found that my computer has been put in airplane mode, or that the sound has been turned off, or that someone has been trying to send encrypted messages with my email or relaying secret instructions to my Facebook friends, so I had taken to covering it with the clear plastic lid to a seed-starting tray. When planting time arrived, the lid was required for the job it was meant to do, and I had to find some other way to protect the keyboard from mischievous pussy-paws. My 12" x 9" cake pan was a perfect fit. When not employed as a security device, the pan is put on top of the printer, but when I need to use the printer in conjunction with the computer, I put it on the floor for the interim. That was when I discovered that its true designation was not "cake pan" or "brownie pan." There is no mistaking it for anything else. It is definitely a Loaf Pan.

Rhododendron Splendor

Day 227: During the first few years of its life, my poor rhododendron had a ruminant problem. The elk and deer would nip off the flower buds during the winter when other browse was scarce. Strangely, they never seemed to bother the ancient rhody in my neighbour's yard, and now, for the last four or five years, they've left mine alone. In any event, it's still not very tall, but it's my personal opinion that you're not a true Washingtonian if you don't have at least one rhododendron in your yard. It's our state flower (the pink/white Pacific Rhododendron, anyway). In fact, there are several species of rhododendron here, although unless you are familiar with them, you would probably think they belonged in a different genus because they look very little like the garden plant. Some never get above knee-height, and one has bell-shaped flowers and small leaves which gave rise to its common name of False Huckleberry. Still, it is the vigorous and showy shrub which can attain heights up to 20 feet which Washingtonians know best, and whether native or cultivated, spring finds our yards and lowland forests massed with rhododendron splendor.