Hearts On The Bonker Loom

Day 18: Now that the October Weave-along is over and both my waffle-weave projects are complete, my thoughts returned to the Bonker Loom, otherwise known as a Swedish band loom. Mine was made by Glimakra, one of very few companies offering this type of loom for sale. Why "Bonker?" Well, the warp threads run from right to left (east-west), as opposed to being strung vertically (north-south) from the weaver's perspective. The weft-bearing shuttle is passed away or toward the weaver's body rather than back and forth. On a regular loom, a beater of some sort would pack the throws against the fell, but in the case of the Bonker Loom, the thread is "bonked" into place with a band knife (wood or metal) using the hand not employed with running the shuttle. It was a little disconcerting at first, and my early bands had rather wobbly selvedges, but muscle memory and a sense for the tension of the weft came with practice. These little hearts are one of my favourite patterns. They are worked over five doubled warps (i.e., the pattern threads) and can be flanked with any number of variations depending on the desired width. The pattern warps could also be singles of a heavier thread. The idea is to have enough bulk that they appear embossed against the plain background weave. Some one of you is bound to remark, "But they're PINK!" and you'd be close to right. The colour is actually called Very Berry, and it's a light magenta. Besides, I didn't say this band was going on anything for personal use! I may not approve of their colour preferences, but some of my friends like it.

Green LIght, Red Light

Day 17: Remember that game you played as a kid called "Red Light, Green Light?" Hummingbirds like this Anna's have it built in. This remarkable ability to change colour seemingly on a whim is due to the physical structure of the feathers rather than to pigmentation. Microscopic layers within the feather only permit passage of specific wavelengths, and as light strikes the feather from different angles, multiple microlayers combine or cancel specific wavelengths to produce the visual effect of colour change. A hummingbird's shimmering throat feathers may hold as many as fifteen different microlayers, each with a thickness which matches one colour of light. The reflected light we perceive as iridescence is the product of amplification of some colours, reduction of others. With the ability to go from red to green with just a shift of the head, it's no wonder hummingbirds can halt so abruptly mid-air and then be gone in a flash. They've had lots of practice playing "Stop and Go."

Jam Smarts

Day 16: Let us assume for the moment that you have the great good fortune to have gooseberries available to you. You will need four cups of them, topped, tailed and cut in half. Add a small amount of water (not enough to cover them, but close) and bring to a good boil. Cook for 15 minutes to soften the skins. Be sure you have sterilized jars and lids ready to go. Add 7.5 cups of sugar plus about two teaspoons of butter (to prevent foaming). Bring to a hard boil and maintain it for three minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in one packet of Certo liquid pectin. Return to the stove and boil for one minute. Take the pan off the stove so that the jam can cool down before jarring up. Stir frequently for ten minutes to prevent floating fruit. Decant the jam into jars, seal and process in a hot-water bath for 10 minutes (half-pints). The result will be 8-9 jars of what is easily my very favourite jam of all time. Gooseberries, my friends, are a priceless commodity, seldom grown these days because they take so much work to prepare. Voice of experience here, I got some "jam smarts" this summer, preparing small amounts every day as they ripened, then putting them in the freezer for processing into jam during cooler weather. Nine cups of gooseberries yielded 18 half-pints of jam. I'm set for winter!

Preferred Branch

Day 15: If they were writing Google reviews, the 'dee-dees, juncoes and Nut would tell you that this is their preferred branch. There's usually a line, occasionally some jostling when someone has lingered too long, and sometimes a particularly rude customer, brash and loud-spoken, shoves everyone out of the way in order to be served first, but outright tiffs are rare because there are no shortages here. Service is prompt, product quality is superior, and almost everyone can find something to their liking. Open hours are from dawn to dusk, and if you're a little birdie, you'll never fly away hungry.

Where Have All The Berries Gone?

Day 14: And just that quick, there they were! Had I not looked up at the precise moment I did, I would have assumed that the robins had cleaned the tree, but when I raised my eyes from my needlework, I saw the distinctive Zorro mask. "THEY'RE HERE!!!" I shouted exultantly. "THE WAXWINGS ARE HERE!!!" Quite literally, within five minutes, they had stripped the tree of every berry they deemed ripe enough to consume, leaving roughly 10% for the robins who accordingly polished off most of the remainder as well as those on the ground. And then, the Waxwings simply disappeared, their work here done for the season. That said, the robins had gobbled all of the berries from the smaller tree prior to the occasion and quite a few from the larger one (a nursery cultivar which ripens a week or so later), leaving some of the Waxwings wondering where their food source had gone. I can only hope they found enough to carry them through the next leg of their journey.

In The Absence Of Waxwings

Day 13: Not a single Cedar Waxwing has come to my yard this fall, nor have they shown up in Cornell's Birdcast migration data for my county. They passed through in the spring, so I can only assume that the recent abundance of wildfire smoke has directed them to another route. That said, my Sitka Mountain-ash trees were laden with berries, and some had begun to drop onto my gravel driveway. Raking leaves out of gravel is one thing, messy berries quite another. I wondered what I was going to do without my clean-up crew. I needn't have worried. A flock of American Robins (Turdus migratorius) cleaned one tree in a matter of days and are now working diligently on the second. They are even foraging deep in the junipers for the ripest berries. Boozy birdies, some of them seem a little shaky on their pins for having overindulged on those which have begun to ferment.

Let's Twist Again

Day 12: When is a gadget not a gadget? When it becomes an important tool! And a tool is exactly what this fringe-twister is. It has saved me an enormous amount of time and aggravation, and I no longer dread finishing woven pieces with fringe. It's actually a pretty amazing piece of engineering. A crank handle operates three bent rods which go through a triangular shaped piece, then through a paddle, where they terminate in alligator clips. The crank is rotated manually, and the motion imparted by the bent rods causes each clip to spin in place, subsequently twisting the strands caught in its grip. Some models have only two clips, but the principle is the same. With a few turns of the handle, the fringe bundles are ready to knot, and a job which once took hours can now be completed in a quarter of the time or less. My bonus project for the October Weave-Along is almost done and with plenty of time to spare. Let's twist again!

Specimens

Day 11: I have to admit that I am sometimes slow in getting things out of my plant press to dispatch to their permanent homes. In this case, I was motivated by an inquiry from another botanist about Aspidotis densa, the "new" fern my botany partners and I discovered in the Park this last summer. We conducted an extensive search to determine that the population of the species could support taking two specimens. There were not enough examples to collect three (the preferred number), but in any case, one of these will be retained for the Park's own herbarium and one will be sent to WTU (Burke). For this photo, it has been necessary to remove information regarding the exact location from the labels as a deterrent to less scrupulous collectors (and believe me, I have met a few). I'm looking forward to next year's "botany season," and the possibility of adding even more species to the Park's inventory.

Not Even A Button

Day 10: I hadn't expected anything when I made my first foray to Coprinus Corner about ten days ago. It's been too dry, but I had hoped to find a few Shaggymanes this morning, given that we've had almost an inch of rain over the last two days. It doesn't take much to pop them through the ground, and a friend reported seeing them near Olympia. Alas, my search was in vain. There was not even a single button in evidence. This is probably going to be a rather thin year for mushrooms, all things considered. My hike this morning was a short one (about a mile and a half), and there was simply no fungus of any sort to be seen. Tough times for an old Hobbit!

End Of The Season

Day 9: There may be a very few of you who will recognize this image from nine years ago. The circumstances have not improved. In fact, they have reached a new level on the Frustration Scale. You see, it is the end of the season, that time when all the paperwork held back by supervisors through the summer comes pouring in. It should have been sent to us long ago, but no, it comes in a flood. We (Kevin and I) are deluged with unsigned volunteer agreements and unreported hours, the backlog from the summer, and sometimes from previous years. It's always a rush, always coming right down to the wire to submit the statistics on which next year's budget is based, and no matter how hard we try to make the process go more smoothly, it seems to be bent on finding new ways to go awry.

I sat down last Saturday morning intending to put a sizeable dent in the pile of paperwork threatening to collapse my makeshift "desk." I'm working from home still, wedged into the kneehole of a poorly illuminated antique vanity amid a snakepit of extension cords. It's a decidedly uncomfortable arrangement, but it's the best I can do. As I said, I sat down to attack the paperwork, turned on the computer and...used the full complement of my father's tractor-starting words when I discovered it had locked me out. We tried several remedies, but nothing worked, so I had no choice but to deliver the offending object to Kevin so that he could work with our IT people to restore access. It took some effort on their part, but eventually, it seemed to be fixed. He brought it back to me along with another pile of paperwork (we're reaching critical mass rather quickly here), and this morning, I moved everything onto the kitchen table so I'd at least have better light. I turned the computer on and...I bet you can guess what happened. Or rather, what didn't happen. Three hours later, after deleting my government account and subsequently re-establishing it, I finally got logged in. I'm halfway down the stack, exhausted, nerve-wracked, and cross as an old bear. I think I can be forgiven for recycling a 9-year old photo for the occasion.

Yarn Waffles

Day 8: It's been over fifty years since I bought my first loom, a Schacht table model operated with hand-manipulated jacks as opposed to treadles. With it, I purchased two reeds, 12 and 15 dent respectively, knowing that I'd be working primarily with smaller threads. Later, I fell heir to a floor loom with an assortment of reeds, among them a 10-dent. Given a full range, I thought I was home free, able to weave at almost any sett on one loom or the other. However, the Fates don't always cooperate, and it seemed that whenever the floor loom was occupied with a project using the 10-dent reed, I'd come up with another project for the table loom which wanted the same sett. It's possible to achieve 10 epi with a 15-dent reed by skipping every third slot if and only if your yarn fits through the gap. While I was content to work under these constraints for years, another factor convinced me to finally purchase a 10-dent reed for the table loom. Whether I want to admit it or not, the time is coming when I'm going to have to move into smaller digs, and the floor loom will have to be passed along to someone with space for it. I needed to expand the versatility of the table loom with the eventuality hanging over my head. The new reed arrived yesterday, and despite the fact that it was supposed to fit my old Schacht, it was almost too long for the beater. A few swear-words later, we reached an agreement, and I finished warping some baby yarn I've been trying to use up for years, once again with the waffle-weave threading. I don't know any babies, don't want to know any babies (they belong to the same class of objects as clowns and monkeys in my book), so this little blanket will be destined for auction by the Nisqually Land Trust at some point in the future.

Who's Watching The Watchers?

Day 7: I am not the only member of the family who finds amusement in birdwatching, but unlike many cats, Tippy is quite content to merely watch. The only time he shows any inclination otherwise is when one of my avian friends flutters against the window to let me know that the feeders need refilling. The suet feeder hangs a foot away from the glass, and its visitors include the usual complement of Steller's Jays, Spotted Towhees, Dark-eyed Juncoes and so on, but lately, three Canada Jays have been quite literally hanging around. This has gone on for several weeks now, the longest time they've stayed. My suet budget has been adjusted upward accordingly because...well, because you just can't let a sweet little jaybird go hungry now, can you? The Nuthatch also occasionally stops by, and the Chickadees have returned from summer vacation, chattering with great enthusiasm about their experiences. Wildfire smoke must surely affect birds and critters in many of the same ways it affects humans. Maybe their internal weather sensors are telling them that the rain is coming. I hope so, because I have only the NOAA forecast to rely on.

The Raspberry Thieves

Day 6: No one likes to get prickled when they're picking raspberries, not even birds. You'd think that those scaly feet were prickle-proof, but in fact, they're not, and it would appear that my Steller's Jays have come up with a solution to avoid being spiked. Clever corvids that they are, they take careful aim, fly at the berry of choice, picking off three or four drupelets in passing. I watched the process being repeated numerous times, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. I finally decided on the former because I already have at least eight pints of raspberries in the freezer for winter, and my avian friends are having a pretty hard time what with dry conditions and heavy smoke. We should get some relief from both by the end of the week, but I'm afraid the raspberries are done for the season.

True Colours

Day 5: With the onset of Autumn, trees and shrubs reveal their true colours. Yes, you read that right. Now, shorter days and cooler temperatures slow down the flow of nourishing carbohydrates and chlorophyll production is reduced. As existing chlorophyll breaks down, the natural colours of the leaves are no longer obscured by green and begin to shine through in all their glory. Eventually, a hard abscission layer is formed where petiole meets twig and, generally speaking, the leaf drops. Deciduous trees and shrubs are not all alike in the types of pigments present in their leaves. Those which turn red in Fall are long on anthocyanins. Large amounts of xanthophyll are present in those which turn yellow. Leaves which turn orange contain carotene. These pigments are not immune to shorter periods of sunlight and colder temps, though, and eventually even they will succumb and turn brown. Some leaves may hang on until the following spring. This phenomenon is called marcescence, and it will be the subject of a future post.

Aerial Assault

Day 4: These are a few of the scenes I captured yesterday of the DNR staging area for their aerial assault on the 8 Road Fire. Two helicopters were bucketing water from a nearby lake, and another was carrying retardant tanks. The support crew for the flights remained on the ground until sunset and then pulled out, despite the fire having grown from 30 to 150 acres during the day. I do not pretend to understand the logistics of wildland firefighting, and I know there are aviation rules which must be followed regarding night flights. However, I did expect to see the crew back in the pasture this morning, but there is nothing out there presently except cows and a lot of smoke. The wind has now shifted and is carrying it into my valley. I cannot see the hills through it. While I still don't believe my valley is in any danger of being evacuated, I have my go-bag by the door and a kitty carrier within easy reach. We are not expected to get precipitation until Sunday, and even that won't be much (if any).

Wildfire In The Neighbourhood

Day 3: This is not news anyone wants to hear, or activity anyone wants to see. Yesterday afternoon, a fire started in Elbe Hills just over the other side of the ridge and roughly two miles to the north of me. It was a hot, windy day, and toward evening, it was determined that the risk of injury to firefighters was too great to continue battling it into the night, and the crews were withdrawn. This morning, the Dept. of Natural Resources sent them out again, using the pasture across the road from me as one of the staging areas for the incident. At least three helicopters are in use, two of which I've seen lift off dragging buckets, presumably to fill in a nearby lake for aerial drops. Several other pieces of equipment are also parked in the pasture. Ground crews and loading crews are operating from the area. The good news is that the wind direction remains such that it is carrying smoke and potential fire-spread away from my location. The bad news is that we have no precipitation forecast until the end of next week at the earliest. It is worth noting that I have recorded a mere 0.77" of precip, largely as fog/dew, in the last five and a half months. Months! That is a truly frightening statistic for the Pacific Northwe't. Although I don't expect the fire to spread this direction, I will have a go-bag packed in case Tippy and I need to evacuate.

Post-Wash Waffles

Day 2: As expected, the waffle-weave towels fulled up beautifully when washed, and the characteristic recesses developed. The shrinkage was a bit more than I'd expected with the final measurements coming out at 21" x 11.5". Had I sett the warp at 15 epi instead of 12, they would have come closer to 12" wide after washing, but perhaps wouldn't have felt quite as soft and fluffy. Shortly, I'll be moving on to another waffle project, a layette-sized baby blanket destined for auction at the Nisqually Land Trust's annual fund-raiser. Handwoven items and quilts are always popular with bidders. 100% of the winning bid goes to the Land Trust. If I can't be out there pulling invasives and clearing brush these days, at least I can weave and sew to benefit their conservation efforts.

Three-Shaft Stud Table Runner

Day 1: As a general rule, weaving is a pretty straightforward process. You decide what you want to make, what fibers you want to use and which colours they should be, what draft you want to thread to give the weave you desire. It would end there if it was all about mechanics, but there is a human element involved in the process which sometimes sends a project off on a very different tangent from the one the weaver had in mind. Such was the case when I measured the warp for the October Weave-Along's waffle-weave towels. My brain slipped a cog and I counted out my warp strands with every seventh one being yellow when it should have been every sixth thread. I didn't realize it until I began threading the heddles on my floor loom, counting 1-2-3-4-3-2 and 1 again. The 1s should have been yellow, but because I had six threads of colours A and B in between them in my measured warp, the next sequence was off. The only reasonable solution was to wind a new warp and put it on the table loom since any other means of correction would have resulted in a heap of thread spaghetti. That done, I commenced weaving waffles per the Weave-Along project, but I was left with the dilemma of what to do with the warp on the floor loom. There aren't a lot of weaving drafts for patterns with repeats of 7, and while I could have woven it in a simple over-and-under tabby, I wanted something with a bit more visual texture. After all, that was why I'd put those yellow threads in there in the first place. I spent that evening and a large portion of the night weaving mentally, mulling over what you could do with seven threads and four shafts, and shortly before dawn, it occurred to me that I didn't need to use four shafts. Three would do nicely. By threading the A and B coloured threads alternately on shafts 1 and 2 and the yellows on shaft 3, I could create "studs" of yellow, identical front and back. The treadling sequence shifts: 1, 2, 1, 2, 1/3, 2/3, 1/3...2, 1, 2, 1, 2/3, 1/3, 2/3. This creates a tabby in the A/B with yellow floats. In the weft, I am weaving with mustard until there are 20 yellow floats, interspersed with 3-float bands of rust and mustard until there are three rust stripes, and then repeating from the start. I had thought I might make placemats in this manner, but I like the weave so well that I decided to make an autumn table runner instead. My invented weave has undoubtedly been published somewhere at some time, but I created it from scratch, and I'm calling it "Three-Shaft Stud."

Thrums

Day 365: Appropriate to the last day of my twelfth year of continuous daily blog photos and essays, I'd like to talk about ends (no, I am not planning to discontinue my posts). When a finished cloth is cut from the loom, there will be a certain amount of warp waste at either end of the fabric, the bits which were tied to hold the warp onto the front and back beams. A delightful word, the technical term for these ends is "thrums." Depending on the type of loom employed, thrums can be up to about six feet long per warp strand. Let's say your warp was 400 threads wide. That would mean 2400 feet of thread going to waste! That, to a Scot like me, is simply too much to throw away.

I weave primarily with 8/2 cotton. It's inexpensive and versatile, and of course by sticking with one type of fiber in one size, my thrums match in everything but colour. When I take a project off the loom, I gather the thrums together in bunches and stuff them in my "thrum bag." When the volume reaches a certain point, I develop a project to use them up. If they are long enough, they can be strung on a rigid heddle loom and woven into towels or washcloths. If they're shorter (perhaps leftovers from a previous rigid-heddle project), I weave them into bands using a band loom, an inkle loom, tablet-weaving cards or even a backstrap loom. The bands can then be used to make lanyards, to decorate reusable shopping bags, to apply to Christmas ornaments or cards, etc. Eventually, though, all good things must come to an end, and when my thrums are too short for any other purpose, I cut them into tiny bits to incorporate into handmade paper. Waste not, want not! Or as my grandma used to say, "Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without."

Illusion

Day 364: A mirage is a visual illusion, but an illusion is not necessarily a mirage. As I rounded the bend at the top of the Golden Gate Trail and began my descent into the valley where the trail joins with that to Paradise Glacier, my eyes told me there was water in the basin. My head disagreed. "There is NOT a lake there," it insisted. "You know that." But I was seeing a lake, spanned by a short section of raised trail, the surrounding hills clearly reflected in the water. "No, that's NOT what you're seeing," my mind persisted. With some major effort, I pushed the visual register aside and forced myself to perceive it as the gravelly slopes of reality, but the illusion returned in full force if I blinked or looked away for a second. Dark shadow turned to water, light rocks to reflection. Eventually, my feet settled the debate once and for all, kicking up dust as I climbed out of the dry basin. Who was it who said, "Don't believe anything you hear and only half of what you see?"

The Waffle Project

Day 363: The three waffle-weave towels for the October Weave-Along are done, and I am quite happy with them despite the fact that I somehow ignored the instruction to double-sley the reed. In fact, I am so pleased with them that I'll probably warp the same way for the next ones, directions aside. After all, weaving is a creative process. The towels haven't been washed yet, so they're still fairly flat. Washing will cause the weave to draw up, leaving little divots between the long floats, very like those you'd see on your breakfast waffle. Finished measurement (raw) is 26" x 15". This should draw in to roughly 24" x 13". I don't know yet if I will hem them or leave a fringe. That will depend on how well the fiber holds up in the wash. At any rate, they are hemstitched. Oh, and I realized why I got three towels when I thought I had warped for two. When I was winding the warp, I used the guide string I'd measured out for weaving on the floor loom. When I changed to the table loom, I didn't change the string, and therefore had an extra three feet of warp in my measure.

Liverworts

Day 362: Scientists are driven to name things (via those pesky taxonomists, of course): to categorize, to distinguish, the better to understand where any given species fits into the grander scheme. To know that This and That are related gives us perspective from two angles, and so much the better if we also know they are related to Those. The morphological commonality here is obvious: This, That and Those all belong to the family "Th-," further divided into genus and species by "-is," "-at" and "-ose," and that method (superficial as it was) served us well for many years. Then came DNA analysis, and now our preconceptions are flying out the window at an astonishing rate. Observation of macroscopic and microscopic characteristics is proving to be insufficient. The liverwort shown above demonstrates my point.

There are two schools of thought regarding this Marchantia. Some will argue that it is M. polymorpha, a common pest in greenhouses and nurseries. Others will claim that it is M. alpestris, and may even cite as proof the fact that it lacks the black median line seen in its cousin. Yet another branch will defend it as a different variety (M. polymorpha var. alpestris) or subspecies (M. polymorpha ssp. montivagans). It's enough to drive you mad! To date, Santa Claus has declined my requests for a DNA sequencer and someone with the knowledge to run it, so given that my observations of this liverwort have both occurred in alpine locations where it is unlikely to have been imported from a lowland greenhouse, I'm calling it Marchantia alpestris, and I reserve the right to be wrong.

Golden Gate Grouse

Day 361: At the top of the Golden Gate Trail, my botany partners and I were met by a companion who was busily searching for late-season insects among the dry foliage. Now whether this is a Sooty or a Dusky Grouse is up for debate. "Blue Grouse" was split into two separate species in 2006 in an astonishing reversion to the classification used in the early 1900s. "In general," says the Washington Dept. of Fish and Wildlife, "the coastal birds are Sooty Grouse and the interior birds are Dusky Grouse," and to further complicate matters, the two species intergrade. The air sacs visible on courting males are red in Dusky, more orange or yellow in Sooty. Females do not share this characteristic, so you must look at the tail. Sooty has a grey band across the tip and generally two fewer feathers in the fan, although these marks are difficult to see unless the bird is displaying. Habitat is another clue to distinguishing one species from another. Sooty prefers forest, Dusky prefers open areas. Range is another hint. If your observation is substantially on one side or the other of a dividing line, you're in luck. However, if you happen to be right at the convergence of the zones, have a female bird whose tail is hidden by the foliage in an alpine meadow not far from timberline, you are pretty much up the infamous creek without your proverbial paddle. This, therefore, is a Golden Gate Grouse. That's my assessment, and I'm sticking with it.

Patchwork

Day 360: The high country is clad in motley, performing its final botanical dance of the season with wild abandon. This, not the masses of wildflowers so loved by visitors, is the display which calls to my heart. In these colours, memories of frost outside my tent door shimmer, wraiths of mist rise from meandering springs in the golden first light of morning, and the crackle of grass beneath my boots sends hundreds of grasshoppers leaping from concealment as I climb a ridge still shadowed from the sunrise. A distant summit begs a visit, and I will climb above the last heather to its crest, there to look out on a panorama of huckleberry-red and willow-gold. Spiderwebs and raptors stitch the air, riding an invisible staircase of updrafts. But even now, the spirit of the high backcountry is donning her nightgown and preparing for a long winter's sleep beneath this patchwork. Together, we shall dream of sunlight and birds and solitude, and the return of Spring.

Goat Rocks Fire

Day 359: Per this morning's update, the Goat Rocks Fire now stands at 4552 acres, small as wildfires go, but filling the air in the surrounding communities with smoke. It was projected to grow somewhat today, based on wind and humidity forecasts and indeed, from the top of the Golden Gate Trail, my botany partners and I could see it progressing slowly down the ridge. Per the incident report, a direct approach to suppressing this fire (i.e., sending in ground crews) would have little chance of success due to steep terrain and a massive quantity of dry fuel and would pose extreme safety hazards for firefighters. An indirect solution is being implemented instead, with containment lines being cut in to the west and north, the most likely direction for spread. Higher humidity early next week should further limit the spread.

A Weaver's Journal

Day 358: As a matter of course, I nearly always add a little extra warp to my weaving projects so that I can make a sample to put in my weaving journal. The "journal" is kept on 3 x 5 cards stored in recipe boxes, and each one contains information about the weaving pattern and thread (draft, ends per inch, number of warp threads, etc.), as well as my comments about the finished product. For example, the green/yellow cloth in the 12 o'clock position reads as follows: "9' warp 8/2 cotton, 214 ends; weft Brassard bouclé; 15epi (rigid heddle); 12Y, *10G, 10Y, 10G* 12Y; yielded 3 towels 24 x 12.5 raw, 22 x 11.25 finished. Could be wider." The colours are also noted, and from a previous card in the journal, I knew not to use the bouclé as warp because it "does not hold up well as fringe." Of course, not every card has a sample attached to it because I was using the same fiber and draft, but the file does note the project dimensions (raw and finished). It's important to keep records such as these with each new fiber or draft used. That way, adjustments can be made if needed, or a project can be duplicated if so desired. It's also a good thought to record the final disposition of the finished pieces, especially if you are giving hand-woven items as gifts.

Success Comes In Small Bites

Day 357: Success does not necessarily come to us in large measure. Sometimes it comes in small bites: tasty, but by no means a full plate. It has been several years since I planted two hardy kiwi "Issai" vines, purportedly one of the few self-fertile varieties on the market. I had great hopes for a crop last year, but what fruit had set fell to the ground when daytime temperatures went over 100 for several days in a row. The garden shed most of its berries then. The gooseberries and currants, only a day or two from full ripeness, fell to the ground in a juicy "rainstorm." I was able to salvage most of them for jam, but the kiwis were months away from maturity. But such is horticulture, and this year, I again had high hopes when the blooming season and the pollinators coincided. There were fewer flowers, quite possibly due to a cold snap and late-spring snowfall, but a few within the vine-protected interior of the arch trellis formed fruit. At one point, I think I counted 11 berries, several of which disappeared without a trace. Three weeks ago, one of those remaining felt slightly squishy when I pinched it gently. I picked it, popped it in my mouth, and was rewarded with a burst of kiwi flavour as potent as any encountered in a full-sized fruit. Yesterday, two more signalled their readiness to be eaten, and this time, I remembered to take a picture to document the story of this small but nevertheless enormous horticultural achievement.

Half The Haul

Day 356: Even as I write, I am enjoying one of the most bizarre fruits in my garden. This is but half the haul from my carefully hand-pollinated Five-Leaf Akebia vines. I have mentioned before that one must acquire a taste for this comestible, and in fact it took me several years to train myself in what, precisely, there was to appreciate from a fruit comprised mostly of hard, large seeds. The handful of friends I've tried to instruct in consuming them have not had my patience or persistence in learning to eat something well outside the norm for Western palates. In other words, I couldn't talk anybody into seconds. Too bad! That just means more for me. This year's crop is exceptionally sweet, and I am not quite sure if that's because my taste buds have become sensitized or because I didn't water the vines and simply let them grow unattended through what was a very dry summer. That said, when the pods ripen and split to indicate that they are ready to pick, they seem to do so all at once. I managed to get through about 50 last year without wasting a one, but this year, I was more conservative in the number of flowers I pollinated.

Murphy's Law

Day 355: Weavers are no strangers to Murphy's Law: "If it can go wrong, it will." But there are ways around Murphy, even if you feel like just throwing the whole thing in the bin when he shows up. So far on this project, I've had four "catastrophes," and here's how I've turned them to my favour.

First of all, when I measured out my warp the first time, I had a particular colour sequence in mind. I was thinking I'd create towels which looked like real waffles. Somehow between reading the draft and stepping to the warping board, a six-thread repeat became a seven-thread sequence. I didn't realize I had one extra thread in each repeat until I began to thread the heddles on my floor loom. I used a lot of bad language just then! I didn't want to unwarp the loom, so I dragged out my table loom, re-wound a warp in the correct sequence, and then set to designing a weave I could do on a 7-thread repeat for the warp on the floor loom. I'm happy to say that it's working out well.

 

The second disaster came when I began weaving the correct warp on the table loom. One of the tie-up cords snapped. Fortunately, that was a fairly easy fix.

 

The third near-disaster was when I realized that my colourway simply wasn't going to work. It had looked fine in tabby, but wasn't suited to waffle-weave. A not-so-quick review of my thread stash finally resulted in a brighter, more heavily "buttered" waffle because I used yellow instead of brown, but hey, I like butter.

 

The fourth mishap was when I discovered that I had somehow missed Mary Black's instruction to double-sley. By adjusting the beat just slightly and knowing how much this particular thread plumps up when it's fulled, I didn't have to start over. 

 

Most of the time, the woopsies we make are not nearly as catastrophic as they seem. Don't despair if your project isn't going right. It may not be exactly what you had in mind, but it's still hand-woven, and you've had a valuable learning experience.

Weave-Along Waffles

Day 354: Amongst the other projects I'm working on at the moment, I decided to participate in Acton Creative's "October Weave-Along." The rules are simple: everyone begins and (hopefully) finishes a project during the month of October using the same weaving pattern. You may create whatever you like in whatever colours you choose. It just has to be woven in a particular pattern. In this case, that's waffle-weave, and there is even quite a bit of latitude within that stipulation. There are a number of weaves which give the "waffle" effect, and since I am weaving on a four-shaft loom, I opted for the one in Mary E. Black's "Key to Weaving." Ms. Black suggested using 12 dents/inch for 8/2 cotton, and I am already wishing I'd listened to the Voice of Experience instead of following her instructions. Weaving at 15 epi for 8/2 as I usually do would have rendered square "waffle" divots rather than rectangles. The divots are not readily apparent in the fabric while it is on the loom, but the structure of the weave is such that they will form when the finished cloth is laundered, giving the "waffle" effect for which the weave is named. Fortunately, this is a short-term project consisting of only two towels. I like the weave, but next time, I'll space the warp threads closer together.

Fruits Exotic And Familiar

Day 353: The "fruits of my labours" are beginning to roll in. Although this year saw some notable failures (blueberries, particularly), it also brought abundance in some corners. The raspberry crop promises to be one of the best yet (at least, if all those busy little bees have anything to say about it), and the Akebia vine has again responded well to my intervention as a pollinator. Admittedly, Akebia fruits are not everyone's cup of tea. It took me several years to develop a taste for the mildly sweet but otherwise relatively flavourless pulp, and even longer to master the art of slurping it off the numerous large, hard seeds, but now I look forward to the splitting of the pods which signals that the fruit is ripe for picking. This year's crop seems sweeter than that of years past, perhaps because I watered less even though the summer was quite dry. In another corner of the garden, a mere half dozen hardy kiwi berries hang on the vines, hard as little rocks, but the first the vines have produced nevertheless. Will they make it to fully ripe before first frost? The next few weeks will tell.