Thrums Runner

Day 102: The "seed" of this project was a handful of 6-foot long thrums in light blue and lime green, enough to use (doubled) as warp for slightly more than half the width of the piece. I supplemented the warp with shuttle leftovers and end-of-cone/dye lot remains in lavender and white, and then threw in some darker blue for accents. In the end, I had enough to make either two placemats or one runner using shorter thrums for the weft, zanshiori-style. I opted for a runner or, if push comes to shove, a piece of fabric which could be used to make a shopping bag. The finished dimensions are 34.5" x 12" raw, which will shrink to roughly 30" x 11" after being brutalized in the washer and dryer. The zanshiori style really appeals to my thrifty nature, and while I was working on this piece, I finished up the warp on my floor loom, so now I have another batch of thrums to put on the rigid heddle. I call it "half-lifing," working with leftovers until they're too short to use for anything else.

Aurora Borealis

Day 101: It finally happened, that rare coincidence of a celestial event and clear skies in the Pacific Northwest! The aurorae did not appear Tuesday night as anything more than a faint red glow which my current camera could not capture on any available setting, and Tuesday's display was supposed to be the strongest. Consequently, I almost didn't bother to check Wednesday night, but then I said to myself, "Well, ya never know." And this was what I saw. I had had the foresight to drag out my older camera (the one which no longer talks directly to the computer by a cable, necessitating use of an SD card reader), and charged up a battery. After checking the EXIF information on a previous batch of aurora photos, I set the exposure ISO 200, f2.7, and 15 seconds (the maximum the camera will allow). Any higher ISO produces a very grainy image with that particular camera. The show lasted about half an hour, gradually fading to pale green. A subsequent check in the wee hours showed nothing but stars, and I crawled back under the electric blanket, snuggled up to the nice, warm cat and caught another hour's sleep.

Try, Try Again

Day 100: "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." Those seem to be the words to live by when warping a Leksand loom. The bag clips rescued my last band in the end, but what I really need to figure out is how to put a warp on with even tension which can be maintained through the weaving process. I decided to experiment with bag clips in place of choke ties, and as I wound on, I used them to move any slack in the warp toward the cloth roller. This is not a long warp by any means, but neither is it the minimum the loom can accommodate. I butted the loom up against a card table with a peg on the far side, effectively doubling the length to give myself roughly 9-10 feet of workable warp using seven pattern threads for the design. The pattern threads are where the slack comes in, so we'll see how it goes.

Not a Kitty Place!

Day 99: I heard the creaking of a cupboard door, indicating that Somebody was looking for food in all the usual locations. Food? He's been known to drag out crackers (a favourite), but he'll settle for a stale granola bar if that's all he can find. I laid my work aside and went to retrieve the Cat. The cupboard above the counter was undisturbed, but then I noticed that the righthand door above the washing machine was slightly ajar. I hadn't heard him jump down, and that was suspicious in and of itself. I peered into the dark space and was met with a returning stare. He knew he was in trouble. "Oh, that is NOT a kitty place!" I said. How he gets in there is nothing short of a contortionist's best performance. The washer only gives him three or four inches to stand on because the cupboard is deep, but somehow, he manages to get the door open, and then in a remarkable display of thigh strength, launches himself upward and over bread pans, a recipe box, a flour sifter, a butter dish and other various cookware without knocking anything off. Getting him out is another story entirely. He doesn't want to jump all the way to the floor, and knows better than to try to lower himself down onto the slick washer, so I have to offer him my shoulder, and then pull his hindquarters out. I guess I'll just have to keep performing cat extractions for now, because the wood is too hard for me to drill. At least there was nothing in there he could eat.

Crewelwork

Day 98: It recently occurred to me that there was one type of needlework I had not discussed in my posts other than a casual mention of it being among the various crafts I do. There's a reason for that, namely that I don't do it any more, not because I didn't enjoy it, but because the particular type of yarn it requires is no longer produced (or not by any recognizable manufacturer). This is crewelwork, a type of embroidery which uses 3-ply wool in the same manner you'd use regular embroidery floss. Like floss, it could be divided so that one or two strands could be used at the stitcher's discretion to create finer lines, smaller embellishments and more intricate blending. The wool disappeared from the market 25-30 years ago, and at the time, I thought it just wasn't being carried by any of the shops I visited (this was well before the internet, mind you). Needlepoint yarn (an entirely different product) is available even today, but the three-strand crewel wool simply vanished. Today, you can pick it up second-hand on websites such as Etsy and eBay, but you're taking a chance with respect to moth-chewed strands or worse, moth eggs. Strangely, these two pieces (the only ones I still own) have never been bothered by bugs. Truly, the loss of the wool was a crewel twist of fate for those of us who enjoyed the art.

Checked Off

Day 97: This band was another one of those interminable projects. I wove it on my Leksand loom, and struggled with warp tension almost from the start. I've tried several different warping systems, have changed the loom's rollers and brakes around to achieve a different angle on the warp, have tried using the equivalent of "angel wings"...in short, I've tried everything I know to try, and I still have warp tension issues nine times out of ten when I'm weaving more than two yards, three at the very most if the band is narrow. I've analyzed every aspect, and have been unable to figure out why the issue occurs, but in any event, end-of-the-year meant I was going to dedicate myself to finishing "hanging" projects, and this was one of them. It measures 150 inches in length and about 1 1/4" wide. I used 16/2 cotton for the ground, 10/2 for the pattern and coloured threads. More to the point, it's done, and I don't have to think about it any more.

Record Keeping

Day 96: As a young weaver...that would have been shortly after the mass extinction event which wiped dinosaurs off the face of the planet...as a young weaver, I didn't see the value of keeping a record of what I wove. Indeed, I didn't think about it at all. Later, I began keeping samples of things I'd woven with new patterns or new threads, but even so, I was not keeping track of everything I wove. If I used a rigid heddle loom, I didn't bother at all. Consequently, I do not have a full record of 50+ years of weaving, but I'm a bit more diligent now than before, and I try to make a card for each weaving, even if it doesn't include a sample. There have been many times when I knew my files didn't include notes for a project telling me how many ends I'd threaded, what sett I'd used, what shrinkage had occurred when the piece was wet-finished, and I'd have to start from scratch, calculating for width and length of a warp. Hindsight, they say, is clearer than foresight, and had I known then what I know now, I would have kept better records. It just takes a minute to weave that little extra bit, maybe not even the full width of a warp, and to put all the pertinent information on a 3 x 5 card with notes like, "Boring pattern!" or "Should have used a wider sett." We learn from experience, to be sure, but when possible, I strongly suggest backing it up with a hard copy.

Bob-bob-bobbin Along

Day 95: This was the part about weaving with boat shuttles which I thought was going to drive me crazy: changing bobbins. I had stick shuttles down to a fine science. Given the width of my project, I could calculate the number of wraps it would take to complete it, and in the case of hand towels and placemats, I could usually wind enough for a whole one onto a single shuttle. Bobbins don't hold nearly as much, and of course there's no way to know how much you've wound onto one unless you're very good with a gram scale and mathematics. Also, having to change them out often seemed to me that it was going to be an enormous pain in the neck, but as it turns out, it goes quite neatly. Fortunately, I have a bobbin winder for loading them with thread, and I can do a pretty fair imitation of a level-winder if I pay attention to what I'm doing. You still need a lot of them, but with a dozen, I'm like the red-red robin, just bob-bob-bobbin along.

Second Memory Wreath Block

Day 94: From the onset, I decided I was not going to push to complete a 12-block Memory Wreath lap quilt in a particular time frame. Rather, I'll work on it when the mood strikes me. I completed this second block yesterday and already had the pieces cut for a third. I glue-basted them to the paper forms this morning, and have started stitching the large triangles to the center. The unifying factors in this semi-scrappy quilt are the white bits and the dark green outer triangles. The centers will lean strongly toward green, and the interior triangles will be in two shades of a colour also represented in the center. Here, I chose aqua to be my "B" colour. The third block picks up yellow/gold for "B." This design doesn't stitch together quite as easily as Ring Cycles did, but it doesn't present any major issues with assembly.

Max Goes Home

Day 93: For all of having enjoyed the quiet, smooth operation of a countermarch loom, the time has come for Max to end his stay here, and go home to daddy. When Daisy arrived, I discovered why weaving on Max had been harder for me. Daisy's breast beam is a full two inches lower, and although I've enjoyed having more space in which to work, Max is significantly deeper between the breast beam and the shafts. I am a small person. No, that's an understatement. I am a very small person, and consequently, when I sat at Max, I had to keep my elbows raised to pass the shuttle. Likewise, I found myself stretching too far forward as I tried to squeeze one more motif in before advancing the warp, and that action taxed my back. While I had originally intended to keep Max, working with Daisy convinced me that he needed to be returned to my weaving partner Ed who, at 6' 4" has no problems with either height or reach. I finished the eighth placemat last night (wait...I thought I'd warped for six?), and today worked the little sample for my weaving files. That said, I'll miss you, Max. We had some good weaves in your short tenure here.

Zanshiori

Day 92: Anyone who weaves a lot eventually winds up with a collection of thrums, i.e., those long bits of thread referred to as "loom waste." Since I am thrifty and can't bear to throw them away, they go through various stages as I put them to best use. If they're long enough, they go on a rigid heddle loom or an inkle loom as a short warp, or they can be card-woven. If they're short, they get tied together and rolled up in balls until I've accumulated a sufficient amount for a zanshiori project. What's zanshiori? Literally translated, it means "a weaving made from waste thread." That's pretty definitive! Similar in philopsophy to other Japanese "waste not, want not" methods like boro, the idea is to use what you have to make something useful or to extend its usable life. The flaws and imperfections in the resulting pieces add to their character.

I've been using a lot of blues and greens lately, and my thrums jar was getting full. Since Daisy has a bowed midsection in her warp beam, I have to leave the raddle in place after winding on. This means her "loom waste" is about a foot longer than usual. After taking my last project off, I was left with a handful of thrums two yards in length, ideal for making the center section of a runner. I doubled them for visual interest, and flanked them on either side with leftover end-of-cone, end-of-dye-lot bits for stripes, using shorter thrums knotted together as weft. The sticky-uppy knots will fuzz out over repeated washings to become cute, random textural nubbins of personality in the finished piece.

Hellebore

Day 91: When a plant is advertised as having "black flowers," it's advisable to take that description with a healthy grain of salt. "Black" in the plant world is the darkest shade of blue or red which can be achieved genetically, and nursery photos likely have been taken of specimens in optimum growing conditions, and may even have been enhanced to emphasize the dark hue. Soil pH can play a strong role in maintaining the "blackness" of a variety, as can the mineral content. The most striking example of that phenomenon in my personal experience has been with the iris called "Superstition." The first few years after I had planted it, its deep purple blooms were as black as I could have desired, but iris tubers are notoriously hard to weed, I eventually dug it up, separated the roots and moved them to a new location. When it flowered the following year, the blossoms were a dark mahogany red! When I realized what was going on, I moved it to a new spot again. It was much happier there, and now produces flowers as dark as those it first bore. My "black" Hellebores are another example. For the first few years, they were as dramatically "black" as the photos in the nursery catalog. As they have depleted some nutrient in the soil, they've faded to purplish-red.

Morning Walk

Day 90: I do not like walking along the highway. I stopped taking a daily constitutional two years ago after three close encounters with careless drivers, but now my favourite places to hike are inaccessible for one reason or another (closed down, full of ticks, too far to drive, too many people), so I've become desperate. I don't go far. Half a mile up, half a mile back in 15 minutes, putting a good, solid definition to "brisk" in my book. This has to be squeezed in while the Mischievous Monster is having a cat nap as well, hence the time constraint. This morning's jog-trot was brisk in another sense: chilly, and with a wintry zephyr breezing me along. I thought I was going to beat the masses of land plunderers hauling their ATVs on trailers behind outsized trucks, but I only made it halfway before they began streaming up the highway, blowing gravel into my face. My appreciation of Nature's beauty was somewhat marred by their callous disregard for it, emphasized by a verge littered with beer cans and other trash. It is a mind-set I cannot begin to comprehend, and one which I firmly believe has in part led us to the current state of affairs. Let this, then, be my protest: a brief snapshot of a better world. It's still possible, if we can incline ourselves to care.

It's Towhee Time

Day 89: Spotted Towhees (aka Rufous-sided Towhees) always look like they've either had too much caffeine or that they're just on the verge of a psychotic episode. It's those red eyes. Other birds can fix you with glassy or inquiring pinpoint focus , but nothing says "wild creature" as emphatically as the mad-as-a-March-hare stare of a Towhee. It is Towhee season at my house. One or two hang around in the summer, but as soon as cold weather sets in, the mob shows up to do their backward jump/scratch move as they bring loose seed and bugs up from the tangled grass. They are primarily ground feeders, although they'll occasionally take seed from a tray. I see them scurrying around in the leaf litter at the base of the contorted filbert, scratching for insects in the decaying leaves with their peculiar dance. To go with the mad eyes, their frenetic activity appears to be rooted in nervousness, although it's only normal species behaviour which has served them well in the evolutionary scheme. But the red eyes? Where's the evolutionary advantage in that? Maybe the "I'm just crazy enough to tackle a rhinoceros" look deters predators. I'll just say that I wouldn't want to meet a Towhee in a tantrum, and let it go at that.

The "Awwww" Factor

Day 88: The "awwww" factor is strong in my yard. This little sweetheart saw me come out the back door with the seed can in my hands, and although Dark-eyed Juncos are too timid (with rare exceptions) to land on a human, he seemed to be thinking seriously about it. I hadn't put out food before leaving for town this morning, and an inch of snow on the ground made foraging harder than usual. I filled both feeders with sunflower seeds and "little" seed (a millet mix), which also brought the Towhees out from hiding in the filbert. No matter how depressing world events are, my birdies never fail to put a smile on my face.

Daisy's Primroses

Day 87: I recently discovered an under-appreciated and somewhat obscure collection of miniature overshot patterns in a book called "Weaving Designs" by Bertha Gray Hayes. It is absolutely marvelous! And while the designs may be miniature, they are surprisingly complex. This one is called "Primroses," and the pattern repeats over 34 threads. Likewise, the treadling is a repeat of 34, 68 if you count the green tabby throws between each thread of the purple design. I selected the colours in keeping with the idea of primroses, and if you look very carefully, you will see yellow warp threads interspersed at strategic locations, i.e., at the centers of the design elements. That said, this is the back side of the overshot as it is shown in the book. I don't always read the instructions as carefully as I should, and consequently, I'm treadling it upside-down, having read the tie-up "inside out" (black squares vs. white squares). Nevertheless, it's pretty any way you look at it.

Daisy's First Project

Day 86: Daisy's first project is off the loom! All three towels were made on the same Finnish Twill threading. The two-tone blue towel repeats the pattern throughout. The second has tabby weft stripes separated by white pattern repeats. For the third, I thought I'd experiment with weaving the twill as an overshot, doubling each pattern throw. It's my favourite! And because she performed so nicely on her trial run, Daisy received a reward: brand-new inserted-eye heddles, 174 on each of four shafts. Next up is another overshot, and if you've been following along for any length of time, you may recall that overshot and summer-and-winter are my preferred weave structures. Managing two boat shuttles turned out to be easier than I'd thought.

Solving the Tension Issue

Day 85: A Leksand loom is not the easiest thing to warp with even tension due to the fact that the threads go from the roller, wrap around the posts, pass through a rigid heddle, go over a separator or through string heddles before being attached to the cloth roller. I've tried several different methods, but even using the best of them, I still wind up with major tension issues. We're talking random threads sagging by inches, not just a few which aren't tight enough. Well, I finally hit on a solution. Every time I advance the warp, I loosen the warp roller and work the slack back toward it until I have even tension all the way across, then snap on a couple of bag clips...yep, the kind you use to close the potato chip sack...before winding the warp back on with a few twists in it to hold the threads securely against the roller. I use two clips for added security, and it's working perfectly.

Little Gold Crabapples

Day 84: Not far from one of the places I park when hiking in the Cowlitz Wildlife area near Mossyrock Dam, I noticed branches overhanging the road, heavily laden with some kind of yellow fruit. Curiosity got the better of me, so I pulled over and got out to take pictures, thinking I'd try to identify the tree when I got home. As soon as I zoomed in, I said, "Crabapples! Little gold crabapples!" and then confirmed it by picking up a mushy one from where it had fallen to the ground. The ones out of reach may still have been firm. I had no way to find out, but I'm thinking that next fall when they're in their prime, I might come back with a long-armed grabber to harvest enough of them to make pickled crabapples. These are just bite-sized!

Nature Reclaims

Day 83: Ma Nature does her best to clean up the mess we humans are making, but we are giving her too much to handle in a short span of time. For whatever reason, this car was abandoned in what was once a farm field, and is now a "natural area" protected by Cowlitz Wildlife. A forest has grown up around it: tangled salmonberry vines and big-leaf maples, scrubby alders, patchwork blankets of moss and fern and piggyback plant. It's always damp here, and some day, even the rusted framework of this old car will be reclaimed by the process of decay. But how much can we ask Nature to absorb before she rebels and becomes outright unfriendly toward our presence? For now, she is merely annoyed with us, and reprimands us with storms and temperature extremes, warnings that if we keep this up, she may get really, really angry.

Button-down Elf Cup

Day 82: One short section of trail in the Cowlitz Wildlife Area near Mossyrock Dam is a favourite with me because it nearly always produces something of interest, probably because the dominant tree is Big-leaf Maple rather than the Doug-firs I usually find myself among. Scarlet Elf Cup (Sarcoscypha coccinea) is easy to identify: a salmon pink/red cup with a whitish tomentum (fuzz) on the outer surface. Typically, it fruits in the cooler months, and grows on decaying wood. This specimen appeared to be "buttoned" to its substrate, and gave me a chuckle only another mycophile can appreciate. We take our amusements where we find them, and Ma Nature can be quite a humourist at times. Fungus with a belly-button! Whodathunkit?

At Last: Plagiothecium Undulatum

Day 81: And a happy New Year it is, because I finally identified Plagiothecium undulatum (Waved Silkmoss). It's been troubling me for at least a decade. As long as I was going after Chinese for my traditional New Year's Eve dinner and the weather was clear, albeit nippy, I decided to take a walk on my favourite Cowlitz Wildlife Area trail near Mossyrock before going to the restaurant. There were several old maples to crawl over, and a few to duck under, victims of a combination of heavy rain and winds. Many of my landmarks were no longer upright, and the trail was much more open and bright due to the decrease in canopy. However, Plagiothecium has always had a window on the sun, brief at times to be sure, but there it was in all its glory on its stump, that pale yellowish green taunting me again. I had not thought about it before I left home, so was stuck without a hand lens, and that meant it was time to get up close and personal. I did the best I could, glasses off and the moss held within an inch of my eye. That was sufficient to determine the shape of the leaves. Also missing from my bare-minimum pack was a test tube, so I did not bring a sample home. As I said, I hadn't really thought about identifying moss when I left the house. In any event, I gathered enough information to make an ID with roughly 85% confidence. Bryophytes are not my "thing," so I reserve the right to be wrong, and I won't be too ashamed to admit it if someone corrects me. That's how we learn.