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.

Consult the Strawberry Book

Day 61: I got a very early start with horticulture when at age two, I was introduced to the "Strawberry Book" by my dad. It became known in the family as such because one time when no one was looking, I took a crayon to the line drawing of a strawberry (my favourite of the illustrations). I was firmly chastised for the error of my ways, and thereafter was only allowed to peruse the Strawberry Book with supervision. The book passed to me when I reached adulthood, and despite its dated nature, has still proved to be a valuable resource for my horticultural experiments. Some things never change, like the fact that gooseberries can be propagated by soil layering (purportedly "easily," although that remains to be demonstrated). It was to the Strawberry Book that I returned when my weaving partner Ed bought property and wanted to begin putting in a garden. He so loves my gooseberry jam that he asked me for starts from my plants. After the twigs had lost their leaves, I scraped off the harder outer tissue to expose the cambium layer, treated the wounds with rooting hormone, staked the twigs down and covered them with soil, essentially the same method I used to propagate from my contorted filbert. Gooseberries certainly won't be as challenging as that was!

Blah But Beautiful

Day 363: Blah Coral (Ramaria acrisiccescens) is no mushroom hunter's idea of a prize, not by a long shot. The common name tells you all you need to know about its desirability as a foodstuff. Nevertheless, the corals present (in my opinion) one of the most photogenic growth structures in the fungal kingdom. They are out in abundance presently, poking their spires up through moss and leaves, giving the forest a brush of sea-floor artistry and making one wonder if the dryads have "gone mermaid" for a season. So much forest life depends on fungus. In the macroscopic view, animals and insects consume them, and they aid the decomposition process. From the microscopic point, vast swaths of mycorrhizae extend beneath the soil surface, breaking down materials into forms which can be utilized by plants of all sorts. Some plants (the mycoheterotrophs) cannot exist without a fungal partner. Blah Coral may not have any gustatory appeal, but it and its fungal kin are vital to the health of the forest.

Textbook Specimen

Day 361: During our mushroom foray yesterday, I showed Ed a few of the other species I can recognize easily, and elaborated on what field identification points I was using to make my determination. He is anxious to learn about mushrooms, so of course the first lesson I gave was this: "Never eat a mushroom if you're not 110% sure of your identification." There were a lot of unknowns along the trail, but also Russulas of different colours and good ol' Lobsters, which gave me the opportunity to explain why I don't eat them; to wit, Lobster is a fungal overgrowth which largely occurs on Russulas, and you don't know which Russula may lie beneath the Lobster's bright orange coating. Some Russulas can cause severe gastric distress, so I avoid Lobster entirely. Then as we walked along, we suddenly came into a patch some 50' in diameter which was heavily populated with huge Amanita muscarias, some with flattened caps as large as dinner plates. They were the only ones we'd seen on the entire hike, and included this textbook-perfect specimen. I took the opportunity to expand Ed's education on field points, but also to explain that some mushroom toxins (particularly amanitotoxins) linger forever in the liver, continuing to damage the organ beyond the toxins' immediate effects. That said, there is no 'shroom so photogenic as this species, so I hunt them every year...with my camera.

Ed Goes Mushrooming

Day 360: My weaving friend Ed came up for a visit, and suggested that we could go for a hike today. I had several options to suggest, and after we'd narrowed it down to three, I said, "Okay, would you rather go for a longer hike or go mushrooming?" but then it occurred to me that we could do both fairly easily. We started with the longer walk, picking up a few chanterelles on the way. I led him down a spur on the way back to the car, thinking (as I had done with Arnie in the same area) that we could connect with another trail to take us back to parking. We were talking as we walked, and went right past the short leg where we should have turned, kept going for another mile or so until agreeing that turning back might be preferable to going on. A two-mile plan morphed into a 4-5 mile actuality, but at least we had a good start on mushrooms in the "perhaps bag." It was a good thing we'd found them there, because the second spot only yielded up about half a dozen more, although what we'd gathered was plenty to make a good lunchtime soup for both of us. It was Ed's first mushrooming experience, and a delightful day all around.

Jam Day

Day 133: I know someone who is going to be very happy to see this. Yes, I've turned my weaving partner Ed into a gooseberry jam addict. Today I made 16 half-pints (and leftovers) from the berries I harvested last June. Since the ripening period spans two weeks or more,  I picked them every day, topping and tailing each batch and freezing them. At the end of the season, I had ten cups ready to process into jam. Of course by that time, hot weather had moved in to stay, and no one likes to toil at the stove when it's hot outside, and in any event, they weren't going anywhere. Winter is a good time for this chore! As usual, I got up long before the sun and had the first five cups on the hob by 7 AM. I was done with both batches by 9:30. I also found some of last year's rhubarb in the freezer, so later today, I'll make some rhubarb bread to get a head start on spring.

The Weaving Weekend

Day 128: The photo is entirely irrelevant to the subject matter of this post, but it is already late in the day and I am delightedly worn out. I have had a tendency to forget that my friend Ed, although an accomplished band-weaver, has never woven on a shafted loom. After refinishing Max, he came into possession of an eight-shaft Bergman, and Max came to live at my house without Ed having even threaded a heddle. Meanwhile, Ed set to work refurbishing the eight-shaft and finally reached the point where he was ready to weave. He read books. He watched videos. He asked questions, both of me and of members in an assortment of weaving groups, but Friday evening, I suggested that he come up for the weekend for a "weaving intensive" designed to acquaint him with the process of dressing a loom with warp, telling him that there was no better way of learning than "hands on." He arrived yesterday afternoon, and we immediately set to work loading a warp I had pre-measured in a heavy cotton suitable for placemats. With only a short break for dinner, the warping process was complete by 10 PM, well past either of our normal bedtimes. Today, even before breakfast, he began the actual weaving. I was pleased to see that his experience band-weaving gave him good control over the selvedges, one of the more difficult weaving skills to truly master. By the time he left, he had roughly nine inches of a nice twill completed. He's taken my table loom home with him so he can do his "homework," i.e., completing at least two placemats. For me, it was absolutely wonderful to have a student who was quick to grasp concepts, and to take to weaving like a fish to water even if I am ready for a good, solid nap.