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.