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.

Same Threading As Overshot

Day 80: When I put this initial warp on Daisy, I was planning to make two identical towels in a Finnish Twill, using a darker blue for the weft (inset, top right). I liked the way it turned out, but as I was doing the hemstitching on the nether end, my mind was working on possible variations. For the next towel, I alternated with bands of plain weave in blue changing to white for a twill section (inset, top left). When I finished that towel, I saw that I had quite a bit of warp left, and a thought was growing in the back of my mind. What if I wove it as an overshot, repeating each pattern throw twice? What's the worst that can happen? I'd have to pick it back, and that's easy enough to do. After weaving about a third of a repeat, I knew I was going to like it. What you see here is the same treadling as the narrow white band, except that each pattern throw is repeated, with tabby between...the "extended version," if you will. As experiments go, this one was a smashing success.

Lenticulars and Snow

Day 79: The Mountain is once again clad in white, the rugged, stony spines of ridges and outcrops now hidden from view. For the last several years, each summer has exposed more of the bare bones as glaciers not only recede but become thinner. It does my heart good to see snow covering naked rock now, although I know that even a record snowfall would not build the glaciers back to their former status. Glacier-building is a long process, not something which can occur to any great extent in a single season. Lenticular clouds such as these approaching the Mountain from the south often presage a change in the weather, although in this case, it was not immediately to come. The photo was taken yesterday. This morning, the sky is clear, save for a few barely discernible wisps of high-altitude cloud.

Autumn Oranges, Quilting Done!

Day 78: This is a "for the record" post. I finished the quilting of "Autumn Oranges" this morning despite multiple interruptions. I began this phase of its journey on November 7 as close as I can tell, meaning that I completed the hand-stitching in just under 8 weeks. There's a reason ladies used to get together for quilting bees, half a dozen women working side-by-side on a single quilt. Nobody in their right mind would try to stitch a whole quilt by themselves. This year alone, I've made two fully hand-stitched quilts, plus a hand-stitched (EPP) quilt top (not yet backed and batted), as well as finishing up this one. I still have to apply the binding, machine-stitching it to the front, but hand-sewing it on the back. That should take 7-10 days. For now, the quilting frame has gone back into the closet until such time as I can make a run to Ben Franklin after something to back it with. Meanwhile, I'll be working on "Memory Wreath," another EPP quilt (i.e., fully hand-sewn, but smaller).

Two Shuttle Adventure

Day 77: A couple of days ago, I told Ed, "It feels like I've known Daisy all my life, and we've just got back together again." I think this is due in part to the fact that she's smaller...a "me-sized" loom...not just in width but in height. And although she seems dainty in ways, she's strong and reliable when it comes down to it. I am comfortable with her in the manner shared by old friends, and I found myself weaving on her without a thought of this being our introduction to one another. I finished up the first towel yesterday, 30 inches of a fairly simple twill pattern, and as I put in the last throws and finished the hemstitching, it seemed to me that we...or rather, I was ready for a new challenge. To that end, I decided to work with two boat shuttles to get the hang of changing colours before leaping into an overshot project. This means carrying the idle colour up the selvedge, a process which has always required much arm-waving and shoulder stress when working with stick shuttles. I wasn't sure how much of a learning curve there might be when using boat shuttles instead, but as it worked out, it's a lot easier, as well as being kinder to a rebuilt shoulder. Overshot should be the proverbial "piece of cake."

First Memory Wreath Block

Day 76: And in other news, I completed the first block of a Memory Wreath quilt on Christmas Day. Memory Wreath was the pattern I used in the first quilt I ever made, some fifty-plus years ago. I dived in with both feet, totally unaware that it was not a "beginner level" project, but in the end, I have to say that it turned out quite nicely even if some of the meets were less than perfect. I sewed it by machine, as opposed to by hand using English paper piecing as I am doing here, and I have always regretted allowing my husband to talk me out of it when we separated. It was themed around birds. This version will use the same dark green fabric in every block, with the centers and inner triangles in a different colour. Next up, I'll be using aqua prints where I've used red here, picking up a hint of aqua from the center. The quilt will be lap-sized, only 12 blocks, and should come together fairly quickly even though I'm still polishing off old projects as my primary goal.