Vivid Rainbow

Day 208: As rainbows go, this was a pretty good one: a full arc from pasture to river with a secondary and faint tertiary, but it was nothing compared to one I saw in the early 1970s in Enumclaw, WA. My husband and I were bicycling from Seattle and decided to head home after getting caught in a powerful squall. Enumclaw is known for its meteorological events, especially freakishly gusty winds which rip down from Snoqualmie Pass. On that day, the wind wasn't particularly strong, but the squall brought pea-sized hail which is not something you want to be bicycling through, so we had taken shelter at a gas station to wait for it to pass. When the barrage was over, the rainbow appeared, first one band which brightened dramatically, then the secondary developed outside it with its colours reversed. Then the tertiary appeared, a little apart and inside the main arc. A fourth (quaternary) became visible on the opposite side of the arc, and then...yes! We could see the full range of colours in a FIFTH arc (that would be "quinary" in sequence, but is usually referred to as "fifth order"). A five-banger! And did anybody have a camera? Digital photography was not yet a thing, so the only record I have of it is mental, but I count it among the best spectacles of my life, right up there with Comet West which swung by a few years later. Since the Enumclaw event, I've seen "threes" and a few faint "fours," but I think the five-banger was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Weave A Rainbow

Day 185: YouTube often provides me with inspiration for projects, both culinary and craftsy. When I spotted this rainbow pattern, I knew I had to weave it. The draft was not given, so I created one of my own, and am weaving it on my larger rigid heddle loom (tabby, 15 epi with 8/2 cotton, 229 ends). The colour sequence is given at the end of this post. I must have been half asleep when I warped it because I made three mistakes, two of which were fairly easy to fix because they simply involved drawing threads through the wrong slots. The third mistake wasn't as quick to remedy. I had already wound the warp onto the back beam and was halfway through threading it when I came up short by one black and long by an adjacent white, i.e., where there should have been two black and three white, I had one black and four white. To fix it, I had to draw the warp back to the front of the loom, remove the offending thread and install the new one, and then rewind the warp. Fortunately, this did not require re-doing what threading I had already done, and I was able to pick up where I left off. This warp will be enough for a six-foot table runner and one towel, but I like the design so much that I may put a wider version on the floor loom to make another tablecloth. As shown, the pattern pivots on the red/violet stripe and repeats in reverse. It would also be possible to repeat the full sequence from the start. I am using black weft throughout.

Spacers and edges:

White 2, black 2, white 3, black 2, white 2 (plus a white floating selvedge thread on either side)

Rainbow stripes:

Violet 3, blue 3, violet 3

Blue 3, green 3, blue 3

Green 3, yellow 3, green 3

Yellow 3, orange 3, yellow 3

Orange 3, red 3, orange 3

Red 3, violet 3, red 3

Prismatic Light

Day 123: Held up in my father's arms so that I could observe the full moon, I spoke my first word: "Light!" Not "mama" or "dada," mind you, but "Light!" in a revelation of my first leanings toward science. From that moment on, I was fascinated by the phenomenon. As a young child, I played with mirrors, facing them into themselves, trying to get my eyes into a position where I could see around the bend of the infinite tunnel the reflections created. I was captivated by my father's spyglass and the way it brought far things nearer. When I reached elementary-school age, I was given a microscope by my favourite uncle, opening yet another door into a realm I could not otherwise see. However, it was some time later before they discovered that the world visible through my eyes was nothing more than a smear, and at last I was fitted with glasses which gave me the ability to see almost normally. But in the back of my mind was always the question: Do I see what other people see? This of course is a variation on the old "Does steak taste the same to you as it does to me?" puzzle. The fact is, we have no way of knowing how another person perceives sensory input. We can make educated guesses, and we assume that most people share these experiences in the same way, but we don't really know, not really. (Frankly, I don't like steak, so it must not taste the same to me as it does to you.) In any event, I began gathering optics of all sorts for my amusement: magnifiers, lenses, prisms, etc., and to this day, they intrigue me. For example, why does a mirror reflect the distance as a blur to a person who is nearsighted? It is a flat surface like a sheet of paper, but light does not "print" on it like a billboard. There's some fancy physics going on there, and yes, I understand it, although one part of my mind still insists it shouldn't work that way. And light behaves as both particle and wave. Which is it, because it can't be both? And is it really drawn by gravity? Is there some other force at play, something which we lack the mental ability to conceptualize? I imagine right now you're asking, "What got her off on this tangent today?" It was just a rainbow, a simple shattering of white light through the corner of my sprouter tray: ephemeral, intense and beautiful where it lay for a moment on my kitchen counter.

Last Towel

Day 260: Inspired by a project from the Weaving Works, I decided that I should weave a Pride Month towel as the last one in a series using a traditional bird's-eye draft. When I finished it up and advanced the warp, I discovered that there was enough remaining to make a place-mat or possibly even another towel. I'm usually rather generous when I measure warp because "too much" is decidedly preferable to "too little" at the end of a project. In this case, I'd kept the spacing between towels fairly close, gaining an inch or two between each pair. Coupled with the extra warp length, this gave me more than I usually leave for the sample I keep in my weaving file. I decided to use the same rainbow design for the last one. Next up will be a much more complicated "Summer and Winter" lap throw. The warp is already measured and ready to go on the loom.

Rainbow In The Garden

Day 8: Time for a confession, here...yes, I arranged this shot, but when I saw the brilliant colours of the dogwood leaf in proximity to the Lithodora, I couldn't resist the opportunity to capture a rainbow.

Most of the leaves are still hanging on our deciduous trees despite some rather windy conditions of late, the exception being the big-leaf maples which are starting to look weary of carrying their gold. Nearly all of the vine maples (a species with much smaller leaves) took a miss on turning red and went straight from an unenthusiastic yellow to a shopworn brown. The dogwood (a "red" cultivar in my yard) is green but dull and without its summer luster, though a few leaves like this one seem to insist that autumn is for celebrating. I'm sure it will convince its cousins before too long!

A Rainbow For Sande

Day 152: The memorial service for my fishing buddy Sande was held today at his church, and we were fortunate to get through it with power. It was very windy when I drove into town, large branches flying across the roads, traffic signals not working, rain coming down in buckets, barrels and bathtubs, 150' Douglas firs bending almost to the breaking point, and the sky almost black. It had subsided somewhat by the time I left, the sun breaking through a narrow gap just long enough to create a rainbow against the dark clouds. It seemed symbolic, given the circumstances. Is it any wonder that rainbows feature in so many mythologies? They make us look up when we are downcast and dispirited.

Secret Falls Rainbow

Day 135: "Secret Falls" doesn't really have a name, although its stream shows up on the topo map if you know where to look. You'll find it less than fifty feet from the road if you know where to stop, but otherwise you could drive right by without any clue to tell you where this ribbon of water is tucked away. It's at its best in the months of winter and spring, and variously may present the aspect of a freshet or of bizarre figures of ice. Light enters this niche in the forest for only a few minutes of the day. If you're lucky, you may even catch a rainbow.