Golly Gee. Yikes.

Did I say I am going home in four weeks minus a few days? No, it's three weeks minus a few days. I just noticed it this morning. And in that time I have to complete a toddler blanket. And file my taxes.

The blanket is progressing. I like the pattern, but it's quite big and I have to stand back to see it.

I like the weft, too. I wasn't sure where it came from but I now suspect it might have been one of Mom's handspun projects, undyed natural cream with some natural grays in two ply, and then plant-dyed. There are a lot of color patches appearing, but the values don't vary as much as the top picture. 

And occasionally there are these beautiful rust-orange flecks. I love it.

The problem is, I've woven with five out of the nine balls I own and got 55.5cm, so I assume with all nine I would get around 99.9cm, and I wanted at the very least 105cm but preferably 110-115cm. So I might have to weave a second one with the darker brown in the sample, which is a commercial knitting yarn; it has silk, is lighter and softer than the slightly straw-like feel of the current weft, but I really wanted the yellower gray. I suspected this might be the case so I have enough warp for two, but I have to put a rush on. As usual.

We Return to Normal Broadcast

Ben went back to work yesterday after a three-week break. We didn't do much on account of Ben's tennis elbow, (cleared by the physiotherapist yesterday), concentrating on our diet, (on-going), and my twisted-bruised-but-not-broken ankle, (98% good.) The ankle was an annoying one; I could walk on it right after I twisted it, but the foot was so swollen I couldn't fit it into a shoe or sandal for two weeks. At the drawing class Saturday I warned Ronette that a shoe might come off, but I managed to keep it on.

We changed our diet and portions surprisingly painlessly over the three weeks, and feel pleased with ourselves. In fact, reducing the portions was so easy we continue to be surprised how little food we ate over three weeks without feeling hungry. And there were always fruits or tomatoes in the bowl. Ben exercised regularly and new pairs of pants he got in late November now look too big. And his blood sugar level is back to not exactly where it was a year ago, but slightly better!   

I often "dilute" my cooking with relatively undetectable ingredients. For example, I use large amounts of eggplants and zucchinis in meatloaves and pasta dishes, oatmeal instead of flour, and chopped up leaves (cabbages are best) in stews, soups and sauces. I also started keeping in the fridge this soy bean concoction, (soak, cook with maybe a cabbage leaf, and blitz with some of the liquid,) which works surprisingly well where I would have wanted butter and flour or cream before. Using more produce tastes better, but has also reduced our starch intake. Ben started playing around with his own new tricks in a similar vein, and our meals don't feel so heavy. And as a nice surprise, we're using so much less dish detergent with reduced use of fats.

We use a lot of vinegar, but this year with the bumper crop of plums, I've put plums in just about everything instead: salads, pork and chicken dishes, even in our sorbet and shakes for an intense sweet-and-sour kick. And I made a lot of "sorbet" - in quotes because I only cut up plums, add other cut fruits or berries, add lemon, lime or orange juice if there is not enough liquid, blitz with a stick mixer, freeze, and mix once or twice if necessary. This is how I survived the heatwave. No sugar, but once I added a little bit of honey, and that gave a wonderful aroma.

I'm a little worried about keeping up this way of eating now that we are back to normal life. I worry Ben will slip into rushed-sandwich-no-exercise routine; already he is not on his machine as much. But the amount of weight and fat he lost must boost his energy level, (he's so laid back I can't tell from the outside,) and I'm hoping it is going to keep him moving. Me, I started exercising until the ankle incident, and am slightly afraid to get back into the routine. I have, though, been doing a lot of housework since the weekend and mixing it up with extra going up/down the stairs and some arm stuff.  

I also worry about our eating with the change of the season. We have wonderful fresh produce until around Easter, and then the air starts to cool down, and we start to think about comforting soups and stews and that's when our resolve will be tested.

In case you wonder, Ben still cooks with bacon; that and bonito flakes are his stock bases, but he uses much less and uses a wider variety of veggies and herbs and spices. (He's big on hot spices.) I'm also experimenting with vegetable stock and hope to make my own garam masala and curry paste. We haven't tried to reduce our animal protein, but it has gone down because we don't crave it. But not milk, nor cheese. We have consciously reduced starch and simple grains with portion control, but with added veggies, we haven't felt hungry. We have stopped late night ice cream completely, though, because the fresh fruits have been so fabulous this season. I need to start thinking of winter alternatives, but at this rate, we may not need any.

The magazine I subscribe to have been on the same wavelength as me; they had feature articles on food and supplements, (I quit them some years ago,) two weeks in a row.  

Four weeks from yesterday I shall get on a plane and go home for six weeks. I've started getting more serious about what needs doing before I go. Yesterday I finished my Sketchbook Project sketchbook, (so unexciting I couldn't even bring myself to photograph,) threaded enough of the pink baby blanket so I can finish it this morning and start sampling, and put all my "to do" pieces of papers on the desk to be prioritized this afternoon. I still have to do my tax returns, but with four weeks to go, I can also weave or tidy the garden or tackle super simple sewing projects waiting on the couch.

This happens often; once summer comes and everybody's garden looks fabulous and veggies and fruits growing and our place looks like weedland, I start to look forward to what I hope to do to in the coming autumn/winter. This year I'm almost giddy became I don't have a big projects in the winter, and I've amassed plants, fertilizer and seeds which were supposed to go in this spring when I was defeated by hay fever.

What else was in my oath? Italian: it's been more like ever three or four days rather than every day, but I have not walked away from it, and surprising myself with what I remember from the course in 1995. Yesterday was the days of the week. Today, I think I shall do the months. No progress with Shakespeare; that book is too too heavy.

Annabelle has an easel in her living room where she puts the latest drawing of interest and considers if more work would improve the piece. I have an easel but have never put it up because my house is already filled with my weaving stuff and I guess I've never done serious drawing at home. I had my purple music/weaving-draft stand in my stash room up for some time, and this week I have the pieces I did on Saturday just inside the door so I can see it from the living room and the hallway. This is an interesting process; I can't think of what I can do to improve it, but my drawings collectively, for the first time, have become not just a throwaway play things but something to continue thinking about. 

We've had tremendous rain in the last 24 hours. I love rain, but at this rate parts of Nelson and all over the country may flood again. Which is not a bad thing in part of Canterbury where there've been scrub fires.  But nothing like Australia. Goodness, in Australia, areas about the size of the greater Auckland Region (approx 5000 sq km?) has already burned. I wished we could send even just a wee bit of this rain westward.

Envelope from Julie

My third envelope came from Julie mid-week. There was so much in it I had to give it time to get my head around it.

There were: photos, including three from Edinburgh, (we went there on our honeymoon in 1990 and then again in 2003,) and closeups of plants; lovely threads and a fine woven sample; a box of conté. 

A lovely letter, and more images. My immediate favorites were:

Zebra stripes, which, funnily, I kept thinking were tiger stripes until just a moment ago when I uploaded this photo. It's the kind of patterns we can weave easily if we had a Jacquard, but simplified, I should be able to do a dumbed down version on 16, but then would I like the dumbed down version? The task would be made easier, too, with dyeing before or after weaving, but you know me; for now that feels like cheating. So now I'm thinking can I make stripes deceptively wobbly by using textures? Because I'm not interested in recreating the exact graphics of zebra stripes, but I am interested in weaving wobbly irregular stripes. The clear-cut division or black or white stripes attractive; the expression/nuance in the cloth can be made by varying the stripe width; and 

the colors of these ceramic pieces. Also the similar-but-not-the-same-ness of the angels. There are more vibrant images in the mix that no doubt will come into play as well.

Even the postage sticker is an example of how these things can be done nicely. And I giggled at the blue supermarket plastic bag in the top pic. I used to be and still am fascinated by ordinary items from different places, and make a point of visiting supermarkets and ordinary stationary/bookshops in every country I visit. At once point I had a sizable collection of ordinary pencils and ballpoint pens and Air Mail stickers from different countries; my nephews grew up with toothbrushes and toothpastes from every country we visited/lived in. Globalization takes away the fun of travel, I say. 


Thank you, Julie. much to think about, much to simply enjoy! 

Links to some of the other envelopes can be found at the bottom of this post.

Clueless

I went to Ronette's one-day drawing class today. It was touted as having an emphasis on composition, using pencils and water-soluable pencils and crayons, working on smallish pieces.

Now, I am not totally devoid of ideas when it comes to drawing, but usually in Ronette's class there is a bit of instruction or direction at the start; there was a minimum amount of that. Add the fact I have no idea how to use the water-soluble material, and I don't paint, and I was a newbie in a masterclass. I kept working with color pencils and crayons and then promptly ruining them just dabbing them with water, and after a while I just drew. At the same time I stopped using the sheets with small gesso-ed windows and drew on the full size of the mostly-around-A2 sheets. (I must add, I was getting somewhat used to different ways water color pencils behave.)

And then, during the last break, I spilled water on all of my afternoon work and prepared sheets. What serendipity! Sam said I should take a brush and go over the colors and go outside the lines. And I did, and I liked it. The two drawings on which the water damage was the worst came out the best. I even tried recereating the spill on a third drawing as well. 

The model was young and had a lovely face, particularly attractive eyes. I tried so hard to get her head/face in this one, but couldn't, though I did draw a couple of drawings of her faces, but neither did her any justice.

Duh!

I started threading the pink blanket yesterday. After about 60 ends, I sensed I made a mistake to check. Usually I don't mind fussy threading, and this isn't that fussy, but there was something about this that bothered me, and I didn't know why. So I pulled out the last, oh, 40 following the mistake and walked away.

I felt the sample I made in 2:2 twill last winter, and confirmed 30EPI worked with either of the brown wefts I intend to use. So, what's wrong?

Oh, I was going to have to sleep on it.

In bed, I knew the twill proportion was the key to solving this mystery; it was something about the proportion of the warp thickness vs the weft and how the shape was going to come out, but it was a conundrum.

Well, Duh!!!

When I got up I just knew the three warp ends (natural and two pinks) were supposed to be threaded together! So, even though it has 30EPI, the draft pattern is coming out fatter and squarer as if it's 10EPI.

Duh! Duh! Duh!!

But the threading is so much quicker now, so I forgave me. 

A Summer's Day in Nelson

Two tuis sitting just outside our living room window. (Sorry for the yikesy photo; I was looking right into the afternoon sun.)

Thunder and lightening, and wait for it, wait for it...

Rain, tuis chirping, and neighbors in all direction clapping and cheering!

Plus we put stakes on our tomato plants and did a wee bit of weeding. Plus I enjoyed my new invention - mint tea and honey sorbet. Plus I started working on the Sketchbook Project sketchbook, albeit tentatively. 

 But that was hardly enough rain for my veggie patch. So off I go.

Revisiting the Cashmere Warp

Is it just me, or is it common among weavers that with the passing of weeks, months, or years, one's weaving doesn't appear as tragic as first suspected? I still hold that pieces from the last cashmere warp were not sufficiently interesting for Santa Fe, but on their own, they have their merits. I wove them starting with the far left piece in the December pic and I did a lot of thinking, and rethreading, in the course of one warp, so I'll follow that order here.

The first: best crafted, light-weight and soft, it's a good product. I'm still hoping to weave an achromatic series based on these squares for the local gallery. This piece is going to be a gift to an important relative-by-marriage who was widowed last year; to me, the personable, quiet feel suits her. I'm pleased about the piece in a non-challenging way, but it still does not present close-up interests, and with these sedate colors, it's doesn't check the "bold" requirement.   

Fun. I actually like it, but my frustration shows and it's not as well-woven. Most definitely bolder looking, and with more saturated colors there is scope for further development. I'm not sure about the close-up interest: if I make the weave structure within each block more interesting, will it detract from the longer-distance view? The only way to know appears to be to sample, sample, sample. This is also potentially a gift on my next trip.   

The enigma; the "Do as I say, not as I do" piece; the "opposite of what I tell my mother" piece. I hold, very strongly, that if one wants to show the structure, one must restrain the colors/values/textures, and the structural pattern is what I want to make stand out in the first instance in my weaving. So I made a simple structure.

Perhaps if the two sets of lighter warps on the sides were as saturated as the middle, I would have been less displeased. I so don't like the unplanned, unsophisticated, anything-goes look, (even though in my head I had though I had things pretty well planned, and the color gradation did work well enough,) I'm trying hard to restrain myself from telling you how much in polite company.

Still, there are unintended points of interest, I won't deny that.

And with super careful planning, there may be scope for development, but knowing my control-freak-ness, I think it's better if I did the "unplanned/spontaneous" thing in the warp colors/textures/proportion and threading, and then tried to bring harmony to the cloth with the treadling and weft choice.

Funny how colors I don't usually like worked well in this; it's The Goddess of Weaving tellng me not to be complacent in any aspect. 

This is the draft, and I was livid by the time I wove this so there is so much weft packed into this piece and it weights twice as much as the first piece. I'm going to give this to Dad as he made a comment about how nice a pale blue looked somewhere a year ago, and he never talks about colors and such. And I am most definitely not getting around to weave his ruana in time. I also experimented with wider fringes which totally didn't work.

One of the problems I have with my cashmere pieces is the fringes. I like tight, orderly fringes so I tend to twist them a lot, which works well for my other wools and cottons, but I need to leave more breathing space for cashmere, or else they come out too skinny and hard relative to the woven part of the scarves. This is why I personally prefer hems, but this shouldn't be so hard to resolve. She says, gritting her teeth... 

My fav from this warp was the warp-end swatch,with sufficient close-up interest. In other words, fussy, and not bold. This one looks to me very much like a kimono accessory, and I can't figure out if it's the colors, scale,or the simplicity of the repeat units.

In the course of working with this warp, I realized I have used my best yarns to make visually the least interesting pieces because I've been gun-ho on taking the best advantage of the yarn's softness and lightness; it's been a good marketing strategy, and the galleries sell on this strength. And to not overburden the yarns, I've preferred the gentle four-shaft Jack for these at the cost of more interesting structural patterns. (This was the second time I put cashmere on the 16-shaft in the seven years I've been weaving with cashmere.) But there is scope for so much more experimentation and sampling.So much so my brain almost hurts!

Day 3

Of 2013. Let's see. In two days, among other things:

The cashmere pieces were mended, fringed, washed and pressed. The three scarves are OK as products; at least two will be suitable as gifts when I go home.

I started to read the 70 pages of Introduction and Prefaces to Riverside Shakespeare; I've a long way to go before I get to the plays and I won't be taking the book to Japan. It's amazing how much general information resides in that tome that I guessed existed but paid no attention to in the three and a half years in college; back then I only read the plays on the syllabus and the intro to each play. The reading has been interesting, but the book is heavy so I might have to make myself a beanbag pillow of some kind to hold the book. I am enjoying reading The Assassin's Cloak more; I won't be taking this to Japan, either, but I'm up to January 9 now. I like the "little bit every day" aspect.

I haven't drawn. We haven't gardened. But we've watched some movies, among them, or favorite baseball movie of all times, A League of their Own.

Italian? Well, yes! On New Year's Day, I thought I'd like to learn the names and locations of the 20 regions. Some of the names I knew turned out to be not of regions but of provinces, which are sometimes the same as the famous cities. 19 of the 20 regions are further divided into provinces, which are further divided into comune or municipalities. That's fine, I didn't intend to learn them all. But in 2014, apparently, the number and boundaries of the provinces are changing in a big way, so I'll stop at the regions.

I've been busy locating the regions and their capital cities on the map and saying their names out loud, but the visual approach, color-coding, learning the shapes, has been a gentle way back into studying the language and history than lists of words and phrases. I was surprised I could write down "map of Italy without colors but with regions' names" without thinking, (I studied Italian in 1995 for three or four months,) though I just strung words together and don't know if that is the way a native speaker would say describe it.

Yesterday I realized I wanted to learn the regions first because I wanted to learn about the characteristics of the city states I've read in Renascimento history and novels; I had this romantic notion that the modern political jurisdiction would overlap with the city states boundaries. Well, not exactly. I was also fascinated to read about the diverse dialectic/language variations in the north, (a subject out friend Gino has an abundance of knowledge,) and some of the history lessons from my school days came into use.

The foot is fine; it doesn't hurt and nothing is broken, but it swells if I stand/walk on it for too long. Yesterday it was too swollen to fit into any shoes. Ben thought it looked like a latex glove filled with fluid, and that's exactly how it felt; movement didn't hurt but vibrated. I was hoping it will turn spectacularly purple so I can take a commemorative shot, but this morning, Day 4, the swelling is down, it's not as hot as the previous three days, and looks ever-so-slightly bluer than the other foot. I'll stay off it another day or two, then maybe I can weave on the Jack standing up by the weekend.

I leave for Japan in a month and a day. In that time, I must work on and send off the Sketchbook Project sketchbook (postmark Jan 15), thread (lots of ends) and weave one baby blanket, wet-finish that and another and post the two, and do my tax returns, (2 days work stretched into weeks and weeks of agony time permitting.)  And come up with interesting "packages" of inspiration for Mom and her students.

Meaning, I better go and work on these things pronto. But, oh, what a dry post without a picture. So here's my "garlic" flower. I think it's green onion, or even brown, but I can't remember planting anything but cloves from half a dozen bulbs of garlic and one shallot. I did have brown onion a few weeks ago. It's about as tall as me.

Books and magazines said I should dig up the garlic when the tips of the shoos start to turn brown, but some are too tiny, while some look ready. And, lo, there are brown onions and not shallots! That's what you get from hit-and-miss gardening, but I'm happy because this is the first year I got more than one shoot of garlic from several bulbs. I think I'll keep some still in the ground, though.  

A Day in the Life of Looms 2013

Mine, 1:00 PM, 1/1/2013, Nelson, New Zealand, 41°18 0"S / 173°13'10"E.

RH

Sample Loom: it is not that I dislike the loom nor the warp that this loom has the same warp as it did in 2011, but it must mean I have not done much contemplative weaving in a while. I do vacuum the top of the warp often, in fact.

Klik: Nth sample for the Friendship piece is still on. I have plans for this warp.

Jack: joyweaving.

Thorp: toddler blanket to be.

Rose @ Weaver Rose

Dianne @ Dianne's Loom Talk

Marion @ Atelier 44 -> Atelier VandenBosch

Jane @ Jane Dallaway

Peg @ Weaving a Gem of Life

Dot @ Dot's Fibre to Fabric

Sandra @ Sandra's Loom Blog

Trapunto @ The Straight of the Goods

and Cally @ CALLYBOOKER|BONNYCLAITH

Off to a wonderful, colorful, productive or relaxing, even-tensioned year, everybody!

Well, it's Here.

And as I said, 2013 looks like any old lovely 2012 day, weavers, so we can carry on winding warps, bobbins and pirns, passing shuttles, and contemplate cloths.

I don't know if this is unusual or even worrying, but I sometimes practice/rehearse/revise, um, my "speech", (speech being one or a few sentences not a entire thesis, and I know why I do this.) Sometimes I put myself in hypothetical situations. Sometimes I go over a real life conversation and "re-say" things that should have been said better. Sometimes I say thing out loud so I can physically hear myself to see if I'm saying what I mean, if I'm articulate and correct. Just Saturday morning, I tried to answer an imaginary new acquaintance who knew nothing about weaving or textiles why I weave; I came up with this: "If I didn't weave, I would have been a different person, (living a different life.)" Later that afternoon while weaving my purple piece and feeling giddy with the physical movement, I felt how accurate that statement was.

I haven't done anything on the list today yet; in fact I must reread it as I only remember Italian, Shakespeare, and Healthy. And Dye. But I started reading The Assasin's Cloak first thing this morning, and it was a nice way to start a year. Trust me, the content isn't nearly as horrible or exciting as the title suggests. I know what I'm doing with in Italian today, and I'm going to draw a little bit, too.

But first, I'm off to shoot my looms.