Day 2

Here I am at the end of the second day of self isolation and not getting nearly as much weaving done as I would have expected.  The rose tea towel is finished and when the bobbin ran out on the hem of the next one, I decided that was enough for one day.

I did achieve one task - I washed all my work jackets and put them away in the cupboard, and put all the makeup away in the bathroom drawer.  The new normal doesn't include formal jackets or makeup every day.

I look out over a park and on the far side is a creek and a walking track.  As we're still allowed out to exercise and it was a beautiful autumn day, I went to check out the creek, here's what I saw while I was out.  I started on the bike path, 

With the creek on the other side

Further up it opens out to a very small lake.  There are usually lots of ducks and moorhens but not so many today.  When I got home I saw in the paper that they had found some dead fish there this morning but there was no sign of them when I was there, probably explains the lack of birds

One of my favourite parts is this small bridge, and the bike riders tend not to go along this track so it's much quieter

On the other side of the bridge there's a very nice patch of bull rushes - I could make some rustic baskets from them although I'm sure I'm not allowed to pick them

At the end of the track, there's another small lake with quite a few ducks, maybe they'd come here because it was cleaner

I managed to get more knitting done and realised that I'm already close to the end of the body.  I do hope that I've got the right size double pointed needles in the stash to finish the sleeves.

When people started stock piling a few weeks back, I decided to plant more lettuce seedlings.  I'm now congratulating myself for this and here's a small basket of fresh (organic) produce from the garden. 

Enough leaves for a salad, the last of the tomatoes and some figs, at least I won't get scurvy.  The fig crop is great this year and the rainbow lorikeets are having a wonderful fig party.  They're welcome to the ones on the top of the tree, just wish they'd leave the ones on the lower branches for me

That's it for today

Helen

Catching up

The choice tonight was to weave in the garage where it’s started to get quite cold, wind a new warp or stay where it’s warm and take the time to catch up with the blog.  Guess what won?

The past couple of months seem to have been particularly busy so this is what’s been happening around here

In the last post I mentioned that I’d been allocated a stall for the annual outdoor market

and if I had written a post just for that outing, the title would have to have been ‘Too good to last’.  On the 2 previous occasions, here and here, we’ve been up the ‘better’ end of the street.  No trams, good cafes, good ice cream shop and kind weather as well.  I guess it was our turn to be up the not so good end of the street at what was more a foot path (sidewalk) festival than a street festival.  For readers not familiar with the workings of a tram system, there are a few points where the trams can reverse and go back down the other side of the track and clearly, when part of the road is closed to trams, they need to reverse somewhere to service the rest of the line.  The reversing point was just at the back of the row of tents, so close in fact that when there was a barrier extending from the back of a tent a couple up from mine, the tram hit it and caused half the tent to collapse.  However the problems started even before the tent collapse.  We had been sent instructions to use a parking area quite close to where the tents were.  We arrived in good time complete with the directions we had been sent, to find a very cross woman, who was just trying to run her business using the same parking area.  We said this was what we had been told to do, waving our instructions and she told us sternly that it wasn’t a legal document and we were not parking there.

Rather than facing the street and being part of the action, our tents faced the footpath and there was a step down to the gutter for anyone who wanted to look more closely. Fortunately  for us, we looked into the church yard. 

There were not a lot of people going past, and we had trams behind us, about a foot from the back of the tent, at very regular intervals. The local shops were very limited and it was just so hot. Surprisingly, I did manage to sell a couple of scarves even though I thought it was far too hot to even think about trying them on.  

At the beginning of the day I had managed to get everything to the tent with assistance from some of the members of the Rotary Club who run the market and had then parked some distance away.  During the day I realised that getting packed up could be an issue as I had brought a few extra things, thinking I would just be able to park outside the tent.  I didn’t want to leave everything unattended in the middle of the road so I took the suitcase full of weaving and my favourite folding table back to the car with some effort. I moved the car a bit closer, and the market gods must have been looking after me as the parking place closest to my tent was vacant when I needed it. Somehow, I managed to get everything else back to the car in just one more trip – but I know I had at least 3 trips worth of stuff to move.  Never underestimate a determined woman who just wants to get home and out of the heat!

I’ve finally finished the white runner, including proper hemstitched hems.Here’s a couple of photos though it’s hard to show the detail well when it’s white on white

I’ve managed quite a bit of sewing, possibly inspired by Polly my new assistant although I now realise that having gone to all the trouble of adjusting her to fit me, I’ve managed to lose enough weight that she’s probably now bigger than I am.

I wrote last post about using the pattern from Burda 3/2016 to make a knit dress, then a woven top.  Since than there have been 3 more knit tops,

all successful

especially the last.  At a distance, it just looks like a repeating design

but up close the little cat faces become obvious,

much to the delight of cat lovers.

I saw some upholstery fabric that spoke to me and managed to draft a jacket pattern from a favourite in my wardrobe.  I’m happy with the result

and can think of other ways to use the pattern as well.

A couple of weeks ago I needed to have a day procedure, nothing drastic and results all good.  It was at least 20 years since my last encounter with the hospital end of the medical system.  I remembered the long wait last time and went prepared with some kumihimo braiding. 

I got some strange looks but just kept on braiding and 5 hours of waiting later I’d done about a metre.  In case you're wondering the design is my kumihimo version of leopard skin, here's a close up

As I was in recovery, I studied the heavy cotton blanket and was able to analyse that most of it was leno,

with what appeared to be a summer and winter border that included the name of the laundry in very long floats.  When I moved on to a critique of the border – floats far too long to withstand the rigors of a hospital laundry – I knew I was just fine.  I even took photos but clearly I was not quite as fine as I thought, because I was sure I took a photo of the other side where the floats were much worse but somehow ended up with this one

of the better side.

Apart from all that I've been to the April and May Hawthorn Makers Markets with reasonable sales.  There's some renovation going on near our usual spot.  Hopefully by the time winter comes the second set of doors will be finished and it will be a warmer inside

My tea towel stock has been replenished with the Neutrals with a touch of spice range finished

as well as a set in blue tones, using every blue, green and aqua yarn in the stash

I still have lorikeets in my garden, when I looked they were playing close attention to the lacrosse game on the oval

I'm off to wind a new warp

Helen

They’ve come for the towels!

I've written in previous posts I had been inspired by the rainbow lorikeets in my garden

to make some plaid towels and that I’d made the warp just before I started working on my coat for the sheep show.

Finally the loom was empty and it was time for the warp to fly off the footstool

and onto the loom.  Threading for a 2/2 twill was easy and a slightly looser sett  - 20 epi – for the thicker yarn and 24 epi for the 8/2 performed very well.

In no time weaving was under way

and a few days before the September market, I made the sensible decision to weave in a couple of sticks and cut off the finished towels.  This gave me enough time to hem and wet finish them properly. 

They were even completely dry by the day of the market, not slightly damp this time.

I gave them pride of place at the front of the stall

and sold three of the six as well as a scarf, so a good day at the market.  I’ve finished the last 2 towels so will have enough for the next market on October  7.

Unfortunately one of the towels had a mistake in the plaid, maybe someone from another clan came in and wove some while I wasn’t watching.  Even though the drying qualities were not affected at all, I didn’t want to sell it so hung it on the oven door and started to use it.

I was washing some dishes a couple of days ago and heard a commotion outside the window.  The rainbow lorikeets who haven’t been round much in the cold weather were back .  There were 8 on the fence involved in some sort of pecking order game to sit on the highest part of the fence and they all kept changing position and moving further up the fence.

My instant reaction was ‘they’ve come for the towels’ but even though I waved the towel at them, they weren’t at all interested.  I think they just wanted me to run out and put more water in the bird bath and as they were the source of my inspiration,

it was the least I could do for them

That's it for now

Helen

Projects

The theme for this year’s Geelong Scarf Festival was ‘Life on the Land’.

My first entry was My Grandmothers Meat Safe. 

Years ago there was a bad storm in my grandmother’s neighbourhood and my parents who were away at the time asked me to check on her.  I told them she would be fine as she was a resilient woman but went anyway.  As I expected she was just fine and told me that it wasn’t nearly as bad as the 1925 Balranald tornado.  

Apparently she could see the storm coming and gathered her young family into the house and started to wash the dishes in a bowl on the table. The storm hit and the chimney collapsed through the ceiling leaving her with a bowl of broken china, bricks and soot.  Then she said ’we never did find the meatsafe’.  Clearly it had been caught up in the storm and was never seen again, probably taking the meat for the evening meal with it.  This was before refrigeration when food was stored in a mesh sided cupboard often covered with wet cloth strips in an attempt to keep the food cool.  The mesh of the canvas weave in the scarf is for the mesh sided meat safe.

The second entry was a man’s scarf using eco dyed yarns from Charly at Ixchel in a Fibonacci inspired block twill.  The colours reminded me of burnt paddocks

The other entry was a fancy twill in fine cotton, hand dyed in blue, similar to a another scarf I'd made in thicker cotton that matured in the stash for a very long time

Although the official opening was last week and the scarf of the year was announced, there have been no further updates and I’d really like to see something of this year’s entries

We just had a long weekend and the next ‘under wraps’ project – for the Sheep Show this time – is under way.  It will be under wraps for a while, but I can say that I remembered with painful clarity the problems I had last year running out of warp.  I bought yarn on Tuesday and it was a little thicker than my original plan.  I redid the calculations, thought for a moment that it would probably be OK, remembered last year and made another trip to the yarn shop on a wet afternoon to buy some more.  I managed to make a wide warp of fine yarn, about 1000 ends, and get the draft planned.  It’s now wound on and I’m half way across with the threading, seemingly with no errors - I do hope there are enough heddles.  It’s a bit cold in the garage where the Toika loom lives but at the last market I had enough sense to buy a pair of fingerless gloves, they’re working a treat, thanks Monnie.

Colours changed to maintain anonymity but they also match the warp, even in real life.

There’s a bird bath outside my kitchen window and if I don’t keep it filled with water the birds gather on the fence outside until I run out and fill it up.  Nothing works faster on me than 2 rainbow lorikeets, one sitting on the fence and one on the rim looking pathetically into the empty bird bath. These ones are probably holding a meeting to see if they can get it filled

As I was admiring them one day

they turned into my next project – tartan tea towels in lorikeet colours.  I had most of the colours in the stash but needed the right green for their bodies.  None of the colours on my UKI or Brassard sample cards was right.  There was a colour on the Webs website that looked better, but I was worried that the yarn in the hand and the colour on the monitor might not be the same.  On my previously mentioned trip to the yarn shop there was a yarn, a combination probably of a slub and a 20/2 that looked just right.  I bought one cone but realised that I needed more so another good excuse for the second trip.  I’ve been to the ‘Tartan Designer’ site and while there should be a wrapping, yarns going over a peg on the warping mill are almost the same.

I just might have wound that warp instead of working on the Sheep Show project. I had worked out the colours by looking at the pictures and estimating 50% green, 50% other colours and more orange and blue than yellow, lime and rose.  The balance worked and when I saw my finished warp chains, I thought they might just get up and fly away. 

Back to the Sheep Show warp

Helen