Waiting it out, keeping busy

 I got the warp on, and in fact, both looms are dressed right now.  Arthur is my 40" loom and he's dressed for a parallel threading workshop next month.  I still have to check it for errors but have given all my attention to this summer and winter dish towel warp.

This is the first towel using magenta and bright yellow.

This is the second one using bright yellow and lavender

This is the third one using butter yellow and rose red.  I was suddenly struck by how the pattern is being swallowed up by the color so cut the warp from the shuttles and started to unweave.  With a little time away from the loom I am starting to realize that they are all going to look pretty much the same because of the super-saturated bright yellow.  Deb Menz has said that a little yellow goes a long way, boy and howdy!

It's been a while since Delaney has used her washable marking pens so last Friday I got them out.  She has outgrown the booster seat and for this she preferred to stand at the table.

She holds all of her pens while she's using them, like an artist, so I only give her six or seven at a time.

I think she's showing remarkable control with her mark making, but we'll wait a little while before we do this again.

By the time she was done with her picture she had colored herself as well, a little on her face and the palms of both hands. It washes off quickly but it's a bit of a rodeo.

I finished this sweater for Alexia.  It's so hard to fit someone when you can't measure and try on but I think this will work.  She told me her underarm measurement was 17" which can't be right since she's a skinny 16-year-old kid so she asked her mother to measure her again and said that it's 19".  Ape arms!!  I told her to measure the the arm of the sweater I made for her, from the body to the end of the cuff.  Surprise, surprise - it's 16". I ordered a replacement sweater dryer which will be here tomorrow and will wash it when it gets here.  I expect some size change when I do that.

I had a nice surprise on my walk this morning.  The irrigation district has opened the canal for ranchers to refill their stock ponds.  During the winter it only lasts a couple of days and it brings in all the water fowl, mostly ducks.  This morning a lone goose was crying his heart out, trying to locate his misplaced family.  Hope he finds them soon as he only has a couple more days before this waterway turns back into a dry bed.

Today is February 22, 2021 and I went into quarantine March 11, 2020.  Still no shot, still no vaccine.

Keeping it interesting

My first project for the new oven was a loaf of white bread, recipe from the King Arthur website.  What a difference having an even heat throughout the oven chamber makes.  It was perfect.

The recipe included a step to make the break have a longer shelf life.  It's from Japan and totally new to me, and it worked all the way to the end of the loaf.

I wasn't really surprised by the difference the new oven made in bread but I was taken by surprise at how different the cookies were.  This is the traditional Toll House recipe and finally the cookies weren't a first cousin of hockey pucks.  

My favorite weaving shuttles are the end-feed shuttles from Schacht.  I have two and weaving wouldn't be the same without them.  The yarn pulls off from the end of the pirn instead of unspooling from a bobbin, and it feeds a shot of yarn across the shed with reliable tension.  They are like night and day from boat shuttles, which I also have.  One day about a week ago I caught the shuttle on the left after sending it down the shuttle race, and something fell into my hand.  It was this piece of metal and it turns out to be the "spring" that holds the pirn pin in place.  I called Schacht and got a message that they're taking care of business from outside their business location.  I emailed them and they were johnny-on-the-spot with a replacement.  Oh how I love their shuttles.

This morning I finished the warp for Linda Hartshorn's class next month on parallel threading.  The warp calls for four 8/2 tencel yarns, 40 ends per inch.  Making the warp is much easier than I could have imagined.  My color choices are disappointing though, more like Christmas ribbon candy.  I thought I had picked colors that aren't complementary but I was wrong.  I posted a question on Facebook and got some handy information on quadradic color arrangements.  I know I'll do this again and I'm glad to have some direction for next time.  

I finished my workshop warp and decided to try just one more go at summer and winter.  Orange and purple are complementary colors and absolutely no-go together because together they make brown.  I made a mess of my colors in the workshop warp so decided to overload these six colors and see if I can manipulate them a little.  Should be interesting.

We're still watching Delaney two days a week and every-other-week, three days.  I never tire of it but I don't get a lot done, though that is changing as she gains more skills.  We're all waiting for her to talk, but it's slow going.  I think part of the problem is that we don't understand her words.  Banana is bwe-aah, for instance.  But she continues to keep it interesting.