Healthy Hobby

This is the retired machine.  I still haven't decided what to do with it, but I'll either have it serviced or give it to the shop so they can refurb it and sell it.  It has something like 40 different stitches but I only use straight and zigzag so 38 of those are wasted on me.

This is the refurbished machine which to my great delight is mechanical.  The settings are the same when I turn it on as they were when I turned it off.  No more going through all the menus to get the correct needle position and stitch length which was a challenge since it was almost impossible to read the display against that bright window.  The cost was $57 but I had some Amazon dollars so it ended up being more like $37.  I'm happy.

The Campbell tartan scarves are underway.  We were gone all day today but we're supposed to get a foot of snow starting tomorrow and over the next five days so it will be nice to have this cheerful scarf to spend some time with.

I have completed these to add to my inventory.  I have very little in the way of blue/green towels but my backordered yarn is coming on Wednesday so I'll have plenty of time to remedy that. 

This is my fourth year as a vendor at Fiber Market Day.  The past three years have been at the fairgrounds in Prineville which is an hour east of here.  This year for the first time the event is going to be at the Deschutes County Fairgrounds in Redmond, just 20 minutes north of us and more accessible to more people. This has been a good event for me and I think it's going to be even better this year.  I'll have as much inventory as I possibly can finish which should pay for all the yarn I've recently ordered and the sewing machine.  It's nice to have a hobby that pays its own way.

Taking Care of Business

Thursday was a rare sunny day and I enjoyed my walk all the more for it. There's some construction going up on the corner and the more they work, the more we realize that our neighbor is building a marijuana grow house. I have no idea what the implications are for that.

It was so nice when I got back that I dug out some of the roving I just dyed. Time to try the wheel on the deck.

The weather could not have been accommodating so I spun all 3 ounces. I was planning on a Verde Gris effect though I won't know until it's plied.

Yesterday was another lovely day so I devoted the morning to yard maintenance and clean-up. No one has pruned anything in years so the bushes are misshapen because their branches can't hold the weight. We've had two branches splint just this winter and clean up is slow. The good news is that at least one of the daylilies that I brought from our yard in Red Rock has made it. I also brought two Catmints (Nepita) from our yard and they too are growing.

Susan Wilson's book on crackle weave arrived on Tuesday and my favorite thing in it is this baby blanket. She had said during the class and said that she used five colors in the warp and the tabby weft. The pattern weft is "softball" cotton. I decided to make my last sample emulate this using some 3/3 cotton I have.

The hardest part is keeping all the shuttles untangeled and off the floor. There's no place to put them on a little loom with a harrow warp. I'm optimistic that it will be easier on a standard floor loom.

My lap juggles a couple and I often hold two at once. This is the baby blanket sampler on the last bit of warp. I'm still trying to decide what to weave for great grandson Owen. I need to hurry. He's already turning over.

I was especially anxious to finish my sampler as I have encroached on Ian's hobby room in an overwhelming way. The other half of the table is covered with my new project which is to pull photos from about six places into one album, or two.
I had lost a box of photos in the move and could hardly stand to think about it. Ian's Valentine's Day present to me was to open the wardrobe box of his clothes still unpacked in the garage to see if the movers had put the box in the bottom. They had.

When this space opened up under the window I ordered a sewing table so I can leave my machine set up all the time. It won't take me long to finish up this project but it's also not a priority. I bought commercial fabric and cut it according to Anita Luvera Mayer's book, Cloth from the Hands that Weave. It will be my test kimono.
Yard work is starting to take up some of my weaving time and I still have ten towels to weave. It's raining as I type and will for several days so the decision is made for me - this time. Tomorrow Ian and I are attending a four-hour "Plan your Garden" class at COCC. We just finished the five-week tai chi class called Tai Chi for Diabetes that we started last month, also through COCC. Monday we will join the Oregon Tai Chi Wushu studio so we can continue because we can only get better at it. At the moment we look like gawky birds with injured wings.

Posted with Blogsy

TaTa April

I had another pupil Saturday and this time we made the class three hours.  It was three hours last time but I only got paid for two.  Her name was Melissa and it was her 63rd birthday.  She treated herself to the class in celebration, her husband bought her this Ashford Flip Loom some time ago, and since she wants to retire in two years, she decided to see if this is a hobby for her.  Over beating is such a temptation but by the time we wrapped up, she was starting to get it and I think she did great.  I just hope she'll work on it again and relax a bit. 

I can't imagine teaching a large class.  One pupil exhausts me.  I spent a good part of Sunday sewing.  About 4:00 I decided it was time to take my book and knitting basket onto the deck, put up my feet and enjoy what was left of the afternoon, when two nekkid sheep wandered into my view, looking confused and bewildered.  I know I was.  This is Mickey Mouth and he's talking to me.

I came back in and asked Ian if he knew that Devon was coming and that he had been here.  Is he still here?  Well now, that was a very good question.  I hadn't thought of that, and yes he was.  Our guys are so small and used to him that he easily does it by himself.  He was just putting his stuff away so I offered him a beer and we kibitzed on the deck for a while and then he was off to the next stop.  He's like the scriptural wind - he blows whither he will.

 This is what I sewed.  It's the Schoolhouse Tunic by Sew Liberated.  The fabric is from Jimmy Beans and it washes up like a dream.  It's the second one I've made and plan to use it for when I'm a substitute librarian.  Two of them are two outfits in my wardrobe that I didn't have before.

Speaking of wardrobe, I recently purchased The Wardrobe Wakeup: Your guide to looking fabulous at any age."  I know - odd thing to buy in retirement, but I've thinned down my closet a lot and was looking for some tips to make everything count.  My favorite tip so far is to sort all clothes by color.  I can't believe how effective that is - I found a lot of things I had forgotten I had.  Man, do I have a lot of black tops. 

I finally finished my sweater.  I decided I wouldn't start the new sweater from Diane Soucy's pattern until I knitted this one from her stash sale about 15 years ago.  I'm glad I went back and reknit the tops and fixed the problems.  I like the look of the black line separating the two colors.  I haven't decided about the collar.  It's kinda high and I have a feeling won't be comfortable.  So it's still not totally done.  I'm pondering for a day or two.

I had to drive in this morning to deliver some soap.  I sold a couple dozen bars to a potter I know who wants to put them on soap dishes and sell them together at his open studio show this weekend.  We ended up chatting way too long - we always seem to do that.  I wanted to get up to the storage unit where DS Matty, girlfriend Julia and middle-school friend Dave were loading up a U-haul.

When I got there they were down to trying to fit in the last weird pieces.  Out of my purse came the trusty tape measure that Amy gave me years ago.  They hammed it up with their dirty hands, but tomorrow is the big day.  They'll be on the road, Matt towing his truck behind this rig and Julia driving her car with their pets.  They've made the decision to relocate to Bend, Oregon where his brother already lives.  I'll miss them but I know that Bend is a very good place to build their future.  Sigh.

To get my mind on something else after I came home, I decided to card up some mixed batts.  I brought down a lot of miscellaneous stuff last week and have been looking at it for days. 

Here are the first batts and I'll start spinning them in the morning - merino, llama, silk and Angelina.  I omitted the Angelia so had to go back, add it and card a second time.  These are over blended for my taste, but this is only 2 ounces of fiber.  I'm just getting started.  Now I just need to perfect my art yarn spinning techniques.  I'm signed up to learned that at the conference next month but I want to know now.

Books Read in April:

The Night Circus,  Erin Morganstern
The Messenger, Daniel Silva
When You Reach Me, Rebecca Stead (Newbery Award)
Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman (Newbery Award)

Amusing Myself

I took the dogs for a walk yesterday for the first time this year.  We still have quite a bit of snow on our roads and I thought our tracks were pretty funny.

Ours weren't the only tracks.  You can see there was quite a bit of bunny activity here.

The dogs made the most of the walk, running full out, sniffing everything and on occasion throwing themselves onto the snow to make doggie snow angels.  My old camera was too slow to catch that action but we had fun. The snow is going to be with us for a while until days get warmer.  Nights will be 9 degrees for the next five days.  We should have a spectacular wildflower spring.

There's our little frozen house, hidden smack dab in the middle of the gray landscape.  What a January it has been so far!

My son was in town so I drove in to have lunch, but first I drove out to Jimmy Beans to buy a piece of fabric.  This is Gus.  He retired, started making quilts six years ago, began going to trade shows, took a quilting class from Kaffe Fassett and decided it was time to go back to work.  He knows fabric.  That's one of his quilts on the wall and some of the fabrics he dyed. 

I bought this to make a blouse for blue jeans.  The manufacturer is Moda.  He explained why that's important.  Mills run the dyes three times.  The first two runs are the finer cottons that go to quilting stores and specialty shops.  By the third bath, the dyes have begun to exhaust so they add chemicals to enhance the dye uptake.  It is hard on the cottons, making them harder and more crisp, and these are the cottons that ship to Joanns and Hancocks.  My cotton is soft and has a nice hand and will be fun to work with.

I asked Gus to explain the difference between the designers and the cottons.  It turns out that Kaffe has a line of cottons and this bolt just fell into my hands.  And then to make the trip even more expensive, I bought the Schoolhouse Tunic pattern from Sew Liberated.  I got to visit with some friends there - it was fun.  Amy asked me recently if I was still sewing and I said no.  How quickly things change.

There's more than this.  The prices are about $8.50 a yard though one of my bolts was on sale for $4.50. That's more than reasonable.

Oh and while I was there, Terry asked me if I might be interested in teaching a two-hour rigid heddle workshop.  They now carry the Schacht Cricket Loom. and would like to offer some instruction to help knitters transition into weaving.  I'm not sure what can be communicated in two hours but I'm looking forward to exploring the options.  It will be fun.

A Happy Post

This is Diana, my classmate, new friend and ham. She painted a still life Friday. We're working in Erik's "living room" but his whole flat in the Riverside Artists Lofts looks just like this - every bit of it. Messy spaces agitate me, so I'm surprised that this is a comfortable place to work in.
I chose to work on a photo I look of Long Valley Creek, about a mile from where we exit the highway. I wanted to paint water this week and I'm terribly disappointed at how flat the painting is turning out. I was torn between this and painting a building. As I was leaving, Erik said, how about this - we paint your building next week and then the following week, we'll work on the first four paintings and address the problem areas.

This is the first class he's offered in his studio and he drummed it up on Facebook. He assures me he's going to do it again, I'm not cut adrift at the end of these sessions. I haven't felt like such a helpless beginner in years - I get frustrated.
So I turned so something I've done since I joined 4H at the age of 10, sewing. You can see how huge that sample was that was missing from my yardage. The fabric was so wide that I was still able to work around it.
I finished the t-shirt today and realized how much skill I've gained since I sewed the first one. I bought eight pieces over two trips and, unlike the last project, I love this fabric. Good choice, Sharon.
This is the next piece I'm going to sew and I've put it in my laundry hamper, even though I did preshrink it when I bought it. It's just been sitting so long, it could use a little airing out. One more piece, and I've done with tyranny of the single knits.

I did wrestle a warp onto Maudie Mae for the last of the Spady workshop samplers, but it's not a happy story. I'll save it for another day. This was a happy post.

Warm Winter Monday

Friday I tried my hand at painting sky and I hated it. You're not really building structure as much as you're pushing colors around. So now I know.
There are a couple of colors that I still haven't gotten yet, so Erik was giving me some alizarin crimson here. I asked for pointers on how to warm up the palette on this earlier painting, I figured out how I wanted to fix the foreground snow while walking Buster and now it's glazed and done.
We watched Alexia Saturday night so Mommy and Daddy could go on a date. She and I spent about three hours drawing at the kitchen table. I've been practicing pen and ink strokes and showed her how. She had several pens to chose from and we so we just drew in the afternoon sun together, while Grandpa fixed her favorite spaghetti and meatballs.
We watched several episodes of Dance Academy, an Australian TV series/soap about teens in a premier ballet academy in Sidney. We finally cut her off after five. Her post-it notes are for the next morning - more Dance Academy, breakfast, ride home and more Dance Academy and also some random pen and ink strokes. Then she played Toy Balls on my iPhone. Incidentally, if you saw the movie Strictly Ballroom, the woman who played the young gypsy dancer is the head teacher in this TV series. Love Netflix!

I haven't been spinning this year due to an elbow that is painful after each spinning session. I'm resting it and doing other fibery pursuits, including knitting some of the massive backlog of handspun yarns. I'm obviously going to have to change my spinning technique when the elbow is recovered. Maybe change sides?
So I cut out this single knit for another tunic. I have no idea why this caught my eye at Mood, but at $14 a yard, I'm going to wear it, even it's just here. This fabric is so hard to work with. It's almost impossible to get wrinkle-free and flat. It makes me even more in awe of those designers on Project Runway who shake out a piece of shear insubstantial fabric and cut it to size.

This looks just as bad on me as it does in this picture.

This is the next piece - kind of a modern art non-pattern pattern. I have no idea what's going to happen in the cutting. As you can see on the lower right corner, they had given someone an 8-9" swatch and didn't compensate when they cut it for me. It's been sitting for several years so I'm going to run it through the washer and dryer again before I try to figure it out.

I'm reading a couple of books at once. Okay, I never just read one, but I'm sure that's been apparent in the past.

Sleepwalking Through History by Haynes Johnson. I bought and read this about 15 years ago but it's been on my mind a lot lately so I'm re-reading it. It's the Reagan era and how it came to be and it's surprisingly relevant to now in this anti-government era, which I totally don't get. Newt insists Reagan passed the mantle on to him and he is channeling Reagan.

Last Man in the Tower by Aravind Adiga, winner of the Booker Award for White Tiger. It's complex, full of rich characters with unexpected humor. I think we'll be able to expect that from him in future books as well.

Gideon's Corpse by Preston & Child. It's a ridiculous plot-driven book that kept me up until midnight last night, and it will probably do the same tonight.

Life in the High Desert

After my dental appointment Wednesday morning, I rewarded myself with a drive down to the river to photograph and measure the trees I want to bomb on June 11th, International Yarn Bomb Day. As you imagine, people were looking.
The ferocious wind was punishing on the drive home but I was rewarded with a box from Village Spinning and Weaving. I had ordered a couple warm tones in 8/2 for towels, a cone of 8/4 cotton warp and my Little Man one-yard niddy noddy. I think it would be easier to measure yarn for hat kits if I were getting yards instead of lengths I have to calculate into yards - plus it's handmade and it's gorgeous.
How hard does the wind blow? This is Bob and Mim's Bristle Cone pine that they lost in the last wind storm. It was a mature stately tree and the cornerstone of their landscaping.
Granted the winds at their end of the valley are more harsh because they're pushed down the mountain, but the root system snapped. I am always in awe of those who pioneered here. I read the oral history of the rancher's wife who originally owned this valley. No sissies need apply.


We woke up to more snow yesterday morning. I broke down and ordered a SAD broad spectrum light last night. Amy asked me tonight why I didn't just replace our bulbs with broad spectrum bulbs. Because we only use canned lights.

On another note, I've finished my last sewing project. This time I used cotton gauze which I thought would simulate sewing with handwoven. It was shucky and loose, requiring lots of ease stitching and stay stitching, but I have the experience under my belt and am ready to move on. I've cleaned up my sewing area and am getting ready to weave.
I shoveled the 4" from the deck and the day warmed up to 36 degrees and took care of the rest. This was our sunset yesterday afternoon. And then it started snowing in the night and we did it all over again. I hope that SAD light comes soon. I'm not going to call it a seasonal affective disorder light. I'm going to call it a spinning at dawn light because that's how I'm going to use it.

More Surprises

I got home from town today to find this box at my gate as Benita had said I would. A couple weeks ago she told me she was paring down her fabric collection and dispersing the extras, would I care for any? Yes please!!
I told Benita that I preferred cottons but had no idea she would be sending me so many pieces. And of course it wouldn't be possible to sort through them without my dedicated snoopervisor. No wonder she said she was looking forward to having some space back.
There are many pieces in many colors and as I was looking through them, I realized that I have gotten off my goals by trying to make and fit pants. My goal is to sew with handwoven and I probably wouldn't be making pants from that anyway. I also want to make more rag rugs or placemats, so tomorrow I'll clear out the pants and start sewing strips. I need to order carpet warp!
In the meantime, I'm setting these two pieces aside as they look like the making for a sundress in Alexia's favorite color.

Benita lives in Indiana and is excited that Butler is one of the Cinderella teams going to the NCAA final four. I had mentioned that two Cinderella teams are competing and it's going to be hard to watch - I want them both to win. She said the governors of Indiana and Virginia have made a friendly wager. If Butler wins Saturday's Final Four game in Houston, McDonnell will send Daniels a Virginia hand-cured country ham from S. Wallace Edwards & Sons in Surry. If VCU wins, Daniels will send McDonnell a variety of duck products from Maple Leaf Farms in Milford. She suggested we do the same. I'll cheer for VCU (Virginia Commonwealth University) and she for Butler. The loser sends the other 4 ounces of something from our fiber stash. That sweetens the pot a bit, doncha think.
So I went to the doctor this morning because I have been feeling like I have iron-poor blood or something, or maybe the thyroid-replacement that I've recently started wasn't working. He told me I have SAD, or seasonal affective disorder, and talked about strategies for dealing with it. And look what came out today - the sun! I wrapped up and sat on the deck until it got too cool. Thank you sun!! Please come again.

I found this so amusing, I wanted to share it.