Tea Towels

My second towel in the turned taquete pattern got a blue weft. I am enamored with how the colors work together. Granted, I have limited experience with color in weaving, but I hope the magic never wears off.
These are the eight colors in the warp. So far I've used the two on the bottom right for weft and have decided to use the top left two for my last two towels.
The butter yellow was too light a value for the hues in my warp and I think it really washed out this towel to the level of pastel. That surprised me.

I am much happier with the pumpkin weft, as the value is equal to those in the warp. I've heard this over and over but now I understand why value is so important. The pale yellow isn't wrong but it wasn't the best choice of my eight options. I'm chalking it up to a lesson learned.
They're off the loom and seeing the picture I realize I didn't do a good job of wet finishing - need to get on that. I'm already planning the next warp. Warping goes quick since you can hold two threads together at time - half the work, half the time.
Changing the subject, my son Josh found these two arrowheads in our dry creek bed a couple of years ago. I posted them on my blog last year and an archaeologist friend emailed me to say he saw the post and thought they were old, certainly older than our local tribes. Kay Fowler, archeology professor emeritus is a member of our weaving guild so I showed them to her last week at our meeting. The whole leaf shape one is from chert and is unfinished. The broken one is from basalt which places it in the Sierra Nevada range area. She said it could have broken while it was being worked because there was an inclusion in the stone, or it could have broken inside an animal during a hunt. She asked me where they came from and I said Red Rock (our valley). She laughed and said, well then that's the Sierra Nevadas alright. She thought they are between 1,000 and 2,000 years old. How's that for American history?! It gives me goosebumps.

I'm picking up DD Chris and Alexia in the morning and we're going to haunt thrift stores for the day. Afterwards, Alexia comes home with me for her last week of school break. This is the first time she's asked to spend two weeks of a month break with us. I don't have a loom for her but I'm sure we can find things to do.

Maritime Museum

When I say that our kids live in the Mission District, I took this picture from the 22 Filmore bus stop that we use from Cow Hollow. That's the California mission. Well, the actual original mission is the white structure tucked in between the trees to the left of the church. Those overhead lines are the electric lines that power the buses.
We thought Noah would enjoy the Maritime Museum and met the kids at the visitors center Sunday afternoon - last outing. The ferry Eureka was our favorite of the boats we toured.

The seating capacity in the interior was aston-
ishing to me. It looked bigger on the inside than the outside. I'm standing in another section of seating.
Ian and SIL Michael couldn't get over the basic tools the captain had to pilot with.
This is half of top of the ferry, which looks like the roof of an apartment complex. In the distance you can see Alcatraz Island.
It was the right place to take Noah - he loved it! And the fantastic thing is that it's part of the National Park Service so the only charge is $5 to tour all the ships, but that was waived through Ian's senior park service pass. Little Sharon picked up the junior ranger worksheet which they worked on throughout the tour, so when we left, Noah had a Junior Ranger badge proudly pinned to his shirt.
Noah's favorite boat? Hercules, the handsome tug boat!
After the previous day of torrential rain, we were gifted with this fantastic, bright brisk day - perfect for touring the ships. I only knew about it because Carl Nolte had done his Sunday Chronicle column on the museum about three weeks ago.

I did this little video to show rather than tell.

This basin is shared with a swim and row club and there plenty of both out on Palm Sunday.

The swimmers - give the woman an iPhone and she'll take a video :)

A deYoung Kind of Day

The one museum I wanted to see on our visit was the deYoung. I had looked at all the exhibition schedules and this most closely fit my interests. There are so many to chose from, it was hard to pick, but the Jean Paul Gaultier retrospective was the final straw. Everything about it was over-the-top. Why would it be otherwise?!! There were 140 mannequins and the display took the entire basement floor, room after room, after video display, after simulated runway show, to movie bits. It was fantastic. This is the first room. These mannequins are nearly life like by having blank faces but the animated expressions are broadcast onto them from mushrooms suspended nearby from the ceiling. Several of the mannequins throughout the display sing arias, which this one is doing - ethereal.
The mannequin on the right is Gaultier, talking in heavily accented English.

It was pouring rain when we woke up that morning and we felt smug in our plans to spend the day inside, knowing we could catch the bus under the bus shelter and walk there with our umbrellas. Both our umbrellas were toast, and since we don't use them in Nevada, we didn't know. We swam to Walgreens and bought two more. We then waited for the bus, soaking wet, with new umbrellas. We had raincoats, but when your hair is dripping, you're wet.

The museum would have been a ghost town, except it was a special day for people with disabilities.
Downstairs it was a bustling business - I'd hate to see it crowded. Each room was a mood and theme, with the echo of singing mannequins. There were enough people but not too many.

The museum created a specta-
cular simulated runway, and the energy from the public was palpable. His work is theatrical, overtly sexual, Madonna-ish, and entertaining. The Sunday Chronicle gave it a great review and it was ironic that I read the review after I had seen the exhibit. You know that won't happen again.
I almost didn't include this because I know this post is getting long, but I do enjoy art as a personal statement. This is called The Burning of Los Angeles, and in four panels of raw canvas, this artist painted a very energetic display of that desperate time. Growing up in San Diego, I remember the Watts Riots very well.

If you look closely, you can see what the components of this cathedral are - spent munitions and weapons. How's that for personal statement in art?!
The second special exhibit that attracted me was the Kilim rugs from Anatolia, circa 1600-1900. Because there's no pile, they don't wear well and therefore there are few from this time period.
I marveled at how the colors have survived all these years. I know there has to be a connection between Anatolian rug weaving and Native American rug weaving, I just wish I knew what it is.

This was my favorite.

Look at this detail!

Off the atria, the museum had set up a room with activities for people with disabilities and one of the activities was weaving.
Participation was invited and the weaver now at the middle loom is a special needs young lady, doing a bang-up job, I might at. These pinwheels are also a weaving activity.
Activity tables were set up through-
out the room, but in the corner was this wonderful little combo. Their music was elastic as they read the moods of their audience, doing Raffi and Jack Johnson numbers, with dancing audience showing their appreciation. Ian and I were both moved at the gleeful abandon of the dancers, some just jumping up and down.

The drenching rain had stopped by the time we left and the public had responded in kind. We were astonished by how many people were in line for admission and equally glad that we were in the line to leave. I have visited the deYoung many many times, even in its old incarnation, and it never disappoints. We left happy.

San Francisco

We drove to San Francisco last Thursday morning for grand-
parents day at Noah's Waldorf school on Friday morning. After checking into our motel, and before I go any further, let me recommend where we stayed. It's the Cow Hollow Motor Inn on Lombard Street, very close to the Embarcadero, Fort Mason, the Exploratorium and many other attractions. We paid less than $100 a night and that included parking. If you've ever stayed in the city, you know that parking is an uphill battle. First you have to find it and then you have to pay for it. We bought a bus pass and enjoyed the Muni transit instead. We caught the 22 Fillmore which is its own form of entertainment, and visited with Noah and Little Sharon for a while that afternoon. In spite of the forecast for rain, we were able to take Noah to Dolores Park so he could ride his bike. Michael was still at work so we caught an early dinner with Noah at Kaza on 18th Street and had our first kati rolls. We stopped at the Bi-Rite Creamery for an ice cream chaser and called it a day.
We spent the entire next morning at the Waldorf School, which started with grandparents being celebrated in a small cafe environment with food and coffee, followed by an hour of student and teacher presentations after which we visited the classrooms - followed by more student presentations. We left exhilarated and exhausted at noon.
Sharon picked us up afterwards and took us back to their flat, where we once again walked over to Dolores Park. Why waste a pretty day? We bought tacos from a food truck and sat on the grass to eat them. We are just returning from a visit to Imigiknit where I bought nothing. Jimmy Beans, my LYS, sets the bar pretty high. We were going to try for dinner but Michael has to catch the train from Palo Alto and so we decided that we'd go on Saturday instead.
I wanted to go to City Lights Bookstore and buy Paul Madona's latest collection from All over Coffee - plus it's a must-stop shop for a bookist. We decided to have dim sun in Chinatown, since it's right next to North Beach. Can you believe how many different rice cookers this shop has?!


How about, can you believe how many varieties of tea this shop has??! The most astonishing thing about Chinatown is that it's nearly completely Chinese, especially on Stockton Street. That's where we got killer dim sum - 930 Stockton Street. I couldn't tell you the name and we ordered by pointing because the storekeeper spoke almost no English. Our dim sum dinner cost $7.00 - in San Francisco!
There is so much in San Francisco that it's easy to lose sight of how little real estate there actually is. Chinatown is in the shadow of the financial district and they really don't cross over.
The tourist street is Grant and that's where the China Gate is, but if you want to see the Chinese Chinatown, walk down Stockton. Look at how little English is on these grocery store signs, and they're selling fresh food, very little is packaged. We eat an early dinner which is why we were able to still get dim sum, and these markets were cleaning up and closing down, hosing the fish scales across the sidewalk into the gutter. It was interesting and a little eerie to be in such a foreign place so close to home.



This is why we didn't stop at the Disneyland of ice cream after lunch.

More Dishtowels

>It was such a relief yesterday to unmold my soap and have a perfect batch. I've only had two failed batches in the over twelve years of soap making - it's expensive. And on top of that, I was out of coconut oil and couldn't make any more. I ordered more but my supplier was out of stock, so it was about 10 days before I got the email that they had received their shipment and she would get my oil out that very day. Fast forward three weeks and past the wedding, I called to see what was up. Had they lost my order? I mean, I really like my supplier, her prices and the quality of her products, but that's a long time. The heater in the storage tanks for the coconut oil had to be repair before they could pour the oil. Unheated, coconut oil is like plastic. I cut it into chunks to weigh it.

I finished another lap robe yesterday, fringed and fulled it and hung in on the balcony to dry over night. I brought it down to trim the fringe and had immediate interest. This is its inaugural use and according to Charlie, it's a success. I used it earlier this even to read and I really like it, though I won't use luster longwool again - it's a wrong application. I have SO many other fleeces to choose from, including boxes of our own. I just heard from our shearer, and he'll be here next month which means I will have more fleece. Why does that not excite me.

These are the colors I chose for my next dishtowels. It's another of Beryl's patterns which is a block weave she called turned taquette. She said it's a great way to use up lots of bits of color - I think she said she had seven blocks of different colors. I had two blocks with four different colors for a total of eight. I wound the warp in bouts while I supervised Alexia's weaving, not that she really needed much supervision.

This is what they look like when threaded into my warp.

This is how it looks when I lift alternating warp threads 2 and 4.

This is what I it looks like when I lift alternating warp threads 1 and 3. The gold paired with strawberry pink is stealing it's thunder, making that strip of warp look brick red.
This is what it looks like when I weave with watermelon pink as weft - pretty!

On the Fly

Can I adapt to new technology? Are there anymore new tricks in this old dog? I'm about to find out!!!

Back to Normal

I got my lap blanket underway, using Shetland that I had already spun and not yet fulled. I had read somewhere that if you're going to weave with hand spun yarns, you really should not full them before weaving, so the action can take place when you finish your cloth. I see the logic, but on top of loom waste, the shrinkable was significant.
It's finished and disappointingly smaller than I had planned. Alexia is delighted because it's just her size. I had bought a Schact fringe twister and this was my first time to try it out. I decided it was more trouble than it was worth and twisted by hand - much quicker. I hated the alligator clips - they kept slipping.

This is some of my Shetland yarn that I used for the blanket. I can see why you would want to spin specifically for warp - after mending a couple of broken ones. I think fulling would have helped that too.
I've had these skeins for several years, wondering what to do with them. I originally thought I'd like to spin enough for a wool rug, but who am I kidding? I need washable rugs here, so they've just taken up space - until now! Both the white and gray are from Lincoln cross sheep. The staple length on the white is over 6" - warp! I bought that fleece over a dozen years ago at Black Sheep Gathering and split it with my friend Lisa. It was a 12 pound fleece at $12 a pound. I had Moro Fleeceworks process my half - just haven't had the right project. I hope this is it.
I got the new warp on, fixed a threading problem and was weaving by lunch - in between loads of laundry. This yarn is fulled and I'm weaving much looser, hoping for a softer, more drapey result and less take-up. I still love this pattern.
This is the same bag of skeins, minus the project. I really hope that the lap blankets work for me because I might be able to put a small dent in my fleece stash. I mean, we're already thinking about spring shearing and that means more fleece. I'm crossing my fingers but not holding my breath.

Oops - I accident-
ally loaded this picture and decided to leave it, because I took this a week ago Sunday. Click for big to see how many quail crowd under our bird feeders. We ended up with 4" of snow and of course, it's back to spring now. That's the high desert for you.
After throwing herself into weaving for two days, Alexia lost interest and went back to being a seven-year-old girl. She is able to entertain herself and play for hours, with lots of singing and role-play dialogue. But the weaving seeds have been sewn.

I picked up my library hold on Tuesday for Gail Simmons book, Talking with My Mouth Full: My life as a professional eater. I finished it the next day, and while I am an admitted Top Chef junkie, I thought the book stood on its own. But then that's probably not the most objective review I've ever given.

I've also come across an unusual suspense author - every so often I need a little romp. Josh Bazell was well reviewed in the San Francisco Chronicle for his book Wild Thing so I ended up getting it from the library - quick read, unusual premise. He had a first book, so I put that on hold, but didn't realize that I had placed it for an ebook. I got my hold notification a couple days ago, downloaded to my Kindle and I'm half way finished. The first is best, but I'd definitely read him again. I have since learned that Bazell is a San Francisco resident and physician at UCSF. That might not have been the most objective review the Chron has ever given :)