Odd Outcomes

Last night I finished knitting the back of the jacket I've been working on for quite a while. It occurred to me that I might not have enough yarn to finish the project, which is a problem when the yarn is hand spun and the last of the fleece. I woke up late this morning, tired from my work frenzy yesterday, so laid in bed and just dozed and mulled thoughts. I realized that the piece seemed very large. I measured it this morning and it's right on gauge but they've given it 10" of ease. I made a spontaneous decision to rip it out and make the next smaller size. It won't be as commodious a jacket but at least I'll have enough yarn. It bothered me that the white was thicker than the gray and it also bothered me that the gray was such a start contrast.
In my sleepy bed musings I remembered that I had made another gray yarn years ago that just might be the ticket and it is. I took my coffee and knitting to the front porch and knitted for a very long time this morning because I could. This yarn is a gray heather and I like it so much better, for it's color and for it's gauge. I'm not a fan of enormous sweaters so I'm happy with my decision.
I finished the last towel on this warp this afternoon. It was a close call and the last three inches were more like hand sewing than weaving. I had to literally thread the shuttle through a very narrow warp at the shuttle race - it took forever. So no, a 7 1/2 yard warp doesn't make eight towels. I've calculated that a 9 yard warp will comfortably do 10 towels.
I couldn't advance the warp. There was nothing to advance so I had to keep threading the shuttle though, right up to the shuttle race, even when I wasn't even sure I'd had enough for the towel. I did but boy was I sweating bullets and not from the exercise.
After dinner this evening, Charlie decided that since his humans weren't using the table anymore, he'd catch a sun bath. His five weeks of antibiotics have run their course and now it's time for him to recover. Our biologist friend Petey says that with the infection gone and the toxins no longer poisoning his kidneys, they can start to heal. His appetite is back and he actually likes his kitty kidney food. He's so tiny it's hard to tell, but we think he's gaining weight. He's certainly more animated - the dogs can attest to that. I'm hopeful and now it's a waiting game

And tomorrow is my second weaving workshop in a year - goodness!

Gob Smacked

We've had a pretty cool June so far. The walls of water are still on the tomatoes because it's been near freezing several nights. I loved the clouds spilling over Petersen Mountain yesterday morning, almost like San Francisco fog. Notice the tree candles are following the morning sun.

Last evening I got an email from Robin. We've read each others blogs and exchanged emails for years. We're both soap makers and she wanted to know if she could call with some questions on making cold process soap. She's in Ohio so two hours ahead - we ended up talking for two hours and I can't imagine what time she went to bed. It was fantastic. I've never talked to another soap maker before. We spent the first hour catching up on what our kids are doing. The biggest surprise of all is Robin's strong southern accent. We were trading book titles and I had to get her to stop and spell for me a couple of times. Thank you Internet and social media!I really pushed color on this warp. I mean, that is just plain ugly. I finished it yesterday morning and then had to break for lunch, with the worry in the back of my brain that I had gone too far this time.
Once I started adding weft, things settled into place. Once again, I'm surprised at how well the colors work together. I tried to get spots of color in the block weave this time instead of stripes. I'm going to do another variation on this and have made notes for the changes. I could do the same thing twice, but I probably won't.
I wove off a towel this morning and then came downstairs to get the warp on this workshop loom before lunch. The class is for Pebble Weave, and while I have no idea what that is, I borrowed Jeanne's loom and signed up. I don't have many opportunities for a weaving workshop so I take whatever I can get, whenever I can get it. After lunch and a reading break, I wove a couple more towels. I really pushed a lot into this day.

This evening I was reading Facebook and saw my daughter's comment - Thank you Thursday for finally being over. Blink, blink. Today is Thursday? I don't have to pack the loom into the car tomorrow morning and drive in first thing to the workshop. I asked Ian - what day is it? He looked surprised. Date or day? Day, I said. Thursday, he replied. I lost a day - I have whole entire day that I hadn't planned on - awesome! I am gob smacked.

In the Neighborhood

I finished the sea glass towels yesterday and took this shot of them before I packed them off to the craft fair this morning. I love them, I love them all. I will definitely want to explore more sea glass color pathways again.
This is the booth space we combine and share at craft fairs. Carol and Kerry sell bird feeders they make from thrift store pottery and I have my soaps and hand wovens. We needed to take photos of our booth to submit with our application for the McQueen Craft Faire.
This was a first-time craft fair cobbled together with the horse show. There was no entry fee - it was just advertised as open to crafters and so we gave it a try. It was such a massive horse show that there really wasn't room for two headliners, but the weather was perfect and we had a great time. We're supposed to get rain and snow this week. Welcome to the high desert!

I walked up to check on my iPhone. Lynn had borrowed it this morning because she didn't have a stop watch and they needed to time the events. This is the next field of juveniles.
I'm always impressed at the presence and poise of these pre-teens.
Her horse balked at one of the gates and she issued a correction, backed him up and then they vaulted. And this is just one rider out of many. My iPhone still had battery and they were still timing events. I had no idea it had a stopwatch but it clocked all the timed events. I love my iPhone! And it still had 30% battery when I got home tonight.
After we packed up, I went back home with Carol and Kerry to get our McQueen application information and photos all in order. In terms of sales, today wasn't successful, but in terms of spending time with friends and meeting and greeting new neighbors, it was awesome. Joe Winter sat up next to us and so visited all morning. On the other side were Girl Scout parents with the mammoth number of cookies that their new leader mistakenly ordered. They did very well and I helped them. Many of us did.

I posted a picture of my towels on Facebook before I left this morning and when I got home I discovered that four of them had takers. That's an interesting end to a craft fair day. When I left Carol and Harry's house, Harry was still down with the fire department - they had been selling hamburgers as a fundraiser - and the equestrian events were still in progress. Nope. I had a fantastic time, but I won't do this again. Hunter Pace is a smaller, more intimate and half day - I'll stick with that.

Deadlines

This is my least favorite part of making soap. I have to create an origami liner from butcher paper that exactly fits inside my mold. I'm so going to coerce my son into making me a mold that is friendly and opens at one end. I hate getting the liner in the mold and I hate getting the soap in the mold out. I've never had it happen before, but I ran out of everything all at once so have made four batches of soap this week. It won't happen again! It's a hobby and it suddently didn't feel like one.

I'm doing another horse show craft fair on Sunday. I love doing valley shows since I get to spend time with neighbors and meet new ones. Afterwards Carol, Kerry and I are going to put together our applications and photos and get this puppy submitted. I've been trying to get the sea glass towels woven and finished for a photo.

I thought about including a photo of my weaving assistant. He is most helpful and interested - mostly curious.
I'm hopeful to finish this towel in the morning and also the last one before going to town. The cone and note are to remind me to move the knot from a broken warp to be in between towels so it can get lost in a hem. I've suddenly become a little disenchanted with Valley cotton. It's where I've gotten the majority of my yarns, but I've had serious breakage and knots that have demanded I stop weaving and repair. I love their price but I'll order Homestead cotton next time so I can compare.
And I have Jeanie's adorable little loom here that she one again generously loaned to me. I have to get it warped next week for a workshop on Saturday. It's a good thing there aren't more than 24 hours in a day or I'd feel compelled to fill them. Honestly. I'm cutting back - soon.

I took a video this evening when Ian and I were relaxing and reading on the front porch - turn your volume up. It's truly a lovely time to be at Sagecreek Farm. I never tire of the quail.

Retired Relaxation

This probably doesn't look much like a garden to you, but this is our Fort Knox of Vegetables. Tomatoes are in the walls-of-water, the garlic has come up nicely and in the second box, the potatoes have begun to peep up. A third box to the left has onions, pepper plants in walls-of-water and carrots have been sown. We could still have a freeze. Do you remember that lap robe I wove from wool I dyed with rabbit brush? I'm wearing it right now!
I started the morning with a batch of soap. I had to make soap on Friday too. I've had a couple of orders suddenly and with Spindle Camp in two weeks, I know I'll sell soap there. Soap is tough because of it's three week curing time. Running out is more than running out. It's running behind.
I haven't had studio time since last week so was glad to finally get upstairs and work on this warp today. I'll be glad when I'm experienced enough to avoid the sleying and threading mistakes I always seem to make. I made two time costly errors but at least this time I have enough warp for eight towels. If I have to fix mistakes like that on every warp, I'm thinking about trying even longer warps, though that idea still gives me (more) gray hairs. This is my first towel in the sea glass series. I use eight colors in the warp so I'm thinking about using all eight colors as weft. It was almost dinner time when I'd gotten this far - tomorrow is Town Tuesday and round two of tai chi. More hurry up and wait, as they used to tell us military wives.

I'm doing a craft fair on Sunday with Carol and Kerry - it's another equestrian show, so it will be fun - profitable? Not sure. They've really gotten into the craft fair thing and have ferreted out some pretty good ones, also some dogs, but all mostly cheap. We've had a lot of fun sharing booth space - it makes a craft fair more entertaining. They're asked me to split a booth with them at the McQueen Craft Fair, which is juried, one of the premier craft fairs in Reno, and *not* cheap. McQueen is the high school my kids attended so it's a soft spot with me. Today I have NO inventory and the thought of generating enough to pay for the booth space in October scares me to death. The application process is seriously daunting. I may be worried for naught.

Knitting

Vickie and I drove down to Yerington today to visit our friend Diane. We all used to work together and became friends in spite of being coworkers. Vickie and I have wanted to make this trip for a long time so set the date, and it ended up being the date of a freak spring storm. We had a mixture of snow and rain all the way down, at times just plain dicey. Scenery was not available, but we visited the heck out of it anyway.

We all went to lunch and then back to Diane's, where we chatted and laughed for a couple more hours. Girlfriends are so important. I'm reading Anna Quindlen's new book and she devotes a whole chapter to how important we are to each other. We are good medicine.

On the way back Vickie and I drove into Weed Heights, a former Anaconda mine site. It's just eerie. Vickie said she felt like we were driving through a movie set and the former company residential areas, now rentals, we decided was ala Stepford Wives. She had never seen Ft. Churchill either, so we did a drive through there too. The major thrust of the storm had passed through by then. She took a picture of my sweater at the Visitors Center. It's from the Knitting Pure and Simple pattern, Top Down Boatneck Pullover. This was a first outing for my sweater.
I was surprised leaving Reno north. The traffic was fairly heavy this evening so I had a wait to get waved through the agricultural inspection station. I drive through California to get home to Nevada - yeah weird. Thank goodness they know my car because coming home with plants from the nursery could be awkward. I see them look at my license plate - Bookist - and no, I'm not a bookie - I'm a readist. They wave me through.
I love the clouds over the Sierras and caught both shots while rolling forward - there were so many moments that I almost pulled over because sometimes it just takes my breath away, but it was already after 6:00.
I didn't pull over to take storm cloud pictures because I figured I do it when I turned onto our road, but the storm was all to the south of here.


This is our canyon, coming from the north end of Red Rock Road. We had absolutely no storm, no rain, but all the pictures I had expected to take in Mason Valley and couldn't because of the deluge, I guess were pent up and I took them here.
This is my current project. I have obsessed over the white being a three-ply and the gray being two-ply and I've finally decided to knit the project and wear the jacket when I'm done. This is from handspun and I just need to bite the bullet, knit my handspun yarns and stop being so critical. I'll get that attitude in shape tomorrow. Tomorrow - make bread or make soap. I'll think about that tomorrow.

BTW, we had to light a fire in the woodstove today. I don't know what the weather is like where you are on May 25th. Today we got to the mid 40s and will be close to freezing tonight. I live in a very strange corner of the world. Pioneers - how did they survive? I think about that a lot since I live on a pioneer route.

Did Someone Say Towels?

I finished the Fiesta ware towels yesterday. I posted them to Facebook this morning and could have sold two right then, but I had a preorder and shipped four towels in California this morning. I'm left with the purple and pink one. At least I have inventory for the craft fair next weekend! Facebook has been good for my sales. More than half have sold as a result of my photos. I'm going to repeat this color pathway next week, but will put on a eight yard warp, and skipping purple and pink, will do two of the other colors. I realize that my friends will eventually reach a point of saturation and I figure what they like will do well at a craft fair.
I've been thinking about doing a sea glass series, based on the colors of glass that I've collected on the beach at Oceanside. With the inventory I have, I think these colors will represent my collection nicely.

However, I got on Google images for sea glass and was taken by the blue and green that I don't have. I'm going to have to place an order with Halcyon soon for yarn color that Webs didn't have and I'll be ordering these two colors. I'd like to try another sea glass series incorporating them.
I got the warp ready and on the loom. It's pretty sedate, compared with the colors I've been using. This is my first eight yard warp. I was nervous about putting on six yards but after four of them, I'm a veteran and ready to advance - hah! The secret is winding on with the paper. Now if I can just locate a source of corrugated paper on a roll, I'll be in like Flynn - and no, I have no idea what that means.

No weaving for me tomorrow. I'm going to Yerington and you can see my journey here. Start me from Doyle, but then I have to cross over the Spanish Springs to Vickie's house - not on the map. She's driving so route us through Carson City where we will drop off her son at her mother's, then east on Hwy 50 (the loneliest highway) and to Hwy 95 and then south. It takes an hour to Spanish Springs, and then an hour to Carson and then an hour and a half to see Diane in Yerington. That's a heck of a trip to go to lunch!

Sunday Was a Fantastic Day

Sunday was a fantastic day. Erik was having a loft sale. He's downsizing to a smaller loft at the Riverside Artists Lofts to reduce his overhead. I told him that's a good thing since he'll fill any space he has. He's a prolific painter and is able to make a living selling his work. I love his art and value him as a friend. I spent the money I've made on towels on these two paintings. I always do that - earn some money and buy some art. Ian instantly was drawn to the watercolor of the Ferry Building in San Francisco. It was much harder for me. I had it narrowed down to three when DS Matt and Julia came. Matt and Ian favored the Overland Hotel and so I went with their votes. There really was no wrong answer.

The four of us went to the Riverside Theater to see The Avengers. I'm not much of an action flick fan and I am a devoted Robert Downey Jr. fan and was not disappointed. The Riverwalk area was a buzz with anticipation of the eclipse - lots of fun energy in the air. Afterwards we walked next door to Silver Peak Brewery and got seated on the eastern patio. The weather was unusually balmy and the lighting was bizarre as the eclipse phases played out, not that we could see them or should. It was a delightful afternoon.
I knew I was going to have to work to get two new pieces hung on our limited walls so started after breakfast. It took me two hours and I had to move 14 pictures in all to get space for the two new ones.
The Overland Hotel (a historic building in Gardnerville) ended up hanging with a lithograph we bought in Alexandria, Virginia of a window in a brick building. I thought they could become good friends, two brick buildings - they have a lot in common.
The four-piece collage set that I always just walked by in the hall is now over my nightstand and I love seeing all the bright colors. Tracy Gundersen is the artist of the set and the watercolor - not a tribute wall.
Here's a little bit of detail - such a shame to have hung it all this time in the hallway and never enjoyed it. I find both Ian and I are looking anew at our pieces - not that I want to move everything every few years. No thanks.
I did it - I got everything up and I am thrilled. I keep wandering through the art in our little house as though I were in a new gallery. Years ago when I was first diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome I discovered that looking at lovely things produced an endorphin response and reduce my fatigue load. At that time I subscribed to three art magazines and I read them like a drug. Now I use Ritalin at half of the smallest dose - thank God for Ritalin. It allows me to make art of my own. We joke about DuPont's ad "better living through chemistry" but sometimes that's the truth.
Probably my favorite picture of the hall group is still this one from Larry Jacox that he painted of the Yuba River. If you've ever seen the Yuba, you know that it has a unique hue of blue. Go to Google images, put in Yuba River and you will be astounded.
This is my sixth and final towel on the Fiestaware series. I kept looking online to double check their colors and worried how to manage the coral. Finally I realized that if I "mixed" pink weft with the orange warp - it might just work. And it did! That is precisely the right shade. I'll finish the towels tomorrow.

I finished the weaving this morning but it was Town Tuesday - always an action packed adventure. I left my doc's with a prescription for high blood pressure medicine. I've resisted and got to thinking that I could end up like my uncle who dropped dead at 60. So now I'm officially hypertensive and I've even taken my first pill. I sandwiched in a quick friend visit, caught my lovely 20 zen freestyle laps in the saline pool and followed up with an awkward first session ever of Tai Chi. I cannot believe how sore I am from that - I see the value and will go back, but man oh man, do I hate being a beginner. If the secret to not aging is learning new things, I'm not going to age for four months - that's how long Mark the instructor told me it takes to memorize the steps.

At Home

This sad mess is my dummy warp. I was in a hurry to cut my lap robe from the loom and cut on the wrong side of the knots. In two seconds the warp flew backwards and onto the floor. Who's the dummy, eh? Since the lap robes are wool and it's getting warmer, I'm thinking about setting these aside and doing some rag rugs for a change.
These are the colors for my current towels, minus the butter yellow that I forgot I was winding bobbins with. This is my Fiesta Ware series.
I was a little intim-
idated by the bright colors I chose so started off with butter yellow.

I picked these colors. There was no point in backing down, so I went for the orange on the second towel. It didn't scare me too bad.


So I went for turquoise on the third towel and I was surprised how much I like it. I got online this afternoon to check out Fiesta Ware colors and decided the fourth towel is definitely going to be lime green. I'm not sure about the purple, though it's in their color line, but then so is black and red.
I had company in the studio today. Charlie found yet another place to curl up, though he left me the second he realized Ian was taking a nap because he exists to sleep on Ian's napping chest. We think we're turned a corner in Charlie's medical crisis. His recent lab results showed an e. coli infection and it's those toxins that have been poisoning his kidneys. He's on five weeks of antibiotics and also treatment for his kidneys. He's starting to return to his role of rotten cat and snoopervisor, which we welcome. We'll also welcome an end to pilling him, a thankless two-person task at which we've become quite good.
I took this photo after my walk with Buster this morning and just realized I caught the tips of his ears on the bottom right. They've "masticated" about 60% of the brush, leaving room for native grasses to grow and reducing the risk of a fire surge. Huge relief.
Our lilacs are finally doing their thing this year and they're gorgeous. We should still have snow so they're never had a chance to showcase themselves like this, and they're filled with honeybees.
And the same goes for the Scotch broom - it's bigger than ever and filled with honey-
bees. We've had a conspicuous absence of bees in the last several years so this is good news indeed. We have to prune this monster, this year for sure. We've let it get so big that it's going to take several years to get our windows back since you can't prune more than a third of the plant a year. I think I bought the wrong variety - oops.