Wednesday, June 28, 2023

Happy Mid Week & Weaving Woes

  Happy Mid-week. 

    Wow one of our neighbors has already arrived for this year's longer 4th of July celebration - long weekend. With the 4th being on a Tuesday this year-people are already arriving at the lake. I figured they would start coming in late Thursday for sure but many are already here. A good thing though is we are cooler this morning, a few sprinkles is all we got for rain, but cooler morning is wonderful, although it will change into a very humid day.

  Monday I decided it was time to finish setting up my loom for weaving. It has been at least a year or more since I did the threading and put on all the warp. For some reason, I had a difficult time with the threading, redoing allot of it over. When finished I rechecked all the threads to make sure it was right. Needed a break from it, so there it sat.

  I finished the tie up of the pedals according to the draft (pattern) and started to weave-ugh part of the pattern was all wrong. I was to have little squares in some sections. It took allot of playing around to figure out the mistake in the pattern. This is a pattern I found in one of the Handwoven magazines I was getting for several years-Summer 1985. Never had this occur before with one of their patterns.

  So I was so happy that I was able to figure this out--but then after weaving several inches I see another pattern mistake-now it is in the pattern that is threaded through the heddles ugh 

   The right side section is not making the little squares.  Only way to fix this is to cut the threads and re thread that section-ugh. Do I want to do this? No but Yes I will need to, but decided to weave one towel first and then cut that off the loom and rethread that section, tie it all back on and begin again. This project will make several 40 inch long towels so don't want the mistake in all of these towels. This process will waste allot of threads so decided to weave off the first towel first.

  On a second thought-I may think on this and decide to cut if off now and fix the problem first before weaving more. Frustrating for sure I know I am not happy with this threading error

This is what the weave is suppose to look like (where the squares start) across the whole towel I wove about 4 inches below this trying to figure out how to correct the mistake in the pattern tie up.


This is what the right side looks like-that should be all little squares where there is just 2 and then 1 row of squares. This is very frustrating for me. I know things happen.


  Sorry about the photos, this camera is just not taking good photos for me-you can't even tell that the squares are blue in this above photo. I will be looking for a new camera soon-this distorts the photos when I zoom in-there is no auto focus, the colors are not always true-I should have tested the camera out better before deciding to keep it.

   I did get a decent pre sunrise photo very early this morning-the sky was very red


Here is a photo I took several weeks ago-you can see how it is distorted a bit from zooming in Not as bad as most-I can not zoom photos in for boats on the lake or the eagles at all-sigh

     I thought this was an interesting line up of these Canada geese.



Happy Mid week and if you are in the States Happy Independence Day

Sunday, June 25, 2023

Good Morning-First Summer Sunday

  Happy Summer! 

    Here in the Ozarks on the lake summer has arrived for sure this week-very hot and humid with the temperatures in the high 90's.  We are getting missed by the rain chances so far, am needing to water my perennials early each morning recently. Lots in bloom again-so pretty and the butterflies are loving the garden

  I took a few photos of the flowers-so pretty right now.  

    I am very unhappy though with my latest camera-I hadn't realized that the zoom feature does not work-all it does is distort everything, close up photos not too bad but in full sun does not take good photos. Sooo I will be needing to look for another camera soon. Will wait  a bit as both our cars needed a little work done to them this month, and I have to go back to the dentist-ugh, I ended up with an infection-the day after I stopped taking the pills (2 weeks of antibiotics) the pain is back-ugh. They can't seem to find anything in x rays so far either.

Just beginning to bloom-so excited when I saw these-I bought rooted plants last year





Larry has his "toys" out ready to work on stuff-too hot right now though



Enjoy your new week

   


  

Monday, June 19, 2023

Spinning Fibers-updated

   Good morning, I thought I would drop in with a post.  I have been spinning most every day for the last 10 days or so.

  Over the weekend I grabbed the bag I had of odds in fibers and blended them together on my blending board. This is always a fun project, and I now have pretty much used up everything that was in the odd fibers bag. I had allot of yellows left with a few other colors-this yarn will go into my bag of Yellowstone colors for weaving.


This is a bulky yarn, which will go well with the other Yellowstone spun skeins I really love how this came out.


   After this one I have been spinning a UK Wensleydale fiber over the weekend-wow this is an amazing fiber. Very very soft and a very long staple length, and soooo easy to spin-wish I would have tried this before.  Here is a photo I found online   I am in love with this fiber. If I didn't have so many bags of fiber to spin already I would buy more.



Some of my readers may remember back around 2016 and later I went to Fiber U for classes on spinning and other fiber related classes. During that period I did go a bit overboard buying fibers to spin. smiles

  I went through my stash early this morning-which is a surprise now after all these years and the move from the woods home-and found another good spinning practice bag of roving. It was full with 2 pounds of USA blended long wools. I couldn't believe the price either-the 2 pounds of roving plus shipping was less than $24.00. Now that price will get you around less than half the amount of fiber plus shipping


  This will keep me busy and hopefully improve my wheel spinning.

    I did buy some new wool breeds to try though-which should arrive in the mail this week. I was intrigued about the sheep in Iceland that Erika posted about. I enjoy spinning the different rare breeds that are not as popular any more. I found an etsy seller that had icelandic white and greys. I bought two greys.

 Here is a photo of the darker grey and a link to the shop


  I found this photo online of an Icelandic sheep-grey




I also bought a rare Shetland roving from another Etsy shop which is a dark brown.






 Those of you that know me-I do not like white, so all the white yarns I am spinning will be going into the dye pot-I have allot of dyeing to do in the near future, more than I had realized.

Have an awesome new week

Oh and this is a view of Lake in the Ozarks-Father's Day weekend-found online




Wednesday, June 14, 2023

Photo and a Poem--Spun Yarn

 Still spinning on my wheel-Miss Ashley (my Ashford Traveler wheel)


Found this poem on a rock-online



Tuesday, June 13, 2023

Photo and a Poem

 I was communicating with a blog friend about slowing down posting for a bit. She had such a great thought-posting a photo and a poem or a quote. I love this for now. Thank you again-

   I think this will brighten my day looking for poems or quotes (I am not a writer) and sharing with a photo. 

  One of my pre sunrises-reflecting on the lake



Poem found online


 Each Dawn

       by Annette Wynne

Each dawn before my eyes I see
A shining new day spread for me;
All trace of worn-out yesterday

The winds of night have washed away.
O let me use God’s hand-work well—
His glorious daily miracle!

Sunday, June 11, 2023

Slowing Down on Social Media

   I almost just edited my previous post to add this to it, but decided to post a short blog instead.

  I think with summer coming and gardening and other outdoor work goals, I will not be posting as much for awhile. Perhaps just a short Sunday post like I have been. Also will not be posting every week for T for awhile. I enjoy reading the blogs that link up over on T but that does take allot of time to read and comment. Sadly there are still several that don't visit back that link up-but I don't let that bother me any more like it used to. 

   I may have done this last summer too. It's not that we are all that busy with our senior lives at this moment in time for us, but it is good to get away from social media a bit. I try to stay away from hearing politics too as our country is going through a very difficult time-wokeness, extreme agendas and companies trying to change the fabric of our country and morals-scary times for sure-in my opinion of course.

  I have greatly slowed down being on Facebook-where I mostly visit my groups that I enjoy, and I am still enjoying Instagram as I can just scan through lots of photos from things I am interested in that I follow. Finding sashiko and mending inspirations, botanical inks, nature photos and wonders, national parks-things I have an interest in and enjoy seeing and learning more about. There are some amazing fiber artists over there too for inspiration.

  Today and most of last night we got rain, and it is still raining off and here today-Sunday. We were so dry so this is a blessing for us. I pray those of you that needed rain will get some soon.

  I do enjoy my friends on Blogger, but mostly need a break from the need to read and comment back on link ups. I will visit friends more right now at my own pace. I will be around for T's 10th anniversary event though

Happy Summer time (image found online)



It's Raining

 Good morning, we are so thankful-rain-and lots of it so far-a gardener's rain so no storms or high winds. We soooo needed rain, The lake is down in elevation where we live, so we have gotten missed allot this spring, as I know many here in the midwestern states need rain as well. So I am hoping this rain is wide spread.




    After the rains I will need to spend time doing some much needed weeding around the gardens this coming week. I never enjoyed that task. I think it is because it was one of our tasks growing up as kids-weeding Mom's huge veggie garden.

   I have been spinning a bit the last few days-Me and Miss Ashley spinning wheel are doing much better. Finally the foot action keeping the wheel spinning is more natural now and I don't need to think about it as much. Finer yarn as well, although still not consistent through out a whole bobbin full
 .  My vintage wheel is still giving me troubles. Ever since we moved from the wood' house, I can't get the yarn to load on to the bobbin. I changed from a flax to a cotton drive band which I was hoping would be the answer-nope. It can also be a tension issue-after a couple hours still no fix. Will try again later today.

   My husband just discovered the new Avatar film showed up on HBO last night-anxious to view it as we loved the first film. This movie is over 3 hours long-so I am thinking lots of action and the special effects should be really good too. Didn't realize avatar was a Disney movie though.  I am not too happy with their wokeness lately. I had ordered a dvd of the movie but canceled the order since we found it released on HBO

  On June 2nd I needed to go to the dentist-a bit before our friends arrived from Wisconsin. An old filling broke between two crowns. I have been in much pain ever since. I must have been allergic to the numbing shot as it took a week for that to mostly go away. Something is wrong for sure-I will need to call first thing Monday morning to see when I can get in. Nothing worse than  tooth pain that never stops.

 Yesterday, I put together the 10th anniversary T package for my swap partner-will get that in the mail this coming week.

Have a good week everyone


 

Saturday, June 3, 2023

Good morning-a little update

 Good morning-Weekend.

    Hi Friends, Just popping in really quick to say hello.  Tomorrow-Sunday- friends from Wisconsin will be driving down visiting for several days. Rob is coming with a friend (we know Rich too) to go fishing and they are bringing Rich's brand new boat. Seems like a long drive (600 miles or so) to trailer a boat down when Larry has one. Smiles    Soooo I will be busy cooking up meals etc and won't be around much or for T this coming week.

  We did finally get a little rain, just enough so I didn't need to water the perennials for a couple days. We are headed towards the 90's though starting today and warmer at  night too-so will miss those cool mornings to start off the day.

   I am off to finish cleaning the house. Yesterday I went food shopping and ugh the dentist-I had a very deep filling between two crowns that needed fixed-I am still in pain from that, but thankfully I was able to get in right a way.

 Have a great weekend and new week-we will be watching the race boats on the lake-that came to play this weekend.


 Our 41st wedding anniversary is this coming Monday, so I made one of Larry's favorites-from scratch lemon meringue pie-one of the very few things I bake with sugar still



 and a pretty pre-sunrise this morning