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

T Stands for Tuesday & Black Walnut Salve Made & Weaving Update

 T Stands for Tuesday is upon us, so we gather with friends over at Bleubeard and Elizabeth's-to join us just post a drink related photo in your T post.

  Over the weekend we began to warm up a bit in the afternoon, the fall colors are really pretty in my area too. I need to grab my camera and take a few photos while taking a walk which I haven't done in awhile.

  Late Saturday I did make the black walnut salve, and I ended up making one and half of the recipe I shared a few posts back. I only had about a tablespoon left of the infused oil, so that worked out really nice. I still have a big bag of little jars and lids that I used to use for the butters and hand creams I would make, that felt so good on the skin, especially now as we get into dry skin weather. I need to make some of that next.  I got three little jars from the recipe-will be sharing one with a friend.

  This is the jar of the black walnut hulls infusing in olive oil and coconut oil for a week.

  She mentioned you could make the recipe right away or wait 6-7 days. The extra days helps to get more benefit from the black walnut hulls.

   Today I followed the recipe and heated up the strained oil with the beeswax pastilles til melted in the oil  and again just heat the water no bubbles or it will be too hot.

    Strained oil on the right these two canning jars will now be designated for craft only useage

Once the beeswax is all melted-take off the heat, and following recipe add in the clove essential oil and lavender essential oil. I also added a few drops of Vit E as well

Since I used mostly olive oil the slave is more green in color I used an extra virgin organic robust olive oil, along with coconut oil.

and since I will be sharing one, I stamped up an information card, and also labeled all three jars. very pleased with the results and these are fun to make

  Friday late I finished up with dressing the loom. It is all ready for weaving now. If I hadn't been so tired I would have started to weave as I am anxious to see the pattern.

   Starting to tie warp on to the front

Finished

One last thing needed to be done-change up these according to the pattern My loom has 4 shafts and each pedal is set up so I can change according to the pattern

Below is the pattern to the far right-where those little circles are-you can see how I have matched those up to above photo (the numbers to the left of this is the pattern for threading all those threads)  Below that box with the circles is the pattern for the pedals while weaving

  Sunday I did grab the camera and took a short walk around where I live-it warmed up to the low 70's f-that was awesome-same for Monday I only walked around half the circle as there is a very very steep hill to go down or up-with my knees decided not to do that.

    I also got one of my dye pans out and filled it up with walnut hulls, some whole nuts with the hulls dried on-and will let it soak 24 hours. Tomorrow I will set up one of the weber grills to simmer this down into ink. Need to take advantage of these few warm days. Still no hard freeze  here as of yet.

This last photo is our home Our little area of the lake is very pretty this time of year-and quiet-not many boats, as most have already winterized their boats by now.

   and Larry heard loons on the lake over the weekend-I was so excited to see them last winter.

  Those bare trees below are the black walnut trees-we have several small ones. The nut trees always lose their leaves first, and I think most of the nuts are down now

For my drink share I grabbed a pretty little handmade pottery cup, made by one our favorite potterers back before retirement

Happy T and New Week  

     and a quick little update-gorgeous day today (Monday) so I set up the large Weber to boil down the black walnuts that were soaking overnite. Around 3 in the afternoon, I took the pot off the Weber-since it's heavy, put the lid on and will let it sit overnite-needs to cool down. Tomorrow I can begin straining and see how it looks.

    I re read some more posts about making this ink-and so many similar but different methods. I will see what it looks like after strained to see if I should boil down anymore. In the mail today I did get the hide glue that is suppose to help thicken the ink it's what was done early on. I also read last night that a few drops of wintergreen essential oil will prevent molding or to add a clove to each bottle. I do have whole cloves, and I just ordered the wintergreen eo

   Or some say to refrigerate. Or some say vinegar and salt which I don't want to do, and some say they never had an issue with molding. 😀

Stay tuned for an update on the ink project.

T Stands for Tuesday & Another Birthday & Weaving

   Hello everyone,

      This morning (Monday) we have the autumn feel for sure. The air is crisp and with the fast storm that came through late yesterday everything is wet and damp.

  This is also my T post where we gather over at Bleubeard and Elizabeth's with a drink related photo. Link in my sidebar.

     Yesterday was my birthday (72 now yikes), so I made us homemade Belgium waffles-they are one of Larry's favorites that I don't make too often as it is a heavy carb and sugar meal. I don't really have a favorite food except for snack foods like potato chips. haha In my 20's I lived on potato chips because I liked snacking more than sitting down and having a meal. Back then I was the head cook for a year long camp outside of Chicago where me and an assistant made all homemade meals from scratch-I was full just tasting and smelling the foods so by the end of the day I just grabbed a big bag of chips (smiles)  So that's where my love for snack foods began, as growing up as a kid at home my Mom never bought snacks. We did make popcorn though.

I forgot to take photos of my Belgium waffle iron. I divide the recipe in half and make a bowl of gluten free and one of wheat flour.

  I served these with pure maple syrup, sliced peaches, and blueberry preserves. Also sliced up Jimmy Dean's sausage into patties. We will have left overs today.

   For my birthday morning instead of working outdoors I worked on my loom. I spent the morning getting it all tied up in the back, then started winding on the warp. Well of course this did not go smoothly-haha it's this project for sure.  Some of the threads were getting crossed which was a surprise to me. Looking at the knots somehow a few of the knots had twisted the threads-strange another first for my weaving. Well a learning process, and it had to be redone. I am thinking getting older now and getting back to my weaving from about 15 years ago I have forgotten about some of the finer details that was just second nature to me when I was weaving allot. So I redid it this morning and going well so far Oh and someone had asked me on last week's T what yarn I was using. This is 8/2 un mercerized cotton and is also very soft.

This shows the back of the loom where these threads will get wound on 

This is what the front looks like.

As I wind on a few inches from the back-this area scoots up to the front reed, so this is a slow process-untangling threads and advancing the threads to the back

This is the back getting wound on-there will be 8 yards being put on

Mother Nature offered up a lovely morning for my birthday-I took two videos For better viewing expand to full screen and have your sound on-the ducks were vocal in these videos.

                                                                 

For my drink share this week, I am still brewing up a cup of mullein tea for my asthma in the mornings. I have been waking up very congested this month. I just ordered more of the herb mullein leaves and also the herb marshmallow root which is to work well with the mullein.

Happy T and new week 

T Stands for Tuesday-Back to the Loom

    Hello Friends,

        Welcome also to the T gang where we share a drink related photo in our post and link up over at Bleubeard and Elizabeth's to gather with friends.

     Over the weekend we were quite chilly, and I needed to switch over to heat. The house was in the low 60's and this is a bit too cold for us now. Wishing the woodstove here worked (last owner had a major chimney fire) as it's perfect weather to burn some wood to take the chill off.

   Saturday was my husband's birthday so I made his favorite food-bbq baby back ribs. I had planned to go outdoors and grill these on the weber grill but it was just damp and cold all day so I made them in the slow cooker instead. They turned out really well, but I like the results better in the oven. I didn't think to take photos-a simple meal with sliced avocado, cucumber, sweet peppers, and french fries that I cooked up in a cast iron skillet.

  We had gotten quite allot of rain last week, and then turning cold it wasn't ideal for me to work outdoors-so I finished threading my loom. In the end I was only over 8 threads in the count.

  In the first two photos the threads over the reed are the extras that will come off-now my towel project is centered again in the reed-haha I knew it didn't look centered before.

My back was aching so I waited til Sunday morning to start tying on to the back-this is a slow process as well After all tied on, then I will carefully wind on all the yardage-I think there is at least 8 yards here.

There is always allot of shrinkage with the first wash with handwovens, but these are still going to be large towels-reminded me of my farm girl Grandma's towels. She always had large towels for hand drying the dishes.

For my drink share I dug out a gluten free vodka-made with usa corn and made myself a mule-a shot of vodka, a squirt of lime juice, and ginger beer-I love this brand the best for the strong ginger flavor and this one is sugar free.  They call it ginger beer but there is No alcohol in it. I grabbed this glass that I bought at the brewery and pizza pub when our friends came down for a visit this summer-and filled it half full with ice first. I popped in one of my stainless straws.

First week of October I dug out my pottery Halloween "sacks' and the cast iron piece and added the little battery tea lights. It was dark when I took this photo-was hoping to capture the dark with the candles-but you can see that the candles are on.

Happy T everyone

T Stands for Tuesday-This & That--Updated around 4pm Missouri Time

   Good morning Everyone,

  Can you  believe it that September is almost over? For me it seems like this month just began instead of ending already.

  I was late for posting to T last week, so thought I would post earlier this week. Anyone is welcome to join us along with a drink related photo-link in my sidebar. Bleubeard and Elizabeth is our hostess-thank you Elizabeth for all you do for the group.

We have been enjoying lovely weather this past week, very cool mornings and then warms up during the day. Went through another pile of rocks over the weekend-mostly small ones. I am keeping one hummingbird feeder out as we are still seeing hummingbirds every day. Yesterday I didn't have a camera nearby but I was looking out the window and the most beautiful little hummer flew in. Very bright yellow-green wings, white under body and pinkish splashes. Looking it up could have been an Anna's

   photo from online-this is the male

or possibly this one a Broad tail hummingbird

 I am thinking more towards the Anna's but the photo shows more green on his chest  Hoping we may see another one this week. The migration has been going on for awhile so we are getting hummingbird visitors that are migrating It is rare in my area of Missouri I think to see hummingbirds other than the more common ruby throat, at least the 20 years at the woods house we only saw the ruby throated-thinking perhaps the lake water might bring others in.

  Cooler weather wants me eating eggs for breakfast now instead of our usual-Bob's Red Mill gluten free European museli-which is all raw gf grains, slivered almonds, and raisins either with yogurt or one of my nut milks.   This little tea pot with a strainer insert makes the perfect size cup of tea.   I have also been drinking a cup of the herb mullein tea for asthma-it really works.

  The mullein plant grows wild here in Missouri, you can dry the leaves and/or the flowers. I bought a bag of organic mullein, and the flavor is actually really good-was expecting not to like it. You may have seen this plant too

 

       I also got a bit more threaded on my weaving project-I have been doing other things so this is still not all threaded-almost now.  and I discovered I missed counted the threads so half of the grey to the left won't get threaded-a first have never missed counted before-ugh

   Saturday afternoon I had fun in my craft room and played with new to me stamps that I picked up used on Ebay (a great place for buying used-almost new stamps) for my October cards and slow mail friends. I ended up making 18 cards. I feel so organized haha.

   Closing with a few lake views-Happy T and new week

 Here is another heron at our  neighbors to the right of us

This morning's (Monday) sunrise-gorgeous

Update:   We have been missing "our" eagle pair lately-they did not disappoint. First there was one-then I heard allot of singing going on behind me on the lake and the one in the tree-then I didn't see it happen but the male flew to his mate and circled the lake singing away-so cool. I tried to record the song but didn't turn out well.

They both ended up back in the tree but not together-had a hard time getting a decent photo with my very old digital camera. Came in the house for a few minutes went back out and they are now sitting together-perfect!

Can you see the two eagles in this photo?

(photos will enlarge just click on them)