More Inkle Weaving

 I've done a little bit of pickup pattern weaving on the Inkle Loom, but using Monk's Belt threading.  I found it pretty straightforward and fairly easy.  It was a tad tedious though, because it was much slower than regular inkle weaving.  It made a lovely pattern though.  I'd never tried Baltic  (also called Norwegian and I've seen it as Lithuanian) weaving.  It's also a block weave, although a bit different set up.   I'd found written instructions somewhat confusing and unclear.  I ended up watching a few videos, some of which were of limited help, one which seems like it was just wrong, and then a couple were clear in both instructions and in photography.   It was  a light bulb moment.  

 I dressed up the loom in a simple pick up pattern.  After a few mistakes and some fiddling, I ended up just weaving a simple part of the pattern to get my hands understanding what they had to do.  Then poof, it was good.  That being said, I have learned to unweave quite a lot, because if you miss a pickup row, everything goes to pot.  It is slower than just plain weave, but some of the results are well worth the efforts.

This is the simple part of the pattern.  It practically weaves itself for the centre part of the pattern.  You can see my fiddling about to see how the threads come up and down at the very bottom of the photo.  

 The main thing is that in this "pick up" weaving, you both pick up and drop the pattern threads.   The background threads remain the same, to be the actually weaving and stabilising aspect of the bands.  As the pattern colours get picked up, they show on top of the background.   When you drop them, it does leave a gap, that is filled in by the weft thread.   It makes a sort of basket weave or half basket weave and when using the same weft colour as the background, you can't see it at all. 

  You can't beat too hard or parts of the pattern will be squished and uneven.   

The pattern threads should be thicker than the background threads.  In this example, I used 4/8 cotton.  I used a single strand of blue for the background and weft and a double strands of natural for the pattern threads.   

This is the complete pattern.  The nice thing about Baltic pickup is that the back of the tape is just as pretty as the front.

Cookies and my Pepper Harvest

Westfield's theme last weekend was Cookies.  Apparently many other historical villages bake cookies as demo items, because they are pretty easy and appealing.  However it turns out that most of the  Westfield historic cooks cook other things far more often.   This opened up having a village wide theme  of cookies.  It was planned that we'd all make different cookies.   I made hard gingerbread.  Shrewsbury cakes, jumbles, rock cookies and thumbprints were being made throughout the village.   It was a tasty day for sure.  I handed out so many little gingerbread men to visitors that there were only a few left for the staff!

Back at home, I've been working on the garden.  The weather has been perfect, warm enough to not need a jacket, but cool enough to make for easy working.   I've cleaned out the raised bed that had been dedicated to green beans this year.   Then I harvested peppers.  It was a very good year for peppers this year!   I planted sweet banana peppers, jalapeno peppers and some kind of chilli pepper, that I'm pretty sure was mislabeled.   All the plants were very productive and had huge crops of fruit.   The jalapeños were small in size though, and all the hazy skies and clouds reduced the actual sunshine hours which for parts of my garden area, was an issue for actual ripening of the fruit.

I spent the morning threading each of those little hot peppers onto sewing thread to hang them to dry.  I'm not sure why I didn't anticipate how long that would actually take, but I actually turned on the tv and watched 1.5 episodes of Vera while I dutifully threaded the peppers individually onto the thread.  They're hanging in the kitchen now.   I'm packaging some peppers for my kids when we get together on the weekend.  It seems appropriate to share my garden bounty on our Thanksgiving.  

Tomorrow I'm going to harvest the last of the herbs.   I have some chives, parsley and a huge amount of leaf celery or soup celery.  I priced out dehydrators today but right now they are out of my price range, so I'll have to air dry the herbs.    

My son brought in the lemon tree yesterday.  It's so weird that we've still had lovely weather this late into the autumn.   While there hasn't been any frost warnings yet, the low temperatures for the next 3 days are supposed to hover just barely above freezing, which means at the very least patchy frost.  Getting the rest of the garden harvested before then just means less work of covering all the plants at night to protect them.     

Just a quick ramble

 There have been combines and harvesters about the area in the past few days.   On one day, all the surrounding bean fields had been harvested.   With the size of the combines, the beans were off the fields really quickly.  the neighbour across the road has been harvesting some of his cord for silage.   It's interesting watching him because every once in a while he starts harvesting a new area and his tractor and harvester just suddenly and unexpectedly pop up in a new area of the field.  

We've not had rain for ages.  Everything is dry.   Hubby ran the lawn tractor yesterday, just to get a few weedy patches and a dense grassy area over a leach bed.  It didn't really have to be done, but better that then giving any mice and other rodents an easy way to get into the house in the fall.  

I've been prepping for giving a presentation on Inkle Looms for the guild.   Somehow I thought that it was next week, but it's the week after so I have a ton more prep time.  I've samples of different patterns but some of the bits that were left from other projects are missing.  I think that maybe I tossed them out, thinking that I'd not have a use for partial lengths.   It's either that or I put them in a safe place thinking I'd know where that would be a couple of years later!   It's probably the safe place and I will find them after the presentation !  I'll bring my ukulele to show the wider strap I wove but I'd been hoping to have the sample of the banjo strap too.  I'm not hauling it to the meeting, nor removing the strap for a short program.

I do have samples of several techniques though, including monk's belt, some plain inkle patterns and even a bit of a narrow band of tablet weaving, all of which can be done on an inkle loom.  I was hoping to get a sample of Baltic or Latvian pickup as well, but this weekend turned out to be crazy busy.   We tried to go to the local garlic festival, but the line up to get in was really, really long and it was really, really hot outside by 11 am.  Neither of us wanted to wait out in the sun for that long, to get in.  We went to the market instead and I picked up really nice cauliflower for a very good price.   Hindsight being what it is, I should have bought more and frozen it.  However, it would have had to wait until next week for me to have time to put it up, so I left it there.  But really, I could have gotten it done on Tuesday, since I don't have to do the demo then.   I picked up cat food, and it was a pet event.  I got tons of cat food samples to use as treats, some treats, toys, supplements and even a nice new silicon cat food tin lid, in a kitty swag bag!   There were two adorable orange kittens at the pet rescue display.  I refused to go and pet them because I was I figured I'd bring at least one of them home.   I'd like another cat, but maybe not so much a kitten, but a little bit of an older kitty needing a home.  Not too old, but a couple of years old.

It's cookie day at Westfield tomorrow.   I'm making Hard Gingerbread from The Cooks Not Mad.  I used the 1841 version, but it's the same as the 1831 version.   It's a highly spiced, very delicious gingerbread which everyone who has tried it has liked it.

• 1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup butter, softened 
• 1 cup fancy molasses
• 4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tbsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp each baking soda, allspice, cinnamon and nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp cloves
• 1/4 tsp salt
Instructions:
Grease baking sheets or line with parchement paper. Preheat oven to 350° F.
Combine butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Mix in molasses until well blended.
Combine dry ingredients and stir into molasses/butter mixture being careful to not over work the
dough.
At this point you can refrigerate the dough divided into to discs for about 30 minutes to help make it
easier to work. You can roll it up into logs, wrap in plastic wrap and then foil to freeze for future use
or just roll it out and cut lovely little cookies.
Roll about 1/4 inch on floured surface, or cut logs into 1/4 inch slices.
Bake 8-12 minutes until done. Let cool for 2 or 3 minutes on the baking sheet and then transfer to wire
cooling racks.
( I sometimes don't bother with the cloves or the salt – it works nicely that way too.) Spice can be
adjusted to taste, but the joy of these is that they are highly spiced and very flavourful

The Local Fall Fair

 The very hot and dry weather this summer has made for a difficult growing season for my garden, since I'm using both deep raised beds and large planter pots.   It was difficult to keep them properly watered.  Sometimes they needed watering twice a day, but watering in the evenings usually causes mildew and other difficult to control diseases.   The only plants which seemed to thrive in these conditions were the basil, leaf celery and the peppers!   I was at a club meeting and asked for suggestions to use up some of these peppers as I wasn't thrilled with the pickled pepper recipe I used last year.   The gal on the fair committee said to enter them in the fair as they were a bit low on entries this year.   

So I entered the peppers, and a few other things.  The banana peppers which were rapidly turning red rather than yellow, took 1st place and the mystery hot peppers which weren't supposed to be hot, came second.  I was really pleasantly surprised at getting a ribbon for my meagre gardening results this year.

I also dug through the items I'd made over the past year or so and entered a few things in the hand craft division.  I certainly wasn't expecting to see this 1st place ribbon and a rosette for most points when I peeked in to the exhibit hall when I arrived to demo weaving on the first day of the fair.    

I may have entered more things than I realised.   Not everything won a ribbon.   A few things got the nice little thanks for entering sticker.   I entered 2 shawls from historic patterns, in 2 different sections.  The one section judge wrote lovely comments on the back of the entry tag saying it was  warm and congrats on finding and using an old pattern which was still a good pattern. The little stuffed bear also got a comment on how it was creative and child safe since I used safety eyes on it.

Most of these items are things that I just knit up in the evenings because I hate when the tv goes on and I have nothing productive to do with my hands!

a few items are missing due to lack of space

I was doing a demo on the Saturday with the Weavers and Spinners.   The fair was super busy and the two gals who were demonstrating table looms, spent the entire 5 hours teaching kids and adults alike, how to throw a shuttle, change sheds and use the beater bar.   It was totally awesome.  I usually bring my spinning wheel, but didn't this time, because sometimes people spend so much time talking to me about spinning and telling me their memories of relative spinning that they don't check out the weavers quite so much.   Next year, if we're invited back, I'll bring the wheel out to play.  I kind of missed that this year, but I'm happy I simply had a my little inkle loom because the other two demonstrators got so much attention.  It was great.  On Sunday I took my display of Dorset Buttons.  It was much quieter that day, so I had time to catch up with another demonstrator which I don't see very often.

The local fair is interesting because they've done away with a mid-way.  They've geared it to younger kids, with pony rides, games, bouncy things but kept it relatable for most others in the community by keeping the horse shows, the sheep show, the 4-H classes, the handcraft division, crops competition and live music the whole weekend.  I did demos both days and it was a great, albeit tiring weekend!

Eliza Acton's Lemon Tartlets

More trees are changing colour.  The fields of beans are drying out, as are the fields of corn.  Today I saw squash and pie pumpkins in the shops.  We went from crazy hot weather, to its fall for sure.  Last night it dropped to 5°C.  Poor Dion slept draped over whoever he could find to give him some warmth.  It's definitely autumn!  With the cooler weather upon us it gives me ample opportunity to bake!

I made the following recipe for Common Lemon Tartlets  as found in Eliza Acton's Modern Cookery for Private Families, 1859.

It was a very pretty tart.  Because my chooks have been free ranging all summer, their egg yolks are very dark yellow which helped with the colour.  

A patty pan tin is a small, individual pie tin about 3-4 inches diameter.  They are often in fancy shapes, fluted, hearts, shells, etc.  

Fluted small pie tins with removable bottoms worked really nicely for this.   I'd recommend pre-baking the pastry for a few minutes because the pie crust didn't quite fully bake before the filling was done.  Prick the pastry a lot with a fork for steam to escape and to help the pastry stay flat.  Pie weights, beans or rice might work too.   I made some in tart shells, in a muffin pans.  They weren't as pretty but worked just fine.

350°F is a moderate oven temperature.

This was easy to make.   It's very pretty.     With the eggs and butter, making a rich base, with the sugar and lemon juice, you get sort of lemon flavoured omelette.   The butter softens the lemon flavour.  I wasn't a huge fan of lemon flavoured eggs, although it was pleasant enough.   I'd used the little patty pans for other pies though as it's a fairly impressive presentation.  

Sunshine Cake - 1896

 This cake was definitely sunny.  It's a sponge cake and was only a little fussy to make.  It was well worth the effort and the eggs though.  It was pretty and tasty! It's definitely a party cake or when you need something to impress!   It was from the 1896 edition of the Boston Cooking School Cook Book, by Fannie Farmer.  

I followed the recipe pretty closely.   The only thing I deviated with was that I added the sugar  slowly, in several additions once the egg whites were half beaten, since I was using an electric stand mixer.    I sifted the flour with my sieve first, and spoon the flour into my measuring cup.  Then I resifted the 1 cup of flour with the cream of tarter to evenly distribute it.  

Things to know -

This was much easier to make than it seems.   Just remember to be gentle with folding in the flour and check the bottom of the bowl so that all the flour gets folded in evenly.    I would have sifted the flour in, but managed to stick the sieve in the sink, so it was wet.  

An angel food cake pan has a tube in the centre so heat circulates and bakes cake from both the outside and the inside at the same time.  If you don't have one, then I think that maybe a not too complicated bundt pan would work.   Just remember to not grease the pan so that the batter can cling to the sides while rising during baking.   

Remember to cool the cake upside down.   My pan has little legs on it for this but before I had it, I just set it on something to keep it off the ground.   This keeps the cake light and fluffy as it cool settle and get a little heavy otherwise.

Moderate oven is 350 °F.   The suggested time was pretty accurate.   The cake should be nicely risen,  puffy and bounce back when gently touched.   

I will make this again but I'll drizzle it with a simple glaze of icing sugar, a few drops of water and either lemon juice or vanilla.  I think it would just add that little bit extra fanciness.

Garden and spinning update!

 Gosh it's gotten cool here.  I harvested the last cucumber on the plants, and with no more flowers, that was the last for the season.  I ate it for lunch the next day.   There are still tomatoes on the vine, but they are all quite green.   We're supposed to have some warmer weather next week, so I'll leave them and hope they get a bit bigger.  There are tons of Hungarian yellow peppers, although I've no idea if they are hot or not.  There are Jalapeños left to harvest.  There are also a lot of them, however they are quite short.  The mystery pepper plant is all still green, but they are very long and slender, so I'm guessing some sort of hot chill pepper. I'll harvest them sometime soon.  Other than that, there are only herbs left to harvest; parsley, basil and soup celery.  I'm going to plant one bed with garlic this fall.   Seed garlic should be in the feed store in a couple of weeks.   

I got 100 g of lovely, deep pink roving from A.  I spun it into singles and then decided that I was going to spin up more singles to ply it, in a different colour, since this was hand dyed and I couldn't match it.   A gave me another 100g of the same fibres which I spun and dyed into a lovely soft grey.   I plied them together, deciding to make a matching hat and mittens.  I knit the mittens first, and then had to figure out how to make the hat fit the remaining bit of yarn.   Finally, after knitting and ripping out hats 5 times, I knit up a sample on a new toy, an old, but lovely working knitting machine.   I made a hat with just a few metres of yarn to spare!

The sky was quite moody on our last hike.   It looked like rain clouds, but it didn't rain and a surprising amount of sunshine broke through the clouds.  The river had a lot scummy stuff on it, which I've not noticed before.  It was a very hot summer though, so that could have been the reason.   There were a lot of dogs on the trails that day.   I generally don't mind them running off leash, as I've only had 1 incident with an aggressive dog.   However, a few owners have decided that they don't need to clean up after their pups, which sadly made for some areas where you had to watch where you stepped, rather than enjoy the scenery!

The Rudbekia or black eyed Susan's were pretty much past their peak blossoms.   The large field of them was showing a lot of spent flowers and not very many blooms.   On the home stretch of the trail, walking beside the river, I saw these pretty blooms.  They look like they should be Rudbeckia but their petals are short and roundish.  I looked it up though and it seems there is a related flower called the Brown eyed Susan and it looks like this!  Pretty enough and nice that it was blooming when it seemed like only the golden rod and a few Queen Anne's Lace stragglers were left.   

I gave away my LeClerc Fanny counterbalance loom to a friend.  She's been looking for one locally but nothing in easy access has been for sale.   The one that came through the guild went to another member.  Since I'd not used it since I strained my shoulder weaving a couple of years ago, I felt it was time to pass it on.   I got this loom with  requirement to pass on another loom.  I have given away a 36 in Mira jack loom, a tapestry loom, a 5 ft. triangle loom and a 15 inch new Dorothy.  I think I have payed it forward enough.   I gave all of these away without any requirements though, just to enjoy and use them.   When my friend picked up the loom, she dropped off a couple of knitting machines she had in her garage.  One which is a plastic bed and the other that she felt I'd enjoy more, was a metal machine.  I've been playing with it and it's quire enjoyable.  It's fast and has a fairly big learning curve like the sock machine.  Really it's just practice and being willing to take off the tangles and figure out what you did wrong.  I had a few of those.