Time consuming projects

These are the new tea towels on the loom.  They are a huck variation pattern.  Not only are they fairly quick to weave off, but they look much more complicated than they are.   The bonus is that the weft colour has a significant influence on how the towels look when done.  Each towel will look quite different depending on the weft colour chosen.

I'm betting lots of people have done these towels.  The pattern was in an issue of Handwoven Magazine a number of years ago, and here is a similar, if not the same project free to download.   I'm sure everyone and their sister has made these towels.  I even was inspired colour wise by a guild project a couple of years ago.  The grey and navy works with so many colours and the light and dark stripes add a lot of interest.     One towel down, and only 4 more to go.

 

A while ago I made this hat.  It's knitted and then felted.   I made some proddy flowers for a demo I'm doing and they were perfect to display on the hat.  It makes the hat really fun.  Right now the flowers are just  pinned on the hat with straight pins.  The hat is thick enough that the tips bury in completely.   Once I feel comfortable going out to get crafts supplies, I will get some pin backs and finish the flowers off properly.  Alternatively, I could just stitch the flowers down permanently.   

I wore the hat on my walk the other day and it was super warm, despite not covering my ears.  Like really, winter appropriately warm.    Yay for that!

 

We did our first sap boil this weekend.  We had about 120 litres of sap, which boiled down to almost 3 1/2 litres of maple syrup.  It should have been a full 3 1/2, but I misread the thermometer and I finished it at a degree higher than it should have been.   Sadly, only 3 of the 500 ml jars sealed, so tomorrow or Tuesday, I will empty them into a pot, re-heat them and then reseal them in clean jars.   

It's really good this year and my temperatures mistake means it's super thick.   I admit that I licked the spatula when I was done scraping the last of the filtered syrup into the pot for reheating, before canning.   YUM!

It feels like I should have gotten more done this week, but all of these projects took way more time than anticipated.  Well, the syrup boiling always takes a long time, but the flowers were part of a demo which will be done with a power point. It always takes me more time than expected to put one together.  Dressing the loom is always a bit of a slow project.   Too many distractions :)