November Wrap Up

 November has been a busy month.  It's passed by in a whirl of activities and waiting.  It seemed to both speed by in a blink and be interminably long at the same time.  The waiting is almost over though and tomorrow we'll see if it was worth it.   The activities though have been pretty successful.  The weather has been weird to say the least.  We've had snow.  We've had more snow.  We've had rain.  We've had almost record breaking warmth and sunshine.  I hung laundry out the other day because it was so nice.  Yup, totally weird weather.

This year's Christmas cards are finished.   I made 10 of them.   Sadly the tape I used to hold the cards to
the workspace, ripped a bit of the paint off one of them, so only 9 survived.     I was going to make a few more, but these turned out to be fairly time consuming.  In the past, I taped up 3 at a time to paint in stages.  The process for these made it easier to do only 2 at a time.  It was 4 steps, with complete drying time in between the steps, so they weren't really able to be done assembly line fashion.  I liked them enough to inital them this year.  I did enjoy the process though and have already had some thoughts about next year's cards.

I warped up the rigid heddle loom with some kid mohair /silk yarn.   It was $3 tiny ball, of less than 50g and with 219 yards.     It's very fine and I struggled to figure out what reed to use.   I found a single article with actual details on weaving mohair on a rigid heddle loom.   There were lots of  "hey look what I did" articles, but not so much on the "here's how I did it" articles.    So I ran with the single article information and tried it at a sett of 7.5.  It wasn't perfect, but it worked nicely enough.

Mohair is fuzzy and has quite a halo.  If you don't take that into account when you dress the loom, those fuzzy bits catch on each other and are difficult to weave.   Then also can start stick up instead of laying flat, which makes for a scratchier fabric.   The idea is to use a sett which takes into account the extra width created by the mohair halo, and then this allows it to lay flatter and lock together, creating a stable, but light, gauzy fabric.  

The silk core made this a bit slippery but the sett allowed me to weave it easily.  I had to place each weft

shot into place, rather than push the reed to the fell line, or it became to thick and stiff.  The resulting fabric is not quite as stable as I'd hoped, but I only lightly wet finished it, due to days of wet weather.  I will redo it before it becomes a gift.  It's very pretty though, light and the colour is fun.  It's also fairly soft and very drapey. 

It took just under 2 balls of yarn for this scarf - 9 in x 76 in, plus 7 inch fringes.  I have 3 more in this colourway and 5 more in a second colourway.  Lots of yarn to experiment with!

After the Pumpkin Festival at Westfield, which was crazy busy and so much fun, I came home with 2 lovely pie pumpkins.  I recently processed them and ended up with 6 packets of pumpkin for the freezer.  There are 5 with 2 cups in them, perfect for pies and 1 with just over a cup of pumpkin, which works for a pumpkin loaf recipe.  

It was really nice pumpkin, better than I found around here.  The flesh was thick and dry, so it didn't need a lot of draining.  I do like having these ready to go packets in the freezer.   There is little waste when the quantity fits a single recipe, unlike commercial tins, which leave me making either double what I want, having to freeze the leftovers, which for some reason, doesn't work quite as well, or some of it ends up as waste.

Autumnal Craziness abounds

Argh, it's been crazy busy around here.  The past weekend was the weavers guild sale.  We had amazing participation from members willing to come out to man our booth.   It was part of a greater community art sale.  The location has been moving around for a number of years, even before Covid, and sales have been pretty iffy at times, depending on the spot.   One location was well attended by a huge number of people who commented each time we tried to engage them, that they were only here for an afternoon out and to look.  It was so frustrating.   This weekend though, the location was such that the people came ready to shop.   Even though they shopped at all the different booths, it was lovely to see the artists happy at the sale.  

There were a couple of potters with lovely wares.  One was a little too softly coloured, with their good smaller and pastel glazed.  The other however, had pieces with lots of cobalt, white and copper glazes with beautiful shapes.  There were mugs big enough for my tea mug.   Since my currant tea mug has suddenly acquired a chip in the base, I was getting worried about it breaking and not having a replacement.  One of those lovely mugs came home with me.  I really liked the cobalt and copper look, but the mugs were smaller, so I came home with a white and cobalt mug, big with a nice shape.  I got to have one cup of tea in it to test it and then hubby put it away.

 I still adore my tea mug that I've used for almost 14 years.  It's the perfect size and weight for me.   It's made by Oneida and it's obviously from a Christmas collection since the cat is wearing a pine wreath or circlet on it's head and a red scarf with stars.  I've looked on and off over the years for a replacement on various sites and not even found a reference to this pattern.  I think of the 100's of cuppas I've had in this over the years and it does make me sad that one day that chip will crack the cup.   Still, it's been a good journey with this cute cup. 

I've been on a weaving binge, although my hip has complained excessively.   With the sale on the horizon, I had a commission for blankets.  They had to be done before the sale though.  I'll admit that one night we ate frozen chicken burgers for supper, and another night I made a quiche in the name of expediency so I could finish the projects.   Much crazyiness ensued for two weeks but my family was okay with it.  Blankets were finished in time and handed off to the new owner.  That was a sigh of relief.

Yesterday morning I put a scarf warp on the rigid heddle loom.    I went to the sale at Spinrite and they had this kid mohair/silk on for $3 a skein.   It's absolutely lovely and I wish I'd purchased more.  This one is about 8 inches wide.   It's very soft and weaving up nicely.   

My research suggests that mohair needs to be woven with a wider sett, to keep the fuzzy halo, soft and not itchy. It's supposed to catch and and can be tough to weave.  It's weaving beautifully however.   I read  that mohair yarn that is 1000yds per 100g, should be sett at 7 or 8.   I'm using my 7.5 reed, so I'm hoping it will be good.   It's certainly pretty enough.  

This is Phil and Dion, the feral kitties who chose to live with us.  Literally, Phil (on the left) hung around all summer, then screamed at me one day when I went to hang laundry when the weather was cooling.   I looked after him and the next day he brought Dion with him.  They didn't leave.  They are now spoiled house cats.  They sleep together when the weather cools down.  

  In the cold weather, Phil really likes to be warm at night.  He wakes me up so that I can lift the covers and give him a space to crawl underneath.   A lot of times he seems to decide to spend the whole night there, so he slips his head on my pillow so his body stays warm.  I've woken up and he's in the same place he was when I went to sleep.  If he's just cold though, he just curls up underneath the blankets.  Once his nose and feet are warm, he hops out.   Believe me, sometimes his feet get cold to be felt through jeans and long johns, so I can understand why he wants to warm up under the covers.