This is one of our favourite local trails, which overlooks a small lake. The sky really was that blue that day. Our winter skies, and sometimes our late autumn skies tend to be pale and watery grey blue.
One of the invasive weeds in our area is Virginia Creeper. It takes over fence lines and grows into any nearby trees. I pulled a couple of vines from a large pine tree near our fence line and the rest pulled off the back part of our deck. I took a couple of bittersweet vines as well because they were growing up in a space between decking boards. They were all still fairly green, so I wove them into wreaths. They need to dry flat before I bring them in to decorate them. I checked them this morning as was surprised how damp the underside felt, so I flipped them over. I put them in the gazebo to keep any rain or dew off them.I wove a scarf on the rigid heddle loom using some lovely yarn I'd picked up. I did the calculations for the sett before I dressed the loom and using 10 dents per inch worked out perfectly . However, the yarn was fuzzy, not quite as bad as a mohair yarn, but noticeably fuzzy. Hindsight, after only weaving a few rows, says I should have gone down to a 7.5 dent to make the fuzzy yarn easier to weave. I had to open every shed with a pick up stick before weaving. I have more yarn, so I'll try that next time.
Regardless, the scarf, while taking a bit longer to weave, was quite nice until a quick check of the underside showed that I had some small floats from skipped threads: about 5 of them. Instead of bothering to fix them, I ironed some lightweight interfacing on the back and cut up some shapes to make stuffed woven strawberries. I stitched them by machine, cut little leafy top green bits free hand from felt and sewed them on by hand, adding some hemp twine for hangers. I'm going to see if the guild wants them for their $5 ornament fundraiser. If they don't, I have lots more materials and there will be strawberry ornaments for everyone this year!
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