Endings and Beginnings

 

The towels with the painted warp off the loom.  They were hemmed and hung to take a photo.  I like them a lot.  The black one shows off the colours really well, however it looks out of place with the rest of the towels.  The other ones are a bit less dramatic but they look really nice.  Even the green one which I wasn't sure about.  

Folded up they look nice too.  I think the purple is my favourite, but the teal is close.  They are all boxed up and ready to be put on sale this weekend.

I thought that I didn't have very much to put in the sale.  Because of the hip replacement, I haven't spent any real time on the floor loom.  What I hadn't realized was how much I've actually woven on the rigid heddle loom.  In this case, my big bin that I thought was too large, was actually full to the top!  That doesn't mean anything will sell though because buyers are fickle, money is tight for most people and lots of folks just come out for an interesting day out.  If things do sell though, it does help with buying yarn for next year.

Len's Mill Store sent out digital coupons and the yellow tag items were 80% off.  This is a pile of yarn which would have been $80 before tax.  With tax, I paid $17 and change.    Most of these are for the rigid heddle loom.  One is a ball of Hygge, a very thin fluffy yarn which has come to the notice of sock machine knitters as you can use it to line socks to make slippers.   The horrible yellow is sock yarn.  It's ugly and bright and was $1.88 after discount.  There is enough other yarn there for 3 shawls or maybe 4 or 5 scarves.   When I'm able to get yarn on deep discount, or at least on sale, it means I can sell my non- wool or silk scarves at attractive prices.  I like that because it means that handwoven items are available to those people who may not be able to afford them otherwise.  It's nice to let people have a choice.

I warped up the Inkle loom.  I used 4/8 cotton that I'd purchased years ago when I had this idea to make guitar straps for my family.  I'd already made 2 for myself - a banjo strap and a ukelele strap.  However there were still 3 kids plus 1 spouse who played, so I thought it was a good idea.   It took so long to make mine, that I ran out of time.  Plus, I'd thought that I'd be able to dye all the white to customize them and that really didn't happen either.

   I need to make a new Birka bag and my old strap is wearing where it attaches to the handles, so I put this project on for that purpose.   But, the tele was on and I was dressing the loom while I was watching some very compelling crime drama on Britbox.   I should never do things like this.  The stripes are different sizes and I missed a peg on 2 different threads so had to cut the strap off early because I could no longer pull the strap forward to weave.   It's about 12 inches too short! 

So sometime this week I need to find table space to paint my Xmas cards.  I still need to make a couple of pairs of csm socks.  I also want to put a new scarf on the rigid heddle loom to have something alternate to play with.  This all sounds doable except for the fact that hubby has a week off and who knows what will happen then.

Weaving and cooking adventures

 I had a huge post all planned out about cooking on the Happy Thoughts Range, or wood cookstove that I was using at Westfield.   It was Thanksgiving Day, and due to the local fair also being held, it's usually fairly quiet that day in the village.  I brought a number of pumpkin based historical recipes to cook and thought I'd have a ton of time to take photos.  However, everyone seemed to show up.  It was crazy busy, with really nice, interested and friendly people.  It was a great day, but so busy that I had no time to take photos, or to even get all of what I planned cooked.   Next day there is the Pumpkin Festival and it's a ticketed event, so people will be streaming in all day, but not all at once, which should be easier to deal with. 

I did however get the tea towels off the rigid heddle loom a couple of days ago.    There was more shrinkage than I expected with a sett of 20.  They are definitely soft and drapey, due to the fact that I couldn't get PPI for the weft tight enough.   But they are are much closer to the towels I weave on the floor loom or table loom than I'd expected.   Using two heddles, was a tad slower, but once you got the rhythm and order of the heddles, it wove up quickly enough to be satisfying.  After wet finishing they are 16" x 27".  Once hemmed they'll be 16" x 25.  Smaller but acceptable for a tea towel.

On the Rigid Heddle loom now is a wool scarf, with a hand painted yarn for the warp.    Next time I think I'd make it a longer skein to paint, so I could get longer colour changes, to make it more like a serendipitous plaid.    It's pretty enough, although they are not my favourite of colours.   I'm trying to hunt down the photo of the painted skein.  I must have take a picture of it, but I can't remember when I dyed this.   It was beautiful in the skein though.  It was a large skein, Lion Brand Fisherman's Wool, which comes in a 227g (8oz) skein and is 100% wool.  It's lovely to work with on the Rigid Heddle loom and dyes like a dream.

We had family Thanksgiving yesterday.   I was tasked with bringing turkey and apple pie.  I changed the apple pie to a pecan and a lemon pie because my son's girlfriend is allergic to apples.  However, it turns out it was only raw apples and the thing she's allergic to is destroyed by heat, so apple pie would have been fine.   This is a tiny pie I made for testing, with the leftover pastry and filling from the pecan pie.   I used maple syrup instead of corn syrup for the filling and it was sublime.  Expensive, but soo delicious.   The pecans alone, for the 2 cups that I needed cost over $10.  Definitely a special occasion pie!  The lemon pie was just a slightly adjusted old fashioned lemon meringue pie recipe but without the meringue, since that wouldn't hold or travel well and I'd made the pies the day before.   I added a bit more lemon zest and a bit more lemon juice for a slightly more tart pie, which people slathered with whipped cream since my daughter had whipped up a vast amount for the 3 pies which appeared on the table.   I tried the vegan pumpkin pie, which tasted fine, but had the texture that felt more like it was under cooked.  I'd have added a bit of cornstarch or something to make it less like an almost raw pudding texture.  It was a commercial pie and the crust was inedible: soggy and tough.  My guys are spoiled with good pies :)