Weaverly

Baseball and Light

Karl played his first stint as catcher yesterday evening. He did well. Afterwards he described his gear to me in great detail, including how hot it was under all that padding in the 90º heat.

After the game, I managed to snag this picture through the chain-link fence with my phone. I love the glow of the evening light through the dust clouds.

Later on, when there was hardly any light left at all, this caught my eye:

He was waiting, but for what? This was at a slow shutter speed and an unbelievably high ISO, and was punched and pulled with Photoshop, but there is still something left that I like, in spite of all the mangled pixels.

Blue, Lilac, Yellow

When I returned home after a two weeks absence, I found all the hydrangeas in bloom. They are extra large and gorgeous this year, perhaps because of the warm winter.

I love this blue. It's sky blue, but a little on the warmer side. Another color very much on my mind is from the lilacs I saw in Gloucester. We don't grow very good lilacs down here, and I really reveled in them last week. 

And to round out the trio, here is a yellow weft I'm trying out on the multicolor warp. This is a singles linen, very stiff and hairy. It's got a mind of its own, and just sits there in the shed and forces the warp to curve around it. Absolutely no draw-in! I like the way the warp colors and the crepe weave force constant changes in the spots of color appearing on the surface—long, short, higgeldy-piggeldy.

Weaving Again

The new warp is all tied on now, and I began sampling an 8-shaft crepe weave with a turquoise cottolin weft. The turquoise looks a little washed out in the tungsten illumination, but it is really very vibrant.

At midday, I went out to lunch with my mother. She thought I was photographing the upholstery, which I was, but I also snuck in a couple of shots of Mom. We had a good time!

The weave structure is hard to distinguish because of the nubby yarns, but it looks like it could have been done on a dobby loom—perhaps a 3-block satin? Click to enlarge.

Warping Time

This will be a short warp to drill into my stash of 10/2 and 5/2 cottons. 

Two chains. They will transition seamlessly (I hope).

A solid weft. Crepe.

The Gaffney Peach

Lunch at Lake Norman, NC

Almost home.

Near Martinsburg, West Virginia

Sightings

Just a few more impressions from on the road—almost home, not quite. This was sundown yesterday on the town square of Greenville, New York.

And the banquette upholstery in the restaurant where we ate dinner last night:

A-a-and, the upholstery at tonight's motel:

Moving On

Last night we enjoyed one more sunset at Lane's Cove and said goodbye to the lilacs and various cats.

Thia evening we find ourselves in Greenville, New York at the Greenville Arms 1889 Inn, home of the Hudson River Valley Art Workshops and Life by Chocolate.

Back to the Shipbuilding Museum

The rain continued, but after a morning of reading we decided to go back to Essex again. This time the Shipbuilding Museum was open, and we were given a fascinating tour of the collections by a fifth-generation member of a shipbuilding family. Essex was at one time builder of more wooden fishing vessels than any other port in the nation. There is now one working builder left. 

Part of the collection of models and old photographs is kept in an old schoolhouse, and behind the schoolhouse is—another cemetery!, this one dating back to the 1600's. I don't know if it was the result of weathering, but some of the stones were rose pink, a lovely contrast to the dark gray ones.

The rain eventually cleared, and from our porch it appears that tomorrow will be sunny:

I think we will have a good sunset tonght.