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I've woven a little sample blanket of the lampas weaves I've been using, but with new weft yarns. The ground weft is a gray cotton, and the two pattern wefts are a cream colored bamboo (not strange) and an olive green polyrurethane coated cotton (very strange). I've had the latter yarn in my stash for a while, and don't remember where (or why) I bought it, but thought I'd try it out. This might be a good fabric for a book cover. It has a stiff, plasticky feel.
Yesterday we had an appointment with a glue gun. C is building a jump for her model horses.
Then there was an interesting upholstery sighting. This one is jacquard, but it looks like random plain weave. Very clever!
And paramount excitement, my new glasses are ready.
In spite of the increasingly delaminating and cloudy lenses in my old glasses, I've manged to read two books this month. First was Joyce's Ulysses, which I've been meaning to read for most of my adult life & finally got around to it, in an electronic version. Fabulous! And fabulously difficult, but worth it. Then in an interesting pairing, Rabbi James Cohn's The Minds of the Bible: Speculations on the Cultural Evolution of Human Consciousness. This is a fascinating read.
Now that I can see properly, no telling what will reading material will appear on my night table in the weeks ahead.
I don't have any pets. No dogs, no cats. I had a dog once. His name was Mercury. R.I.P.
I do have quite a few granddogs. I have loved some of them.
On my morning walks I see cats. Most are skittish and bolt as soon as they see me coming. One or two lie in wait for birds and are still as statues and are not distracted by such as me. In general most cats ignore me. Except for Boots. He comes right up to me and rubs against my legs. He has white socks on his front paws and white boots on his rear paws. He is a conversationalist.
Boots: Meeow!
Me: Hello pretty Boots, do you mind if I take your picture?
Boots: Meeow, meeow.
Me: Click, click, click.
Finally the more interesting part of Iceberg is approaching. This is where it gets to be fun to weave. Most of these structures are lampas, but there's some satin thrown in for good measure.
Here it is a little closer. Click to enlarge.
I didn't get to Yellowstone this year, unfortunately, but Kathleen took some great photos when she was there and I drew this elk while looking at her beautiful photo on my monitor. I wish I had left a little more room for his antlers. There's a lot to be said for planning ahead.
By coincidence, this waiting room upholstery makes use of the same palette I'm working with: warm neutrals.
Sometimes going to the neighborhood pharmacy is exciting.
Iceberg is underway, but it really doesn't get exciting until halfway.
Here are two aspect ratio tests. To refresh your memory, ppi/epi=aspect ratio. The first woven strip gave me a value of 1.07, and the second one .98; so roughly, averaged out, that comes to about 1.0, or woven to square! A very unusual result, in my experience. What it means is that I will not have to alter the vertical dimension of my new design.
Working title of this one is Iceberg.
I didn't like the way the 9-end satin was combining with the lampas weaves in this sample blanket, so I redid the blanket with a 12-end satin background instead. This is a better blend, with similar warp takeup in all the weaves. Some of the weaves look interesting on the "wrong" side, too; I may be using some of them as well. There is a lot of textural variety in this palette, even though it is very restricted in color. I'm looking forward to working with it. Click to enlarge.