Weaverly

Fringe Benefits

The gray warp is all woven and cut off. This morning I sat on the back porch and tied fringes. 

The paperback I am using as a weight is the first one that came to hand, a weighty tome from my cookbook shelf. The New York Cookbook was recommended to me when I was researching the best recipes for a NY style Jewish rye bread, which some in the North call corn bread.

Apparently the term "corn bread" in this context is not the Southern style made with mostly corn meal, but a dense rye bread with a little corn meal, and a good sour flavor. 

In her introduction to the recipe, Molly O'Neill quotes Terry Kornick, " My mother learned to make this from her brother, Izzy, who immigrated to New York from Poland, where he had been in the shoe business." 

That's what I love about this cookbook. It's full of little personal gems. Out of print, you can still find plenty of used copies. 

And now a closer look at the scarf. 

And if that's just too much orange for you, here's a little purple from yesterday evening's jaunt to the lakeside to see the iris in bloom.

Bread & Books

Finally. A loaf of bread without a sinkhole in the middle. I'm not sure about the science behind sinkholes, but here's my story. For the past ten or fifteen years I've been making bread in a bread machine. It's not that I can't make bread by hand, just that I find it more convenient to throw the ingredients into the machine and push a button. And if it's more convenient, that means I'm more likely to do it often.

I keep track of my bread recipes in a journal, date every entry, and modify as needed. Sometimes I follow the recipes of others, & sometimes I make up my own. My first journal got lost. Very sad. My second journal is filled up, and last year I started my third journal. This is a handmade book. The cover fabric sports a design by my granddaughter (when she was about 8 years old) that I had printed onto linen at Spoonflower. The book itself is case bound. The pages are a paper stash I inherited from my father, who liked to draw.

I love this book and I enjoy writing in it.

The most recent journal entry documents that loaf of bread you saw at the top of this post. As you can see, I declared the experiment a success, and will be repeating the recipe in future bakes. By the way, I get the harvest grains blend and the rye flour from King Arthur.  Click to enlarge image.

Wool, Again

The last time I sat down to spin, after a long hiatus, the motor on this little friend was dead. It went in for repairs and is now back home & working like a dream.

There is a lot of wool here waiting in line. First up is this lovely carded Shetland I bought last year from a local farmer. It will be plied and then go on the loom. That's the plan.

In the department of books, I finished reading Hemingway's first novel, The Sun Also Rises. Apart from a huge dose of misogyny, racial epithets, anti-semitism, and rampant bad behavior in public places, it was an interesting read, especially the passages about fly-fishing in Spain and descriptions of the Spanish countryside. Comments welcome.

Wednesday Notes

Hello friends. Since we were last together, I've had company:

And I've been to the mountains. It was early spring there.

The old post office is still there, and still in use as a post office. 

I saw some interesting examples of complementary colors on my walks...

And when I got back home I finished another halvdräll towel. This one is hemmed and laundered. Cotton & cottolin. No shrinkage events here.


Up close and personal.

Recently read: Max Perkins: Editor of Genius by A. Scott Berg, and Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner.

 

Rainy Day

While waiting at the pharmacy this morning, I scanned the magazine rack. My favorite knitting mags are now $9.00 each. When did that happen? No thank you. 

It's a gray and rainy day, perfect for weaving. The hemp towels are coming along. I have this funny dance I do with the shuttle to keep the snarling under control. It gives me plenty of upper body exercise. I look like a crazed yoga instructor.

I like the way the cloth looks in black & white. The texture certainly comes through here.

How about blue?

In the Department of Books -- I just finished reading Julia Otsuka's The Buddha in the Attic. Extraordinary. Highly recommended.

Chaos

Chaos. What do you do when the world seems incomprehensible? Wind another warp, of course.

And the next picture is not related to the previous. It's for a warp in the planning stages, and may never make its way to the loom. That's OK, sometimes playing with the software is a good exercise to clear the mind, like a certain unnamed puzzle everyone is playing these days. You know the one I mean.

I have just finished reading We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, by Karen Joy Fowler. This is the one about a little girl who was raised from birth alongside an infant chimpanzee, as a psychology experiment. Outrageous and compelling.

I'm also in the middle of The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine by Serhii Plokhy. This is a heavy going, as it is quite long, but I can't put it down. I'm learning a lot about my own family history here. 

Straight Lines and Curves

No shortage of straight lines this morning at the Sustainability Center. More broccoli to come.

And for curves, I give you these...

...or these.

Meanwhile, I am still enjoying weaving dishtowel-sized samples on 12 shafts. This is a waffle variant.

And yet another waffle weave variant.

I don't know what you would call this. It started out as a 7-shaft point twill, and I amalgamated it & came up with this. OK, let's call it a crepe. Wet finishing will tell us more.

Another oddity which will  metamorphose into something very 3D. 

In the Department of Books, I have just finished reading Lucky Us by Amy Bloom. I loved her novel Away when I read it several years ago, and this one is equally good. 

Twos

When you walk around the lake, you get twice as much scenery. 

In the Department of Warps, these two lovely hand grips have speeded up production tremendously. Why didn't I ever think of this before? Each one weighs exactly 2.5 lb. I took this picture yesterday, and this warp is now beamed and ready for threading.

And in the Department of Books, I have just finished reading:

Laurie Colwin, Another Marvelous Thing

Dani Shapiro, Inheritance: a Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love

 

New Amalgamation Tool

For all you fans of handweaving.net (and I hope that's most of you), Kris Bruland's new amalgamation tool has just gone live. Go to the site, log in to your account, and have the best weaving hour of your life. Kris has produced an intro video which will get you started. 

I'm having a great time creating new drafts with this tool. It's not the same as working in your own software, but is an interesting extension. The more the merrier.

Here's a 16-shaft draft I came up with in 5 minutes, based on draft #54019 in handweaving.net, using the amalgamation tool. 

Possibilities

The sky this morning, just after the rain stopped. Lots of possibilities.

Into the woods. I spotted these little beauties again, off to one side. You really have to be paying attention. 

Carolyn says they are Helleborus. Such a grand name for a shy little thing.

On what remains of the linen warp, I'm trying a little experiment with energized yarn. The larger segments are amalgamations with a linen weft, and the narrow stripes are a basket weave variation with multiple strands of overspun wool singles.

I'm hoping that the real drama will come about in the wash, as the wool singles release their energy and shrink up. 

Just finished reading The Charleston Gambit by Stuart Bennett, an excellent historical novel about the Revolutionary War in the South Carolina backcountry.