Still here, still working on the blasted tapestry.

Oh how time does fly!

Here it is 2017 and I'm still working on the sunflower tapestry. Progress is being made. I may even finish it before the end of the decade. Truth be told, I don't get out to the Shanty as much as I should these days.

Lest you think I'm completely slacking on craftyness, let me assure you that I have been carding fiber, spinning, and knitting. And there's that whole gardening thing. And now there's...[ta da!]...

Genealogy! You can read about that at my other blog, Rooted in Elizabeth.

Here is photographic proof of my efforts since last I wrote.

Well, first there were these guys. They sucked up most of my time in December 2015

[and lots of money too!] They were dumped out where I work, and after living on a manky deer carcass for five days I fed them and took them to my Vet's office to board. For three weeks. With the generosity of friends and strangers I didn't have to foot the bill all by myself, but boy was I glad to get these guys adopted out - one through the vet's office, and one through a very reputable rescue group. [I would have loved to keep the Doberman. What a complete goofy love muffin!]

Our own dog is getting older now (14!), but there are still walks and games and sleepovers with her doggie friends. We try to get her to day care twice a week, just so she can have an outing.






Here are some pics of things I made, though not all the things I've made! Must get better at taking finished object photos!

Spun lots of naturally colored wool.

Brilliantly dyed batt from Into the Whirled

On the bobbin

Done! Still haven't made anything with it!

To be carded, and carded fiber.

Lincoln, with mohair locks carded in.

I've been working on blending Ramboullet and Alpaca.

Studio. Birds eye view from the loft.

Sunflower on the loom. I'm a good bit past this part now.

 And around the house:

Strong young men with shovels built our new patio.
We built the lovely surround for the stairwell.

Spinning on the new patio, Teashanty in the distance.

The front garden with sunflowers of ridiculous proportions.

 And so it goes. We do a little of this, a little of that. And, apparently, not too much blogging on this site. I shall try to be better. But....genealogy! Really.

Happy New Year. May 2017 be way better than I expect it to be.

What's wrong with this picture?

Yes, rain INSIDE the studio is generally considered to be WRONG.
Also, bad, expensive and vexing.

I snapped this shot in the studio on Sunday. It was raining outside. Also, inside.

This only seems to happen when we get a hard rain from the North/Northwest. Which is the direction that most of our interesting weather seems to come from.

Looks like I'll be dragging out the ladder and the caulking as soon as we get a dry spell. And then hunting for someone to replace the windows.  I need some sort of "real" insulated windows anyway. The rest of the building is insulated, but these single-pane jobs came with the kit for the studio. Attractive and rustic, yes. Warm and cozy? Not so much.

Forgetting to run the warp over the back beam is also WRONG.
And bad, and vexing.
Especially if you thought your were done dressing the loom.

And then,  just when I was feeling all smug because I had finished threading the new loom and thought I might actually get some weaving in, I discovered that I had forgotten to run the warp threads over the back beam. On my old Schacht loom, the back beam lifted off and I could just slide it under the warp, pop it back in place, and no one was the wiser. Not so with this one. And so, I started threading all over again.

On the plus side, the new loom is very easy to thread (at least the first time through) because you can take off the beater and breast beam and scoot your comfy chair right up inside it. The very nifty light under the shelf at the front of the loom is pretty handy too.

Hoping for a dry weekend, and good weaving this weekend!

More Eagles!

I just had to pass on this link to a great blog, Life Looms Large. The author has given me permission to share her post with my small but mighty group of readers, so I'll just whet your appetite with this photo that her husband took at the Merrimac River Eagle Festival last year. There are more great photos of the eagles, and eagle watchers on her blog.

Mrs. Life Loom Large has interesting posts with lots of great photos. In fact, her blog turned me on to the online Digital Photography School - a website with tons of great information and opportunities to participate and learn through their forums. Hopefully it will help me get the hang of my new DLSR, which still confounds me on a regular basis!

Yesterday I spent the afternoon in the studio culling old magazines. They are now tied up in tidy bundles to go to the YMCA thrift store. (That store helps support programs that benefit the Virginia Tech community and the community in the New River Valley. They offer some outstanding programs via their Open University program.) I have this hope that someone will wander in there and "discover" the weaving magazines and yarn that I'm dropping off and will get excited about learning how to weave.  Also, I've cleared out the binders and boxes that the magazines were stored in, and they will be going to our wonderful Guild Librarian who will hopefully be able to make good use of them. Best of all, "that corner" of the studio is nice and tidy now and I've eked out a little more space in my loft!

Today, as soon as it warms up out there, I plan on working on my tapestry. Does it seem like I'm avoiding the Warping Wheel? Hmmmm. Maybe I am :-)

So, here we are. Just those two tips of beans on the right there to go, and then we're into the eggplant and background. My friend Kristy suggested that some people snap the tips off the beans. But as anxious as I am to get to the eggplant, I think I'll keep those bean tips right where they are. Besides, if I don't have to unweave too much they shouldn't take too long. Right?

We had a whopper of a snow this weekend. OK, for us 12" of snow is quite the thing. I'm still enjoying the staying home, the sleeping in, the baking and eating of treats. The shoveling, not so much, even though my husband did most of it. Today we spent an hour chopping and digging out the pile that the town's snowplows thought fully dumped in our driveway.

Just a few more photos : the Teashanty, as it looked this morning just before the rest of the snow slid off the roof; and Pyper, the old dog was soaking up the sun while sister Freya ran circles in the snow.

Baby, it's cold...inside!

Ok, I know it doesn't look like I've made much progress since last time. I did get the start of that top bean in the upper left corner started. Also, there was some un- and re-weaving done. And, I spent some time trimming up the loose ends on the back of the piece.

We had more snow this weekend - several inches - and it was just too darned cold out in the studio on Saturday to spend much time sitting still. Some days it warms right up in there and gets very cozy. But other times it just never really gets warm. Probably it would help if I finished insulating under the floor of the building and covered up the sub-floor with actual flooring. Maybe this summer. If I sell the spare loom.

Here are a few other photos for your amusement:

A corner of the studio, showing the Glimakra. I've been weaving those linen napkins forever, but had to quit a few months ago due to a bum knee. I start physical therapy next week, so hopefully I'll be throwing the shuttle again real soon now! Also, you can see the tapestry in the background there, part of the Stash, and my desk.

The last photo du jour was actually taken last week - before the current snowstorm upgraded us to "Winter Wonderland." Again. This is the view I get every time I drive to work at Strauch Fiber Equipement Company. We call it "Happy Valley." It really is lovely there.

The beans progress. The bubble remains.

Lest you think I've been idle for the past two weeks, here is an update on the tapestry.

The beans progress. The bubble remains.

Oh, there's been the usual fits of unweaving and reweaving and unweaving again, but all in all I think it's coming along ok. The egglplant is in sight now, and I'm looking forward to weaving with purple yarn, just for a change of pace.

In other news, I have a new weaving student to look forward to beginning in February. New weavers are always so much fun. All that enthusiasm is contagious.

The thought of having company out in the TeaShanty prompted me to clean and rearrange the studio a bit. I thought it would be nice if she actually had space to sit at a loom. It took me two and a half days, and there's still a little bit of putting away to do. It occurs to me that I might have too much stuff.

Part of the stuff includes too much yarn (of course), tools, books, and twenty-eight years worth of weaving samples - mine and other peoples. You know, guild sample exchanges, samples from workshops, and that sort of thing. Some of them are lovely little snippets, others are less attractive. Unlike some people who are avid and enthusiastic samplers, and swear that they are the most useful things in the world, I rarely look at mine and almost never find them helpful. Every once in a while I think about just throwing them away. But that just seems wrong somehow.

I've got them all in binders now, labeled. And I've sorted out the worksheets and samples of things that I've done myself into a separate notebook. I guess I'll hang on to them for a while longer. Perhaps my new student will find something there of interest....