As the Spindle Turns . . .

I got different things done than what was on my ToDo List. I am not going to add them to cross them off. That just seems silly.

I vacuumed the living room floor. With two knitters and a long haired cat, it was necessary. The knitting was finished up before the convention, leaving the floor clear to run the vacuum.



I also bottled the rhubarb wine. It yielded 23 bottles. It took me all afternoon. That was a lot of bottles to clean. Then I realized I had to hand write labels and find a glue stick. The glue sticks are probably 20 years old. I found one that wasn't dried out. I really need to buy more.

My husband got his booster, which in turn caused some pretty horrific side effects. I spent a lot of time and energy on him. I won't go into personal details, but we avoided the hospital and death. But I only got through half the alphabet for Holiday Card writing. That's when all my plans went out the window.



I did get some stitching in. The garb was too big. I was using a Finnish technique to use all of the rectangle of fabric. I lost weight since I started this but also, I think I had too much fabric to start with. I trimmed the excess on the sides. I stitched and zigzagged to prevent fraying. However, I need to find sewing machine oil before I finish the garb. The machine is thirsty. The last bottle spilled. There could be 3 in 1 oil in the basement, maybe? I decided to herringbone stitch the seams down with linen thread. I haven't started yet.

Today, I watched alternative housing videos on YouTube. Then I looked at things to do with pallet wood. Hmm. I don't have the right tools. But I have some ideas. Mostly, I stitched on the quilt.





The bottom fabric had a gapping hole that caused the top patch to go askew. There is just going to be a little excess fabric in that green square. Eventually I figured out that the hole needed to be patched before the patch was tacked down. They overlap. Since the batting was also gone, I added the blue acrylic felt as a patch on the backside to even out the thickness. It's a long term project. I have a whole laundry basket of fabric scraps to appliqué onto an old, sad psychedelic quilt. It's a stash-busting idea. The leftovers from the garb are also going into this quilt as well as the pink quilt.

Next week is doctor appointments. Not expecting to get much done either.

No weaving has been accomplished at all during this week past.

* Cleared away old electronics; put away clothes; found studio floor
- Vacuuming TBD
* Started stash inventory - raw materials for future projects
- Clearing the way for weaving kits I'm assembling.
- TBD, Find out how much weft is needed for each size scarf/shawl.
* Made a Mustard colored linen dye bath. I like this better than the curry color I had last year.
* Looked at outdoor studio; must clean out old baths today before freeze. It's raining.
- Dump marigold and onion baths. Clean kettles and lids. Bring inside for winter.
- Check what's in the rest of the buckets.
* Studied notes on dyeing with madder. Can I find the madder I just bought? No. Ongoing quest.
- Read through the stack of books for methods on dyeing with madder. Put books away.
* Pack up all the business tablecloths into a tub, out of the way but likely to be packed for Gulf Wars.
* Dishes were washed.

I was a grown up and took my dirty glassware to be washed downstairs.

On the horizon:

* Call the Royal Locksmith. Get keys to a used filing cabinet I bought 30 years ago? It's legal sized. It would hold off season clothes nicely. I wouldn't have to worry about the roof leaking on them.

* Sand Shuttles

* Practice photography. Learn something. Get better.

* Finish the damn cardigan and get it off the floor

* Call a guy about sistering in those beams. Still fighting over that one. "We're too busy." 'It's too small a job.'

* Plan time for daily finishing of projects. There are too many ~that just needs fringe or the loom is missing a nut, that shawl needs to be blocked, or . . .

Weft chart for a 72" piece
12 dpi
4 inch: 96 to 144 yds
6 inch: 144 to 216 yds
18 inch: 432 yds to 648

10 dpi
4 inch: 80 yds to 120 yds
6 inch: 120 yds to 180 yds
18 inch: 360 yds to 540 yds

Footnote: all tasks are subject to change on a whim.

Still working on inventory. At some point, I have to move the wall of grid walls without flipping my displays. I have wool stored in a cupboard behind the whole setup. Small spaces. Normally my shop takes up a 14'x 14' area. This 6' by 12 ' in front of all my cupboards may look nice on camera, but for daily functioning, not as handy. Mostly I have been thinking about shelving, painting and stripping wood and staining it. I also need new windows in the studio. The cranks are pretty cranky. They are hand-crank casements that are a bear to get closed for the winter. Since there is no AC in the attic, cross flow of air is important in the summer. Meanwhile, the cleaning continues as inventory is done.

I kitted up more shawl projects. I should have enough to do into next year.The only color I am short on is blue. I hope the indigo reseeds so I can fix that. I've been dreaming of 2021's garden already. Sigh. It will be a while yet. Meanwhile, the grow tunnels are doing well. I harvested celery yesterday and leeks today. It may not be much, but food is available even in the dead of winter.

Some of the projects I'm working on:
36" of shawl are woven. The loom is fighting me. The tension is shot on the loom; bolts are stripped. I have to hold the warp beam with my feet. The cloth beam sometimes also gives out. Just three more feet! Then I will switch over to the 24" loom with ratchet tensioning. Old looms may be charming but they've had a life. It was not designed to be robust either. It's rather rickety.


Then I ran out of thread on the triangle loom. Fortunately, I can just spin up some more.



And because the teal looked so pretty, I had to card and spin it up. I think it may actually work with some of the Bollicine fuzzy stuff I have laying around. Add that one to the kits of shawls once I've finished spinning it.


I have also been plotting for this year's Pennsic. I realize that it may or may not happen. It depends on how fast vaccines can be distributed. I don't expect anyone from Drachenwald either. The news on how the US has bungled the vaccine and the whole pandemic has reached even my friends in Iran. They wrote to check on me. It was very sweet. They sent me Yalda pictures. OMG, the fresh fruit! Yes, I definitely live in a northern land. It got me thinking about planting more fruit trees. On that tasty note, I bid you good night.

We elected to run errands today. An empty fridge and pantry kind of necessitated it. Orders were processed today. We went to two different post offices. One closed at 5. With a long line, we weren't sure we would make it. The second post office had an OMG! line. It was open until 6 pm. I handed Chrono my packages and told her I'd pay her back. Didn't want to make the line even longer. Mostly people have no clue on what postal regulations are. They try to ship things that were never meant to get shipped that way. A lady was trying to overnite an aerosol by plane to Alaska. The post office requires it go by land because an aerosol at altitude or without heat could explode, something like that. Dumb stuff. For every rule, something really bad happened to cause the rule to exist. People have no idea how to package either. I once spent time with a lady trying to explain where she could still get brown paper bags or buy brown paper to cover her box. It had too many bar codes on it. It's like a casual driver joining rush hour traffic. Us regulars know the rules and navigate through it quickly but these Sunday drivers do not have a clue. How do we know so much? Chrono is an insomniac. She read the entire postal code one summer as a means to fall asleep, well maybe not the whole thing, but you get the idea. The rest is by experience.

No work was done today at all. Here are pictures of yesterday's progress:
Triangle shawl, two or three more days.


Cutting next rigid heddle piece:


Need to knot the fringe and wash/full this one.


That's about it. We made it with time to spare into Pittsburgh. Shopped, drove home, made dinner. Had a surprise as one of our ground beefs wasn't a ground beef. It'd been seasoned with Italian spices of undetermined origin. With allergies, that didn't happen. Hubby will get those for lunch. I may make hime meatball bombers or something. So dinner had to be rebooted. We ate at 10 at night. Sleep schedule is all screwed up. It happens.

As we go through things and clean, I keep finding more yarn. Today I wound a bit of yarn and released my special order for purchase. The sun was so bright that picture-taking could not really happen. I wound about 3200 yards. I still need to label a bunch of balls.

More ideas for shawls are bouncing through my head. I found some rayon that goes with my existing palette. I think I can get another rectangular shawl out of it.


Today I finished crocheting the edges of the brown/cranberry shawl. All the ends are stitched in. It needs to be washed and blocked next. Then I turned the loom upright and started a new shawl. All the yarn got weighed as well for record keeping. I keep a book so I know how much I used and the patterns in case I want to do them again. So here's what is looks like:


The 18" loom was fussing yesterday. I found a tapestry needle and fixed my handspun that frayed. It's hard to use handspun as warp on a rigid heddle. My weaving goal was to finish all the weft on one shuttle. I achieved that and wound more yarn so tomorrow will run smooth. I didn't measure how much I wove, somewhere between 5 and 10".

The goal is to weave at least an hour a day and wind up to a pound of yarn but the 40/2 linen has so many yards, I can't physically wind that much by hand. All in all, I think I'm doing good, meeting my goals.

Covid numbers are way to high to actually go to a store at this point. Pittsburgh had over 1200 new cases today alone. I'll be poking online to look for a new computer. I may also have a chat with some friends to see what they recommend. Meanwhile, Chronographia ran into trouble with Weebly. Her site won't take payments. She has no idea why. Tech support did not get back to her. Square's tech support did get back to her but they can't fix Weebly. So, perhaps my website launch will be a little rocky. My biggest concern is getting all the pictures I need taken in good lighting, natural light, not too bright. Tomorrow it will hit 60 degrees so maybe I can get some outside. Fingers crossed.

It's really late or possibly early. Not everything got done today. I had to work on being Santa's helper and make some homemade gifts. Sorry, no spoilers in case the recipients are reading along. I know there are lurkers out there. I got a late start on the day because of that. Banking was achieved. Staples got some of my money, but now I can print again! And library pickup happened because it was on the way. After a quick bite when we got home, groceries were desperately needed. Meat alone does not make a meal. We opted for the food co-op for potatoes, veggies, onions, dairy, eggs, TP and fruit on sale and of course it grew because well, cereal, sugar, and a few other things were necessary for this week's menu. Everything ran late.

Yarn did get wound. The Irish Lace is in process. I got one skein looking pretty. Still have one more to go. Then I have to look up prices and label it before getting it onto the web. I wound another skein of natural for the red dyebath. I was able to get the cherry red done with furnace water. I set up a collection bucket last night. I even got a little of the 40/2 thread wound into a ball. Here's how the weird grellow/mustard turned out.



The darker color started as a natural gray 40/2 linen thread that I'm calling Golden Acorn. One of these days I will shoot some video on dyeing with natural grays and maybe even brown sheep wool. I was going to teach a class this year at GW but that is cancelled. So is next year's GW. That gives me 5 months to see just how much weaving I can get in. Speaking of which, here's how far I am today. Shown in my poor lighting is a cranberry colored yarn I plan to edge this shawl with.



The grant came in. I am not sure when I'll get back in to Pittsburgh to shop for a computer. It depends on the COVID numbers. UPMC Shadyside is full up- totally out of beds. That is the area where the computer store is. The total number of cases did drop today. Apple has a temperature gun that they use before you can enter the store. They limit the number of people who go in. You wait outside until it's your turn. I really need to get the online store going soon. I'd like everything in one place. I will still have some items on etsy but most things will be on the new site.

Next up is book keeping. But first, sleep.

Still playing around with schedule and lighting to take product pictures. LED lights really screw up some colors. After removing the bulb from my overhead light, I finally got a realistic picture of Marine Blue. The 16/2 linen has been updated. I have more to wind but at least there is now a picture of every color in stock. Today I spent time winding the 10/3 hemp yarn backstock. I still have to print and cut more labels before doing the update. I also found more butterscotch. One more to wind.



In planning the work schedule, I have yet to figure in time for new dye baths. After winding all the back stock, it's obvious that I need more yarn and thread colors dyed. I will have to go through dyes tonight to see what needs to be reordered. I want terra cotta back in stock. I've plenty of purples and navy blue. I have never found a green that I actually like. Another thing for the "to do" list.

Pittsburgh's Covid numbers have been ridiculous so until they go down, I am staying out in the boondocks. I am heading to a farm tomorrow to pickup meat and flour. Today we picked up some basics at the health food store. We are just going to be short potatoes and veggies until things cool down a bit. Tonight was chicken wild rice soup and grilled cheese sandwiches.

I did get my hour in on the brown triangle shawl. I managed to break a thread and didn't want to fuss on the green shawl. The weekend is harder to plan for. Customer service and other things need to be done. Have a good weekend one and all. Don't become a statistic, please.

A lot was going on today. Lots of snow fell. Warping continued. Dishes got washed. Floor swept. All small things but time occupiers. I started to make pumpkin pie but the pumpkin had fermented. That's what I get for harboring fermented cabbage in the refrigerator. I made rhubarb pie instead. Orders were packaged and shipped. Library items were returned but will not be logged by the library for 72 hours. The library is closed to patrons but has curbside pickup. I finally got logged in again to the online catalog. I placed a few requests. I got my husband hooked on the 1632 series by Eric Flint. Since he is considered a local writer, the library system carries all his books. The library will call me when my requests are available. They do curbside pickup. I think they give me a time slot and I have to show up and park in a numbered space, kinda like Target.

I got to harvest celery in the snow today. Tomorrow the snow will be gone. I did sloppy joes for supper. Tonight I am making toffee chocolate chip cookies. Hubby was looking just a little too skinny. None of the other projects were worked on today. The oven heats up the kitchen nicely on a day like today.





Tomorrow I get to go back to my regular schedule.

Today I unwound almost the entire shawl of mohair. I was 9 nails short of a finished 7' shawl. It bites. At least I don't have to deal with warlords and a wayward husband. Because I couldn't stand to look at it again so soon, I tabled this color and went on to the next one. It is very similar but instead of magenta and van dyke brown, it uses chestnut and a cranberry/rose tone. I have a matching ball of cranberry rose wool to finish the edges. The weaving should be done in about 6 days. The edging will be crocheted in rose all the way around. That may take an additional 2 days. Remember my goal is to only spend an hour a day weaving.



I have two more shawls in this size to follow. This year's year-end-inventory counting should go fairly quickly. I still need to update spreadsheets, but since sales are down 80%, it shouldn't take long. The Commonwealth downgraded my business to only having to file sales taxes semi-annually. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I spent 20 years filing quarterly. I am awaiting a Covid grant to help boost sales. I need a computer system that is modern enough to keep up with modern software. My operating system doesn't work on many platforms. Anyhow, once that happens, I will be spending much more time on my shop updates. There is just too much we still don't know about vaccine effectiveness, virus mutation, and so forth. Having a good online presence serves all my customers better.

Meanwhile, I am playing with all the pretty colors. I picked up a lovely green ribbon yarn at a yarn shop in Tucson, AZ some time ago and have been trying to match other yarns to it. Manos del Uruguay had the closest color so here's the bin I threw together. I think the Manos came from a shop in Coralville, IA. I love yarn tourism when I'm on the road.



Some of the yarn was dyed in Burdock for a video that Fiona shot back in the early 80s. Others were dyed in rhubarb which gave the khaki. I probably used carrot tops on some too. I also have Peace Fleece from a show I did in Crystal Lake, IL. There is also handspun, and Catalina from when my husband worked in Cedar Rapids, from a local yarn shop. So many memories are going into this warp! I have more work to do to finish it, but I had other things on my agenda today. I am also doing roof staple removal in the driveway. I can't use the driveway until all pokey bits are gone. My wonderful neighbors let me borrow a metal detector. I need to buy it batteries. Meanwhile, I have an old scissors that seems to find every staple as I cut. I'm also doing the edging while I'm there. The driveway has grass up the middle. I think I pulled at least 5 staples and a big nail today. Once the grass is cut really short, the rake is good at making the staples go 'ting'. Then I get to find them on the concrete. I have three more sections to go but rain and cold weather are moving in.



This is a classic vintage loom from the 1975 Sears Wishbook. My parents bought it for me for Christmas that year. It was the only remotely interesting thing in that catalog. I had it in my head to make plaid in my school colors and stitch them to my jeans to make bell bottoms. I did not think to ask for yarn for Christmas. Big mistake. Anyhow, I will finish filling out this 18" wide loom and warp the rigid heddle frame over the next week. I have a dye bath to run and clients to interface with as well. I have my work cut out for me.

It was a rough morning. You know, one of those days where you realize everyone has clean clothes except you. Laundry happened. Then some weaving. I'm really enjoying myself, listening to the Thriving Farmer podcast. Michael Kilpatrick interviewed Glenn Elzinga, who is a regenerative rancher in Idaho. It was absolutely fascinating. I still have a half hour to go. Glenn is a great story teller. I realize not everyone is into farm podcasts, but Glenn explains what they are doing differently to mimic nature and how that effects the soil. Here's a link: https://www.thrivingfarmerpodcast.com/tag/idaho/


I don't know if I have enough brown to finish the shawl. If not, then I undo the whole shawl and rebuild it at a smaller size. I have my fingers crossed. Mohair is a bear to unweave. Hopefully, it won't come to that. I can't find my locker hook so the final bits are going to take more time than I want. I should know tomorrow if I can finish it.

Ball winding did not happen today. I did make a ball out of a sari silk yarn to see if there is enough for a shawl accent. There is enough but I will do a wash of the silk first. I don't want to find out it bleeds the hard way.

Then there is the memory of Loren. I dyed some yarn for a shawl in her honor. Loren had had a beautiful emerald green shawl from Ireland. She was working in a daycare center, maybe in Milwaukee. Her coworker took it upon herself to throw Loren's beautiful wool shawl in with a load of the kids' things. She thought she was doing Loren a favor. Loren was given a postage stamp of a shawl back. Her coworker had no idea. Nor had she ever apologized. She still felt that Loren should thank her. Ya. I had always meant to make Loren an emerald green shawl to replace her loss. It never happened. You only have today. Tomorrow is unknown. Loren is gone. But, I decided to dye my next shawl of handspun grey wool in emerald green.



The Columbine shawl has been washed. It's being blocked at the moment, waiting to dry. That is about all for today.