And good news for Bob the Dog

We received good news from the vet today: the biopsy on the tumour removed from Bob's neck shows that it was the sort that is likely to be only locally invasive, not intensely metastatic. It may recur, but at his age, he's likely to outlive the cancer and as far as we're concerned, that makes it a good outcome. We'll just watch for any new lumps, and if they show up we'll know it's time for Bob’s last watch, before the new tumour can grow to an uncomfortable size.

At almost 11 years old, Bob probably has another 2-3 years of good life and guardian work in him and we're glad to have him on duty again!

The music begins

I did some test weaving on the Ode to Joy warp yesterday evening, and settled on a draft called ducape, which creates a vaguely ridged fabric with interesting little rounded oval designs when you look closely at the contrast between warp and weft threads.

Non-weavers, just skip this next bit … it’s not in plain English.

The draft was found on the not2squareweavers blog, many thanks to the guild for sharing their favourite weaving drafts! Threading is a simple 6 thread repeat: 2-1-2, 3-4-3 and the tie up is 3, 2, 1&3, 2&4. You can (obviously) weave plain weave with treadles 3 and 4 alternately (for hems, for example) and then the body of the pattern is treadled 4, 1, 3, 1 and repeated – you never use treadle 2.  You end up with these neat little rounded blocks separated by a ridge, it’s a lovely fabric and very easy to weave and treadle, and it’s really easy to see if you’ve made a treadling mistake too. I’ve threaded this at 20 epi, using the Louet Organic Cotton. I am using floating selvedges as the weave gives you wobbly edges without them.

I’m not attempting to pattern the weft, just weaving in the same set of colours as the warp at random intervals and for random widths. I did notice that the black is particularly striking … I may try doing one whole length just with black weft, and see what that looks like, I think it could be very interesting.

The fabric is a little wider than I had originally anticipated, partly because I forgot to thread the last (well, first) section yesterday, I found it today and cut off the sample I’d done, threaded that last bit, and started fresh. I like how it’s shaping up.

Yes, that’s bubble wrap you see – when the fabric gets long enough that the beam it’s rolling onto has come all the way around, the knots that are used to tie the warp onto the front bar end up pressing on the fabric. This creates uneven lumps of tension which muck up the weaving, so padding is needed. Most weavers use a piece of cardboard, but I happened to have a big roll of thick bubble wrap right there, so I used that. It pads things out  nicely and keeps the tension smooth.

More weaving is on the schedule for tomorrow, as well as a custom blending project that I need to prepare: I am going away for a few days over the weekend, as The Reluctant Farmer has a conference to attend and I get to go with him (!) so I need some spinning to take with me. I have a Top Secret Commission to work on that involves some custom blending, custom spinning, and then some knitting – so I have to get all my gear together before I head out on the weekend. I mean, the most important thing to pack (after the bathing suit for the hotel pool) is the fibre projects, right? :)

Music, math, and fabric

I was looking around for interesting ideas for what to weave next, and I stumbled across a kit for some tea towels that were called Mozart Towels: the colour progression was based on the Jupiter Symphony, with different notes associated with different colours, and the number of threads used in sequence based on the duration of the note.

Well, now that’s a cool idea!

So, I thought about my favourite music, and immediately decided on the Ode to Joy.

(If you haven’t seen this video, please do take the time to watch it. It makes me cry with happiness every time I see it … especially when the little kids start directing in the background!)

Okay, let me just dry my eyes here …. good heavens, I love that music!

Right. : sniff : So.

The hymn version of the Ode to Joy is 16 bars long, and only requires six notes to map the melody line. Six notes, six colours. Sixteen bars, at twenty four threads per bar and twenty ends per inch, that’ll be a bit under twenty inches. Perfect.

So I sat down with the sheet music and a spreadsheet and started counting out music notes, then I laid out my yarn cones in an octave and tapped out the melody to see how the colours worked. I settled on a colour mapping that went from black and gray in the lower notes to bright orange and red in the upper, and got it all planned out in Excel.

Then, I wound each two inch segment of the warp on warping pegs, counting out the threads (six for a quarter note, three for a half) and beamed each segment onto the loom as it was completed.

Wind…

Beam onto the loom…

And there’s the entire score!

Read it from top to bottom (which will be left to right on the loom) …

Joyful, joyful we adore Thee

God of Glory, Lord of love

Hearts unfold like flowers before thee

Opening to the sun above.

Melt the clouds of sin and sadness

Drive the dark of doubt away

Giver of immortal gladness

Fill us with the light of day.

 

Threading will be an adventure for tomorrow or the next day.

A podcast interview about the Rookie’s Field Guide

A podcaster (who happens to also be a local knitter and spinner that I know in Real Life) invited me to be interviewed on her awesome podcast, By the Fibreside.

You can listen to a wonderfully crafted introduction, learn about Master Spinner techniques, hear about knitting projects underway and hear us chat about the new book and supported spinning and other fibery goodness right here.

Sunny day, more fence repairs.

The weather forecast is FINALLY calling for some rain this week, which is good - we have had no rain but a few little sprinkles not worth putting a coat on for since our last snowfall, which is just plain weird. And the grass needs some rain to clue it in that it's time to GROW!

However, today is a sunny day and a good day to work outside. And Pasture A is just getting to the ‘edible grass stage’, and Pasture C where everyone has been for the last few days (since it seemed cruel to keep them locked up any longer in such nice weather) is looking pretty used up. With rain coming, today was the day to do the work so The Boy and I went out and repaired the fences in Pasture A and got everyone moved over. The fence we fixed today is one of the first fences we ever put up, so it was pretty awful. Some wire had to come down, a few more posts had to be pounded in, and then we strung barbed wire instead of woven wire along that side, as it's really hilly and it's almost impossible to get woven wire to go up properly with hills and dips. You need a LOT of strands of barbed wire to hold sheep in though, and the posts have to be really close together (even more so with all the darned hills and dips), so it was a lot of work. Went out at 11 or so, came in around 4. I am a little sunburnt and a lot tired.

But, a job that needed doing has been done. And I ache and feel very worn out but at least I was productive so I feel good on the inside. And the critters now have decent grass to eat, and access to their shade and water, and the fence reallocation plans are gradually evolving in my head. The goal is to have a setup that allows access to water and shade from every pasture, with alleyways and access gates to optimize traffic flow and minimize infrastructure headaches. Yeah, it’s an ongoing, evolving process, but it’s slowly coming along. A few new ideas started percolating in my head today, I need to do some drawing and see what might actually be made to work.

Now, though, it’s rest time. My audio book and knitting await!

Bob the Dog is on the mend

Bob’s surgery went well today!

The vet said that his body was already starting to reject the tumour growth, shoving it outwards. Nicely encapsulated on the underside, easy to get out, and he is now lump-free. A sample has been sent off to a lab for tests to fully identify what it is, mostly so that if we end up seeing something similar in a little while, we’ll know for sure what we are dealing with and can take appropriate action. But, he’s home, he’s slightly stoned and a bit woozy still, but he’s home and seems quite content.

Yay Bobbie! Yay Dr Sarah and team!

Work with the weather

Ya gotta work with the weather if you wanna get stuff done and not suffer too badly.

Today it’s warm, but a little overcast and not too hot so I did some of the outside jobs: got the washout at the culvert repaired well enough that I could drive the quad and trailer across to get hay without falling into the creek; filled up the trailer with hay and got it brought back for the sheep and cows; moved some more wood from the old wood pile to the new wood shed; took down most of the old fence around the garden, stripped off small branches and kept the centre straight tree branches/trunks for use in the new version of the fence; did a little bit of thinking about the south yard terracing that needs to be done; put a trellis in the raised bed by the patio door so that I can plant a climbing something or other in there; read up on how to propagate hops, because hops is a climbing something or other and I could maybe put that in; moved the water storage cube underneath a different downspout (and climbed a ladder and moved the water spout so it drains directly into the tank now), the new location is a little higher in elevation and will work better as the water source for the more-or-less-automatically-refilling-summer-water-trough I have planned for the pastures, once we get the fences reworked; moved the outlet for the sump pump so that it will spill water onto the newly planted trees along the road instead of draining into the pasture; changed the sheets on the Small People’s beds and washed the sheets that were taken off; set the table for dinner … and now I need to go *make* dinner.

The wind picked up about 20 minutes ago, after I came inside, so my timing was good today. It’s always nicer to work outside when the weather is pleasant!

It was supposed to rain this week, but I see the forecast has been changed and it’s looking to stay dry again. We really need some moisture … there’s been a few drops fall from the overcast sky today but nothing you’d actually call *rain*, not even enough to warrant putting a coat on. I may need to give some more thought to irrigation strategies. Hmmm.

Okay, off to make dinner!