If I tried to put all this in my daytimer…

… I’d need an extra page.

So here's what I've done so far:

I got the motorhome cleaned, scrubbed, and smudged with incense. Put bedding on the beds. Loaded some canned goods into the cupboard. Stove, water, and water heater tested. (Need to test the furnace tomorrow!) Tried to start it, no go, probably needs a boost – The Reluctant Farmer is taking care of that. Took out some of the shop stock so that at least that much will be ready when I get home from Ontario. (More on that in a bit.)

I've also been doing a bunch of laundry in our new washing machine - the old one died a long-anticipated death on Thursday morning, and we were able to pick up a new one (well, new to us – the people had listed it on Kijiji just that day, and their place was not far off my route home from counselling, so it worked out perfectly). The new machine is WONDERFUL – it’s really big, and very quiet, and doesn’t dance across the floor or complain about being unable to drain. When I arrived to pick it up, the people were there talking with a friend who’d obviously come by on his way home from work. I recognized the company name on his truck, as it’s the same place my friend with the horses works. I asked if they might know one another and sure enough, they do. “Oh yeah,” the guy said, “he was talking to me about this McGavin’s Bread wagon he’s gonna restore …” I laughed. “He was at my house yesterday with one of the spokes for that wagon, I’m taking it with me when I go to Ontario so my wheelwright friend can make copies!" Apparently that detail had been mentioned in the conversation … it was quite a coincidence! I felt all, I dunno, famous or something.

So, laundry – which dries nice and quick outside in this sunny and somewhat breezy weather, and motorhome prep, and also getting ready for the show tomorrow. It’s Artist’s Day at the Pegg Garden, and I’ll be there selling my woven items, one hand knit scarf (in really wild muppet yarn), and my books … and weaving, and spinning, and generally just being a fibre artist where everyone can watch. I also have some fabric with me so I can do the tests of ecoprinting with the plants that grow in the garden in advance of our workshop coming later this summer (the workshop is the last weekend in August, also at the Garden). I’ll need to be there a bit early so I can wander off and get plant samples rolled up into fibery cocoons for steaming and colour setting. They have to sit for a few weeks, so I need to get them wrapped and steamed before I leave so they can sit and do their marinating thing while I’m off gallivanting around.

I did get the wheel, spindles, and all my stuff out into the van tonight – and I took my gray coat, to show as a sample of what can be done for custom work (it’s also a different shape, so I want to have both the swing coat and the blanket coat there to display) … and I grabbed some yarn so I can warp up the little loom once I’m there. I’d sort of thought I might do that ahead of time, but really, I’m out of energy and I’ll have plenty of time tomorrow as the show goes from 11-4, and warping is just another part of the whole adventure so people might as well see that too.

Oh, and yesterday I did most of my packing for my trip to Ontario – I am gone all day tomorrow, and I have to be at the airport for 6:30 Monday morning (which I clearly did not process when I chose that flight time … an 8:30 am departure seems quite reasonable, until you factor in the need to be at the airport two hours early and the fact that it takes over an hour and a half to get to the airport from home). We will be adding in time to stop for coffee on the way, trust me. I’m heading to see my parents, and then my sister and brother in law will join up with us for a day, and Friday I’ll be heading to Burlington for the Ontario Handspinning Seminar where I will be helping out my friend Wheelwright with his antique spinning wheel sales and assisting during the keynote speech he’s giving. Oh, and doing the last minute assembly of the giveaway items that he was asked to make for the Saturday night banquet! (I know what they are, but I think they are a surprise so I won’t say.) It sounds like it’s gonna be a blast.

Then once the conference is over on Sunday afternoon, I’ll hop on the train and go to Oshawa to visit some of my Chosen Family, and Monday afternoon I fly back home.

Then I do a bunch of laundry, go for groceries, load up the motorhome and head to Olds for Fibre Week!

I am gonna need all of July to recover from this, but it’s gonna be an awesome ride.

Stay tuned for more of the adventure!

Sheet music for weaving

I mapped out the sheet music for the Ode to Joy with the colours I used in the warp for the fabric I made, since I want to be able to easily explain it to people at the Artist’s Day on Sunday.

For those who can read music, here it is, in colour!

Artist’s Day at the Garden

I’ve been staggeringly busy getting ready for Artist’s Day at the Pegg Garden, which is this coming Sunday (won’t you please come out and see me?) in Lac Ste Anne County.

Here’s the blurb on the event:

Art in the Garden
Sunday, June 9th, 11am-4pm
George Pegg Botanic Garden
Outdoor show and sale featuring local artists, art demonstrations, live music and children's activities!
- Adults- $8, Students/Seniors- $5, Preschool Children- Free 
- Admission includes a showbook with artist biographies and entry into the door prize draw
- A wide range of artists: fine art & sculpture, pottery, photography, woodwork and fibre art
- The children's art corner will engage the youngest visitors 
- Local musician Neil Lightfoot is gathering an eclectic mix of singer-songwriters to entertain throughout the day
- Many artists will be demonstrating their crafts, providing an opportunity to not only see art but experience the artistic process!

- Refreshments & Garden Memberships will be available for sale

Now, as one of the artists, I needed to have things to sell at this lovely event … which meant I needed to spend some time at the loom!

So, I have the Ode to Joy works completed: the fabric was really interesting, in both the multicoloured cotton and the purple cottolin (cotton/linen blend). In the end, I got three tea towels, three headbands, and two placemats from the warp that I wound, and I’m quite pleased with it all.

There’s also the green tea towels I had done earlier, and the samples I wove when I was first testing out the cotton on the loom – those ended up as a drawstring bag, which would be perfect for a sock project on the go, or maybe a small shawl in progress.

Here are some pictures of everything together:

And here’s one of the headbands, in use taming my rather wild mane:

And oh, there’s also a gray wool floor mat, which I don’t have a photo of, and the Creamsicle Coat, which is now all finished: hood, cuffs, pocket, buttons, and lovely back pleat.

Everything’s been tagged and folded and is ready to go to the sale on Sunday.

Now I just need to warp up the little loom so I can do my weaving demo while I’m there, and find something to spin and choose a wheel to take along so I can demo that as well … and yeah, we’re good to go.

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.