Textiles and Tea and chicken and biscuits

 The 165th cold grey cloudy rainy day is here. Yesterday I fought back

Roast chicken, buttered and garlicked and hot biscuits. 

After Misfits brings the coconut milk tomorrow, there will be curried chicken. Today it's picking on roast chicken.

And I finished the current jigsaw puzzle

I'll donate this to the library lending collection after I've finished admiring it 

And yesterday's Textiles and Tea featured

She weaves tapestries, specializing in wedge weaving, her own way. This is a weaving approach creating angular designs and developed by Navajo weavers, whose work is like this

She makes it clear that she honors their tradition and art, but is careful to follow her own design ideas, as you see. Following are her tapestries 

She makes hand drawn notes and design diagrams, not computer assisted. She prefers natural dyes and has been exploring indigo, cochineal and mineral colors, to get depth rather than subtlety in color.

And she doesn't plan on writing a book, because her notes are easy to access on-line. 

News from the nest, right now

Mrs Dove in residence.

Happy day everyone, discussion group this afternoon if it doesn't start hailing, or grauping, some kind of precipitation.  Enjoy your day, whatever the weather.

Warm days, fish, punctuality and Misfits

Yesterday was so warm that my library discussion group met outdoors under the trees. It's mainly old people, retired, because it meets mid-afternoon on  a weekday. 

Once again it reminded me of a quotation from a Miss Marple episode.  Two lawyers are talking abut her appointment with them, and one comments she's elderly, so she'll be prompt.  And again, by start time, every seat is occupied.  It's a lively and interesting, very  opinionated,  group, hospitable to new members like me.

Lunch yesterday was that lovely ginger scallion sauce over cod poached in milk, with steamed chard and carrots

That really powers you up for action 

And once home in the afternoon, the first day warm enough to sit out and read and smell the spice bush.

I'm currently doing a load of laundry using ivy leaf soap, and I'll report back on the results.

And the Misfits box arrived

The pita bread, blueberries and spinach are a favorite breakfast. And the ground turkey will join the pasta to become spag and mb. The shrimp will be cooked very simply, with rice and maybe that ginger scallion sauce.  It's all there. Apples for midmorning snacks.Many plans. 

Happy day everyone, enjoy your day, what are you reading? I've tried and rejected a couple of books recently, no need to review when I don't think they need more oxygen. 

That's why you only see comments on books I think are worth my limited remaining lifespan. 

Weaving journey continued, current events and nostalgia

Yesterday I donated the waste warp yarn, in small pieces, for nest use if birds would like it

This morning I thought I'd finish up the warping I started last evening, and the first part was looking good.

So, after a break to stretch my back, I did threading part two, ready to roll the threaded warp onto the beam, then  to prepare the weaving area to start weaving.

All the videos show a second person at the warping peg end, after the warp's off the peg, holding it steady to keep the tension while the weaver rolls the beam you see in the foreground. I don't have a second person, but the Book Lady said use a dumbbell in that case. Which you see there.

I was getting cautiously optimistic at this point.  Then I found that the rolling wasn't working. The top part of the warps rolled and the lower ones flopped about.

I studied the situation, then realized I'd missed a crucial part of the previous threading stage. And I think that's what caused the problem. 

Not fixable. Soooo, I cut the whole Kitten Kaboodle off the loom. Again. Rolled it onto a fat dowel which has had many uses.

I can use this for weft or for another small weaving on my little handheld tapestry loom. Tomorrow I'll try again. This yarn was better, so there's that.

My life is devolving into Before and After the RHL.  To think this was just a spur of the moment idea a couple of days ago... it's developing into a spur of the year idea.

But by the time I succeed, I'll be really really good at it.

Speaking of being really good at something, this sticker now on my fridge, shows just a few of the inventions created by African Americans.

Then I went and spent the afternoon with a fun group, my first time there, discussing current events. About a dozen people, some men who, blessedly, did not try to dominate the discussion. It's weekly, at another library, where I used to go to a knitting group which is no more, since the pandemic.

I noticed several people were masked, though it's no longer required and was a room with plenty of space. So that may become a regular event on my calendar.

And here's a picture this week of a scene well known to me in childhood. It's a village. It's called Great because a couple of miles away, there's Little Ayton, known locally as Canny Atton.

That's the River Leven. There was a wonderful ice cream store, which I went to later, when we'd moved and I only visited when a nice older relative took me. Homemade ice cream, local cows. 

We'd sit somewhere near here to eat it with one of those little wooden spoons out of a paper cup. Captain Cook, the explorer, was a boy here, too, but I don't know if he ever got ice cream before he went to the coast at Whitby, to go to sea aged nine, as a cabin boy.

Happy day everyone, what did I do in the mornings before heddling happened? Enjoy your day.