Although I have sat at the loom a couple times recently, I wove very little. How could I fill or just live with the empty space of not having Ken making pots while I was weaving? After call from a five year old friend about her pot holder weaving, I decided to give it a go. Since Mardi Gras is about ten days away, I set my pandora for Mardi Gras music – something I …
Since Ken’s death I have been unable to weave. I thought I would find comfort in a familiar solo activity. But, no; each time I sat at the loom I would weep. I started burying it as I cleaned and cleared elsewhere. I kept wondering why, why, why. No answers came. Was it because each break I look up and see Ken’s desk, his clothes, where he did yoga? No, I could do other things …
I have started warping up a loom. My goal is to keep both looms warped up so that I do more weaving during spring, summer and fall. The more carefully one warps up the loom the fewer mistakes one has to work around as one weaves. Since I am a sporadic weaver I don’t warp the loom often enough so that it is an easy task. First one calculates how many ends or strands of …
Greetings from the Garden! This box has pie pumpkins, onions, garlic, carrots, potatoes, beets, celery root, parsley, and salad mix Field Notes. Happy Ground Hog’s Day, Imbolc, St Brigid’s Day, St. Blaze, Candlemas – or whatever you may call it. This midway point between solstice and equinox is when the days lengthen dramatically, the cold doesn’t last, and Ken starts monitoring temperatures in greenhouses. We are in transition and can feel spring’s approach. The …
Winter includes many necessary tasks. Now the following are done: seeds ordered, taxes prepped, sales tax filed and paid, etc. Now I clean and weave between harvest dates. I am finishing off a test warp. I thought it would make two rugs, but I have enough warp for a smaller third rug with the remaining balls from three worn out wool blankets I am trying out something new – I had read about this …
Each fall we fill the root cellar for winter sales and our own use. This fall was so warm Ken has been harvesting later than usual and I have just finished getting some items in boxes and some roots buried in sand. Damp towels keep crops moist. Dry storage for squash and onions and garlic is upstairs in a dry cool corner Now I move on to book keeping and seed orders. …
After a morning in the kitchen, and some friendly delightful customers, i headed upstairs to work on weaving my last rug on this warp. I started with army green and added the end border stripe I did narrow grey and then the pink beige that was the narrow border stripe on the previous rug of mostly blue. You can see that prior rug on the cloth beam …
A few days ago Ken needed a break. He started a building project; he is taking a very old cart and converting it to a portable chicken coop. I also needed a break from produce work; I love tomatoes and peppers, but I have sorted many this season… So, I headed upstairs to a loom that has about enough warp for one more rug. I was experimenting with two different warps to figure out how …
While Ken was away I decided to dye some faded denim. I received several balls of denim rags about a year ago. Some of the rags were very faded. Faded rags do not make a very colorful rug. Bright or deep colored rugs sell better than faded ones. Years ago I took a natural dye class and was told that natural dyes work better on animal fibers like wool than plant …
The denim rugs are finished! Ken got this rug loom at an auction – a story in itself. It has a sectional warp beam so I can do long warps easily. this reduces time spent setting up the warp. This was my first sectional warp, and I have learned a lot. The sections need to be the same number of revolutions. I discovered near the end that I was at the …
