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For reasons that are beyond me, it’s apparently daddy long legs season here in the sticks. Suddenly they’re everywhere.
Although I don’t really like them, I don’t hate them. I just don’t want to have to deal with them every time I turn around.
This is what I’m used to seeing. A tiny body and long legs, but overall still fairly small. (Yep, this one’s missing a front leg.)
I was a bit freaked out when I saw this one!
Overall MUCH larger. And that body! That body isn’t like what I think of as a daddy long legs. I think of their bodies as little dots – really nothing more than something to hold the legs together.
I did not like him Sam-I-Am!
Now get a load of THIS one!
Obviously not a spider at all, but I am struck by how insect-like this shadow is when the sun strikes my lamp in the afternoons. I couldn’t help but share it.
Your turn: anything creeping you out lately?
My lovely daughter Amanda and her sweetheart Ryan got married in May. It was the best wedding ever! (No, I’m not at all prejudiced. It’s true.)
They had a very simple, sometimes humorous, delightful ceremony at the zoo on Friday night.
On Sunday they had a terrific, delicious, beautiful party in their backyard. Amanda & her brother Michael did all the cooking, with Amanda coming through with six flavors of terrific cupcakes, all of which disappeared in a heartbeat. Fortunately, someone (not me) had the foresight to make them do the traditional feed each other cake thing before we let the crowd mob the dessert tent.
I wish these two decades years of love, life, and laughter. They’re both wonderful people and deserve it.
This is an entry into Carmi’s photographic challenge of the week: kids. Join in the fun.
I finished weaving another warp of three cashmere & silk scarves. I’m so glad I discovered the trick of preparing the warp so I can do three at a time without pulling out my hair!
This time I wanted to try a woven lace pattern that was a bit more complex, requiring me to use my 8 harness Macomber loom instead of my 4 harness counterbalance loom that I use more than 80% of the time. This alternate lace pattern also needed to be woven tighter than the other cashmere & silk scarves in order to produce the end result I was after. So instead of setting at 18 ends per inch, as I have done with the others, I threaded the reed for 36 ends per inch – twice as thickly.
I was crossing my fingers that I’d like the pattern, since it required 360 ends to give me a scarf that would end up being around 9″ wide. That was a lot of winding on the warping board, and much more time consuming, a lot of threading through 360 heddles. I guess I wasn’t in exactly the right frame of mind while I was threading – not enough focus – because I probably ended up threading 500 heddles by the time I was done. How is that possible? I kept making threading errors that I’d catch at the end of a bundle of 50 threads (that was one pattern repeat) and have to take lots of threads out and re-do. Even so, when it was all threaded through heddles and reed, tied to the front beam, and I was weaving the fringe spacer header, I found another threading error. I SURE wasn’t going to unthread more than needed, so the easiest fix was to make two string repair heddles and tie them into place.
Anyhow….once it was all done, I started weaving the pattern, and I could tell immediately that I did like it. Yippee!
Nowhere near as thin as the earlier ones, I think these are beautiful in their own right. Granted, they don’t drape quite as softly, but they have more sheen. There’s always some trade off.
The center scarf is the first one I wove — a diamond huck lace pattern that I think is really pretty. On the right I changed the treadling slightly. It’s hard to see the difference in the pattern in this photo; it’s pretty subtle even in real life. On the left, I went back to the first treadling pattern, but dramatically changed the firmness of the beating. I think you can see that the diamond pattern is substantially elongated and the scarf is much thinner. I like it, too. I’d be hard pressed to choose which I prefer.
I’m anxious to see shopper’s reactions at the upcoming Elmwood Avenue Festival of the Arts. If you’re in the Buffalo area, I hope you’ll stop by and give me your input.
Your turn: have you tried anything new lately?
My next completed weaving project — handwoven rayon scarves made with hand painted yarn.
I really like the pastel lavender, green, and cream in this color blend. The Tencel rayon is nice and soft, a perfect fiber for the soft colors in these scarves. I wove two of them with columns of huck lace along their length. I really like the way they look, and will definitely do this again.
For the other scarf, I did a gentle point twill. I didn’t want the sharpness of a regular point twill, so at every end of threading, I added an extra heddle of the same number. That is, I threaded 1-2-3-4-4-3-2-1-1-2-3-4-4-3-2-1. In hindsight, I wish I’d threaded so I had longer runs up and down. I could have achieved this by threading in this fashion: 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4-4-3-2-1-4-3-2-1-4-3-2-1, still doubling the 1s and 4s at the turn around points. Maybe next time.
I did post these for sale on my revised rayon page of my website.
Your turn: what would you do differently next time?
Russian sage wasn’t the easiest thing to grow in my garden. No idea why, but it stood still for years before it finally decided to amount to something. I like it for its late summer color and its wispiness. It’s also a favorite of bees – generally big bumblebees this year. I haven’t paid enough attention over the years to notice if it’s always the bumbles, or if there’s a dearth of honeybees this year. I do know I have way fewer honeybees at my house this year, since the bee man did his work last fall removing them and early this spring sealing up my house.
Carmi’s photographic challenge of the week is blue. Although this photo shows more of the empty lavender flower casings than the delicate blue petals of the Russian sage, I like the way the transparency of the bee’s wings are captured here.
Your turn: Bees are critical to our food supply; are they healthy near you?
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