Busy, busy, busy

The last two days have been sort of crazy busy for me.

Like many people these days, I piece together my income with a variety sources. Part of that includes doing some administrivia (a term I borrowed from Laura Fry) for a few projects. Usually that’s fairly quick – about an hour a week. Not this time – I had to play catch up, so spent about 4 hours. Then I had to do a few months backup of my own administrivia – another 3 hours.

The outside called to me, and I probably spent 3+ hours weeding and mulching. Those parts of the gardens that are done look great – sorry, no photos.

I did have a few other feel-good accomplishments. I made my first ciabatta bread, using my sourdough starter, and it turned out pretty well for a first attempt. I’m happy enough with it that I may try again. I need a bit more holes, and the recipe I followed – as the book told me it would – had a really hard crust when it came out of the oven that softened as it cooled. I prefer a hard crust when it’s cooled, too.

I also got that 3-color warp threaded through heddles and reed and tied on.

Then a problem hit. I bought a brand new stainless steel reed for my Mac. It would make my life a bit easier for these baby wraps, and every bit easier counts when you’re weaving. After I was tied on I saw that the new reed had left marks on the light colored warp.

I tried wiping the reed with a paper towel, but couldn’t get in between the dents (teeth, for you non-weavers). I tried pushing it with a scrub brush, but it only tore the paper.

Then I tried using a cleaning pad, but that was too thick & wouldn’t go between the dents at all.

Then I used toothbrushes. Two of them. Got ’em all filthified, but wasn’t convinced I’d gotten all the manufacturing oil off the reed.

So I took some old white socks and used a fingernail to go between each of the 400 dents with the sock. From the front. Then from the back. Then from the front again. You’re imagining how much time that would take, aren’t you? I purposely didn’t look at the clock – it would have been discouraging.

Then I wove with some scrap yarn for about 7″ to get past the marks on the warp before I could start weaving with the real weft.

Finally, I’m using the lovely twilight blue silk KM chose.

This is the first time I’ve used silk for weft on one of my baby wraps. Although it will make laundering more of a pain (I will hand wash & line dry and will tell mom to do the same), I’m sure it will be really lovely. And while the color in this photo – like all my on-the-loom photos is horrid, in real life that twilight is lovely.