So much for good intentions

I wanted to get better at posting regularly. Hah! I actually got WORSE! It’s now been 6 weeks since I posted. Yikes.

Here’s my excuse – I haven’t woven much. Does that work for you? It doesn’t really work much for me. 🙁

Anyway, the time frame means this will probably be another lengthy post. As I was preparing it…and I’m not at home when I’m doing so…I see that I’ve neglected to take photos of everything I should have to show you what I have been doing. Sigh.

Let’s continue in the kitchen first. In the last post you saw & heard about my efforts with gluten free sourdough. Of course, that wasn’t the last of it. You saw up to trial #4. There were more. I won’t give you tons of details now, but here’s GF sourdough #5. Decent.

Then I tried a different recipe from a different blogger. MISTAKE! Granted it was going to be a smaller loaf, but here it is from the top, with my potholder for size. This has an egg in it.

And here it is completely cooled and cut. Look at how gummy it is. It went straight into the compost.

Time was passing, and it was nearing my trip to my friend’s in WV. So I decided to make her one more loaf with Georgia’s now tried-and-true recipe. This time I added a few cloves of finely minced garlic and some Herbs de Provence, just for fun.

Then I realized that her non-GF hubby might feel left out, so I baked him a loaf of regular sourdough. His has more garlic than hers, and black olives (she hates olives, he loves them), and Italian Herb blend. Here they are side-by-side before being cut.

And cut in half, GF in the front.

If I was lived near them, I’d continue to make her more GF sourdough, and would try more things with seeds and nuts and other additions. But this was as far as I went.

I brought her the GF sourdough starter and all my remaining GF ingredients, as well as all the bread. I told her that if she wanted, we could make a loaf while I was there so that she got some experience with the process. As I expected, she declined, acknowledging that she was unlikely to actually do it. No problem. Made me even more glad that I’d brought her as many loaves as I did.

Then it was Easter. I wanted to make an egg braid to bring to my daughter’s. Haven’t made one in many years and was looking forward to it. Doesn’t this look nice?

Hah! It was not the moist and chewy delight I wanted at all. Instead it was dry IMHO. Sigh.

Let’s leave the kitchen. **********************

I sewed bead bags for April and dropped them off at the Weaving Center.

Then my 7-year-old grandson called me on a Sunday morning and asked if he could set up a lemonade stand on my corner. Sure! It was the first really lovely spring day we’d had. I hauled out my garden umbrella for him and a folding table. He and his mom made and brought everything else.

Hand squeezed lemons, simple syrup, and just a touch of hand squeezed lime. Add ice and it was DELISH! The truth was even if it had been made from a frozen concentrate he probably would have done as well at selling. Location, location, location. Add a really cute little kid and it’s a winning combo. Plus his mom texted a few friends who came by. Some cars driving by simply stopped and gave him a donation. Most of the lemonade purchasers gave him a large tip as well.

I had to be at the Weaving Center that afternoon, so he packed up and went home and set up in his driveway in their cul-de-sac. They don’t get much traffic, but the kid was entrepreneurial. He went door to door and offered to deliver. Of course no one said no! He made a ton of cash that day.

Sticking with nature for a bit… *************

No, I didn’t take this photo recently; it’s from mid-March. But I was fascinated with what I saw on my morning walk.

The shadow of the cable and power lines made a very definite and noticeable impact on the melting snow. Who’d have thought? Not me, obviously.

Last year I went to a plant sale of a local garden club and picked up a few gems. One of them was a small bit of kerria shrub. It’s blooming nicely in this, its first year at my house.

As it grows it should be one more thing to offer me some additional privacy in my backyard.

And I couldn’t resist taking this shot.

This is a little corner of my garden that both looks and smells wonderful! I picked up the bearded iris years ago from a woman who painstakingly made her own crosses, using a paintbrush and lots of attention and patience. Beautiful and fragrant! I have always loved poet’s narcissus for both their simple beauty and their fragrance. Not sure how they, or the single tulip, got planted among those iris rhizomes.

Ok, on to fiber. ***********

Here are those 8 Spring Flowers towels you saw all my trial and tribulations with in the last post. Only 2 are left in my Etsy store.

Then I actually wove something for myself. A rare occurrence indeed. I saw something another weaver had done and it moved me to try my hand at it. My fabric is mostly cotton, with one of the warp yarns a rayon-cotton blend.

So I made my calculations and warped up the loom. I didn’t have quite as much yarn as I wanted so I made some last minute changes to my plan. And still, I played warp chicken. This is the back of the loom – couldn’t have gotten another inch out of this warp.

I also played weft chicken. This is ALL the weft yarn I had left at the end of weaving. (Note that the color is quite off in this photo. It’s most red, not pink.)

Then I took the warp off the loom, washed it and dried it, and laid it out in my backyard. It obviously hasn’t been pressed here, nor have I yet dealt with all my thread ends.

In addition to cutting and sewing, I wanted to make button closure for the jacket. Trust me when I tell you that this Dorset button took me hours to make, as did the kumihimo braid I used for the tie to loop the button with.

And here I am modeling the finished jacket. Although this type of weaving is, as a general rule, very much outside my comfort zone, I am really pleased with the jacket.

I want to make a few improvements and try something along these lines for sale. We’ll see how that works.