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 These are handwoven placemats I made on my Macomber. I made these out of an unbleached 10/2 pearl cotton, which gives them a nice, fine look and feel, as well as the slight sheen of the mercerized cotton. I modified a pattern I had for linen placemats, since the pattern called for yarn that was about twice as thick as the 10/2 cotton.
Despite spending literally hours planning these placemats, I still made a significant boo-boo. I didn’t plan enough for the shrinkage of the pearl cotton. I used 288 threads, sett at 20 ends per inch, for 14 1/2″ in the reed. This translated to about 13 1/4″ on the front beam, which shrank to 12 1/4″ after wet finishing. That’s bad enough, but the length, ah the length. I had 20″ on the loom, but after hemming — by hand, I might add, for real class — and wet finishing, they’re only about 15″ long.
I keep telling myself that they’re just right for an elegant luncheon, when the plates shouldn’t be quite as large as a dinner plate. Besides, we all ought to eat smaller portions, and usually do when we’re in a more formal setting, and these placemats are perfect for that.
 I’d like to show you how a placemat looks with a single place setting on it, but my dishes are all large and bold-colored. While they look great on my vintage red formica table, they just don’t work on these lovely handwoven placemats. You’ll have to use your imagination.
Your turn: Do you use placemats? What are your dishes like?
I’m quite a home body. I’m more comfortable staying in my little corner of the world than traveling. I think it’s the safety of the known versus the excitement of the unknown. Somehow I feel like my life includes plenty of excitement already, and plenty of unknowns. Little things mostly, but either I have an incredibly small desire for that adrenalin rush, or I unwittingly create my own rushes through mental machinations.
That being said, I have taken some really marvelous trips to far away places. Unfortunately, all those pics were taken with a film camera, and I don’t have a scanner so I can’t transfer them to a digital medium. So my version of Carmi’s On The Road challenge of the week is from my own road.
 I walk on my dirt road daily. Most times twice a day. It gets me outside, gets any sunshine that exists on my face, and the hill really gets my heart pumping. Living on a dirt road with very little traffic, it also gives little Red a chance to run and explore safely, without having to battle the way-over-his-head weeds that field walks mean.
When we’re lucky, Red’s friend Marley joins us at the top of the hill and walks with us for a while. These two dogs couldn’t be more different in terms of size, coloring, or temperament, but they really like each other. They walk, they run, they bare their teeth, they jump and twist. And of course, they sniff each other’s butts. Marley’s gentle with his little buddy, and Red gets a chance to be a bit more assertive than usual. This shot shows them just enjoying a winter day together. I like both the dog counterpoint and the fogginess of this shot.
Your turn – join in Carmi’s game, or tell me about your dog’s friends.
I recently finished a beautiful handwoven shawl. Made from rayon chenille hand painted by Tammy, I’m really happy with the overall appearance of this shawl. The rich, saturated gemtones are pretty much my favorite colors. 
This will go up on my website soon, but I’m betting I’ll get a much bigger reaction at shows. Although I’ve tried many different techniques, I’ve never managed to get what I consider to be a great picture of rayon chenille. The fiber’s natural sheen causes light to bounce around a great deal, despite the various ways I’ve tried to minimize it. Also, with this rayon chenille shawl, the color was a real challenge. Either it was all REALLY blue, showing next to no purple, or it was washed out looking more gray than anything. I probably took 20 shots of this handwoven shawl before I got one that I thought was worth using.
Now for something else in shades of blue & purple…
 Isn’t that attractive? (Please ignore the fact that I have rather ugly feet, with a big bunion and toes that, at best, resemble cocktail wieners.) I dropped a piece of firewood on my toe yesterday. Not far, but it went down on end, and the edge of the firewood hit the toe really directly. Now here’s the really amazing thing: doesn’t that look like it should hurt like hell, all swollen and black & blue like that? Well, it hardly hurts at all. 🙂  Immediately after hitting it I elevated, iced, and rubbed in arnica oil whenever I could for the rest of the day. And today it’s really not feeling bad at all. I even got in 1/2 mile of walking my dog. Mind you, I’d usually have walked about 3 miles, but the single digit temps combined with the toe turned us around really quickly.
Your turn: got any good tricks, either for photographing rayon chenille or for keeping your toes safe?
On Saturday morning I was feeling pretty good. As planned, I’d managed to work my way through a decent quantity of my yarn stock, getting ready for the 2010 shows. I’d also done the tedious work of updating my website with recently handwoven scarves and shawls, and removing items no longer available.
Then the mail arrived. It contained two boxes of hand painted yarn I’d ordered from Tammy at Yarntopia Treasures, my favorite fiber colorist.
Most of the yarn is a bamboo-cotton blend: 2/3 bamboo and 1/3 cotton. This blend makes the yarn more affordable while keeping the best qualities of both fibers. The silver is rayon to coordinate with another handpainted rayon I previously ordered from Tammy.
The bamboo-cotton will makes some stunning handwoven scarves, perfect for the warmer weather that we’ll have by the time shows start. I purchased the rayon specifically to make a handwoven shawl that I think will look quite dressy.
 So now, although I’m still working on my stash of rayon chenille, all that gorgeous bamboo-cotton has brought with it some anxiety. Overflowing shelves mean I have lots more weaving to do.
And since the handpainted yarn all needs to be wound into balls before I can get it on the warping board, it’s just that much more time. Fortunately, last year I bought a yarn swift and a ball winder. Until then I’d stretched the skeins over the backs of two kids’ chairs and wound balls by hand. These two simple tools take the time per skein from 15 minutes down to 3-4 minutes – a dramatic decrease.
Your turn – what have you received in the mail recently?
Carmi’s theme this week is I’m Hungry. I decided to take a TOTALLY different approach to theme. I live in the sticks, and am thankfully surrounded by wildlife, with few human neighbors.  I love seeing the evidence of my four-footed and winged neighbors, even when I don’t see the animals themselves.
Each set of tracks was left in the new snow by a hungry animal, one seeking to fill his own hunger.ÂÂ
Rabbits are little furry vegetarians.  I know, I know, they’ll find your garden a smorgasbord of delights, and they’re sure you planted just for them.  Since I belong to a local CSA and don’t grow much food in my yard, it’s ok with me.  Besides, I surprisingly don’t see many rabbits. ÂÂ
At the other end of the food chain, wild rabbits don’t have much meat on them, so there’s little rabbit hunting around here, at least by humans. They provide plenty of meals for fox, hawks, and other predators.
The wild turkey is a beautiful sight. My good friend Margaret has likened watching a lone turkey walking down her driveway to a model on the runway – they are equally graceful and beautifully decked out.  It’s pretty common to see turkey tracks on the dirt road, since they need bits of gravel in their gullets to help process their food.
Most folks know that it almost became our national bird, beat out by the bald eagle. We do have a few eagles in my corner of the state, but we have lots of turkeys. Although the fairly goofy babies are easy pickings for lots of predators, adult turkey have such great eyesight and hearing that I think their primary predator is human.  And they are quite tasty, with little comparison to the “solution”-infused Honeysuckle Whites.
This lovely set of prints was made by a whitetail deer. Their population has dropped dramatically out here in the sticks in the past decade. While there are definitely too many deer in suburbia (or is it too many people in suburbia??), we’ve seen dramatic declines in our rural populations, thanks to a combination of predation by coyotes & bear and the issuance of too many doe permits.
I could, in fact, eat each of these animals, but I’m not a hunter and I don’t. I fully realize that as an omnivore that’s pretty contradictory, but that’s the way it is in my life. I do eat meat, although not a lot of it. I try to buy locally-raised when I can, resorting to the grocery store more than I care to admit.
Seeing these animals in the wild, or even just seeing their tracks near my house, feeds my soul far more than their meat would feed my body.
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