{"id":11083,"date":"2023-03-28T12:40:11","date_gmt":"2023-03-28T17:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/?p=11083"},"modified":"2023-03-28T13:37:19","modified_gmt":"2023-03-28T18:37:19","slug":"lots-to-tell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/2023\/03\/lots-to-tell\/","title":{"rendered":"Lots to tell"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m getting two posts in this month as planned, so how can there be so much to share in just the past 2 weeks? I don’t know, but fair warning – plenty of pix and detail in this one, so get yourself your beverage of choice before proceeding.<\/p>\n

I’ll start with a shot of my first spring flowers. This is my tiny scilla. Taken on March 17, they had poked their purple heads above the mulch but hadn’t yet opened their petals.<\/p>\n

\"scilla<\/p>\n

Ok, we’ll start some detail here. Trust me when I tell you that I have lots more detail than I’m including; let me know if you need more to guide you in your own kitchen.<\/p>\n

I’ve baked bread off and on for 40+ years. (Doesn’t that<\/em> make me feel old?!) For the past 5-6 years I’ve really gotten into making sourdough breads. Easy peasy. BUT. I have a dear friend who has been on a serious gluten-free diet for years. And she drools over my sourdoughs. I’ll be visiting her in April, and wanted to make her a birthday gift of GF sourdough bread. Could I do it?<\/p>\n

I did some online reading. Started making a GF sourdough starter from scratch. Decided to follow a recipe that used a well-known 1-to-1 flour mixture that included xanthum gum, as the source seemed quite reliable. It was just okay after 14 days, but thought I’d better try making a loaf of bread. It was a complete fail. The starter and the bread added to the compost bin.<\/p>\n

Did a lot more reading, and decided to start again, this time using a mixture of sorghum flour and quinoa flour, no one’s mix of anything, no gum or other things. The starter was working well, so on day 11 I made a loaf of bread using a recipe from the same source.<\/a><\/p>\n

It sure didn’t rise much, but the taste was good, although you can see a bit of gumminess near the bottom crust. Labeled and froze the loaf to take with me on the visit.<\/p>\n

\"GF<\/p>\n

I kept feeding the starter and a few days later I tried again with the same recipe. I forgot to take a photo of 2nd loaf, but the rise was unfortunately similar, as was the taste, but no gumminess. Sliced, labeled and froze it.<\/p>\n

I put the starter in the frig for a few days while I did yet more online research. Got the starter back out, did some more feeding, and followed a different recipe from the same source – I came to trust Georgia. This loaf was a bit higher, lots more air holes, and better taste and consistency that loaves 1 & 2. Sliced & froze it.<\/p>\n

\"GF<\/p>\n

Kept feeding the starter and the next day went back to a well-known flour mixture recipe. Again, not impressed with the results. Still, I sliced & froze it; she can always decide to use it to make croutons or stuffing or something.<\/p>\n

\"GF<\/p>\n

Everything I’ve read has told me that the starter is better after a month. So it’s back in my frig. I plan to make a loaf a week until I leave home in mid-April, probably using the recipe for loaf #3, to see if there’s a notable difference in my results.<\/p>\n

I may also try to make her a GF (non-sourdough) baguette, as Georgia’s recipe sounds simple enough…at least as GF bread goes.<\/p>\n

I’ll close the GF bread discussion here by telling you 2 things:
\n—I’m quite sure my friend will be impressed with all the bread, as she told me she and another friend tried making GF bread and were very careful to follow a recipe exactly and it turned out like garbage – went into her compost.
\n—the process to make GF sourdough is just that – a process. MUCH more involved than regular sourdough.<\/p>\n

Just for a visual break, here’s my hellebore, getting ready to open its flower heads on March 21.<\/p>\n

\"hellebore,<\/p>\n

Out of the kitchen and into the studio. I made my March bead bags. Someone in my BuyNothing group gave me a big bag of fabric with lots of kid-friendly prints.
\n\"March<\/p>\n

I also got the March hugs woven and gifted. The warp was a variety of cottons (with the variegated & textured bit a rayon-cotton blend). For the first one I used a purple 20\/2 bamboo in a plain weave. I liked the way the colors played together.<\/p>\n

\"purple<\/p>\n

I wove the second with an 8\/2 burgundy tencel, using a straight twill. It also turned out nicely.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In my never-ending quest to use up my stash, I picked out a 5\/2 chartreuse-y cotton. Honestly, I thought I’d probably have to scrap this yarn after its audition on the warp, but no. The green of the chartreuse totally faded, and it gave the whole hug a golden glow that pleased me more than I expected. <\/p>\n

\"golden<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, I applied for another good one-day, indoor show to be held in late April. Or thought I did. Apparently something technical went wrong and my app didn’t go through, but I didn’t notice that. After the fact, I am glad it didn’t; the universe looked out for me on that and took away some unneeded anxiety.<\/p>\n

So now I wanted to get another towel warp on the loom. I scrolled through a lot of pix of things others had woven and settled on one that spoke to me. I modified the threading from 4 to 8 shafts, expanded some parts, and wound my threads. With all the color changes, this wasn’t a fast as my usual winding, but I really liked it. All 8\/2 cotton, sett at my typical 24 ends per inch.<\/p>\n

\"2<\/p>\n

Got the warp on the loom, thread it, spread it out, and started weaving. Uh oh. After weaving probably 10″ I noticed that in one of the cream sections I’d inadvertently threaded 4 ends on harness 2 instead of harness 1. So I made string heddles, hung replacement warp ends, and laboriously needle wove those threads correctly. I knew I wouldn’t want to do that needle weaving any more after all the towels were woven and off the loom, so just bit the bullet and did it right then.<\/p>\n

\"repair<\/p>\n

Ok, finally I was back on a roll. Until I wasn’t. Just a few inches later.<\/p>\n

\"broken<\/p>\n

If you look carefully at the prior photo, you’ll see that my apron strings are, um, not strong. I thought they could make it till the end of this warp and I’d replace them at that time. WRONG!!<\/p>\n

Geez! Would I be able to replace the apron string at this stage of the game without having to cut off that warp and retie? Would I be able to get consistent tension? I didn’t know, but I figured it made sense to try with the warp in place. I could always cut it off & retie it later if needed.<\/p>\n

\"Spring<\/p>\n

I was so pleasantly surprised when it wasn’t really much of a challenge at all to get the new (much stronger) apron string in place and have consistent tension. <\/p>\n

I’m not happy with that left selvedge, and have again tied repair heddles and tried 2 different harnesses in an attempt to smooth that out, with *some* success. So far I’ve woven 2 with that cream weft, 2 with a 10\/2 celery weft, and am now working an 8\/2 light blue. Not sure if I’ll weave 2 of the blue, try another color, or return to the cream. Or the celery. So many options.<\/p>\n

As soon as I’m done with this warp I will replace the apron ties on the back harness, as they are probably the same weak string as the front was.<\/p>\n

In closing, here are my first daffodils to open, which they did on March 22. I have several hundred plain yellow daffodils around my foundation, planted by the prior owner. They all open early and draw lots of comments from all the neighborhood walkers.<\/p>\n

\"first<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m getting two posts in this month as planned, so how can there be so much to share in just the past 2 weeks? I don’t know, but fair warning – plenty of pix and detail in this one, so get yourself your beverage of choice before proceeding.<\/p>\n

I’ll start with a shot of my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[367,7,4],"tags":[214,530,495,610,99,556,304],"class_list":["post-11083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gardening","category-life-as-i-see-it","category-weaving","tag-bamboo","tag-cotton","tag-food","tag-handwoven-hugs","tag-nature","tag-tencel","tag-towels-linens","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11083"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11087,"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11083\/revisions\/11087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}