Happy Mother's Day all.

Update:  Bubbalee's kittens, unseen, were 3 weeks old yesterday.  It is marked on my calendar.
She comes every morning to eat.  She inhales a can of food, and then has some dry.  I have seen her come  at least two more times during the day.  Nursing those babies makes her hungry, it seems.
It makes us crazy, at Crazy as a Loom, :),  to see here go back and forth across the state highway.  I am hoping that she has it down to a science, but I have seen her have a couple of close calls, so I am not so sure.  The little ones are far underneath the shed across the road, and short of tearing the floor up, we cannot get them.  Bubbalee, on the other hand, does seem to be friendlier.  She is sometimes sitting on the porch in the morning, when I get there, waiting.  If not, she must hear me pull in, because within fifteen minutes, she is looking for breakfast.  She lets us get within feet of her, and she will continue to eat while we talk to her, without running off like she used to do.
Can't she see how willing we are to take care of her???

I anguish about what to do, still.  I have tried to accept that I can only do so much for her.  I hope to catch the little ones to at least get them neutered, and her, too.
I like to think that I have made her life easier, with food on demand.  No more scavenging for her.


Inside, life is easier still.

Miss Puss, chillin'.

When I went to feed the cats this morning, I stayed for awhile, and wove a rug in the sunshine.  Just for me.  My time.   I needed it.

Still working on the same container.
I am not sure if I can explain the many, many containers of fabric I have.  Some of them are leftover from fabric cut for custom orders, some of them are filled with fabric I dyed.   One day this week, I will take you on a tour of my fabric stash.  You will be mortified shocked at how much I really have.
Does the term hoarder sound familiar???
No, it's not hoarding if you are actually going to USE it, and I USE this stuff all the time.
Never mind that DH says I will not live long enough to weave it all.  He's a man.
Men do not understand these things.

I will even take you on a tour of the BARN.  Now there's a stash.  And when we're done, you will not wonder where I come up with a container of motley fabric.
Or motley anything for that matter.

I was going to do a little mowing, or yard work before I went home, but honestly, I just wasn't feeling it.
Maybe I just want to hire someone to do all the hard stuff.
That is a strange feeling for me.  Hard to accept even.

I have always mowed acres of lawn, rototilled the garden, pruned and trimmed and hauled brush, planted, and harvested, and canned.  I did it all.  Pickles, and relish,  grape jelly and pepper jelly, green beans, and corn, and tomatoes. Asparagus.  Horseradish.  Grapes.  Flavored vinegars.  Pesto.  I was driven.
I know you find that hard to believe.
Now I find that I just want to putter in the garden, and I want someone else to do the back breaking, knee killing, muscle tiring STUFF.
And the question that I ask myself, is this.
Is it because I am getting OLDER?  Or because I am getting SMARTER?

This is one rug done, and wound onto the cloth beam, with enough for fringe for that rug, and the next.  Now I will start another rug, without taking the first one off.  Sometimes I will do four or five, and take them off all at once.

To answer the epi, or ends per inch, question.
For placemats, I always do 12 epi.  I like the warp threads closer together.
For rugs, I NEVER do 12 epi.  I use 8 or 10.  Sometimes I use 8 or 10 threaded on a straight draw, and one in each dent.  And more often I thread the heddles one to a heddle, but when I thread the dent, I put two in a dent, skip one, and put two in the next, and repeat across.
This gives me, for 8 epi, 8 working as 4, and for 10 epi, 10 working as 5.   I like the way it looks.
Is that as clear as mud for ya' all????
The reason that you want LESS threads per inch for a rug, in my opinion, is that the less warp you have on the face of a rug, the less wear you have on the warp.  The fabric, or weft, takes the wear, instead of the warp.  So while it seems like a rug with a 12 epi or more would be stronger, it will actually wear out sooner, because there is so much warp on the face of it to take the beating.

And yes, I will do a tutorial on sectional warping.  Soon.
As soon as my camera girl comes back from volunteering at the shelter for flood victims.
Yay, L.

I came home at lunch time, and my daughters and grandchildren came for Mother's Day.  We had a lovely lunch.  It was laid back, and casual, and just what I needed.
I  think it was just what my mother needed, too.
Family.
It doesn't get any better.