Weaving my way out of February.

Is it March yet???
Well, there's a LOT of snow out there, but when the SUN shines, it is easier, somehow.

I have a LOT of warp on the AVL, which is a good thing.     It means that when the sun is shining, I have something to weave on while I soak it UP.

I apologize for posting and reposting pictures of my "new to me weaving space", that used to be totally wasted on retail.
But I can't help it.   I love it.
It is the coolest place to work.

To think I used to work in a PRISON.  Yikes.
Dark, smelly, depressing.
OK, let's not go there.

I've been trying to decide how to put some plants on the new window between the rooms, without 
the four cats in residence, knocking them off.
I am stumped.
Hanging plants, maybe?

I found some cotton flake I liked, so I decided to give it a try on towels.

 I wasn't sure about it though, at least not confident enough to keep weaving a bunch of towels, but Lois had a small warp on her Wolf Pup at home, so I gave her some of it to weave a sample for me.

Which she did, she made TWO and she washed them  too!!!!

 I think she is starting something......dollhouse rugs???

Then I found some variegated cotton flake,  and kept on weaving.

 I suppose I should be sick of this pattern by now, but I'm not.
I'm still having fun, and that's what it's all about.
Gonna weave my way right through March.

Yeah.

Ay yi yi

My fave carpenter/handyman said to me one time, " You come up with the craziest ideas, and then I make them happen."
This has so far been true.
But THIS TIME, my friend and fellow weaver, Sue, suggested a reno project to me the other day while we were weaving.
She said, 'You know, if that "window" between these two rooms was BIGGER, it would let lots of light in.  I think it would be awesome."

When I bought the house, this was two separate rooms.  But I found out that the wall was not original.  This was ONE ROOM, once apon a time.
I debated making it one room again, but someone had put in narrow oak flooring in the back room, which made a much more complicated project.
So I just opened it with a window.

But Sue got me thinking, and there is nothing I love better than tearing down walls, and opening up spaces.
I blame it on my parents, who did this kind of thing almost every year of my childhood.  Our little house grew about 6 ft or so as soon as it was warm enough to cut off the back of the house.  Inside, the walls changed whenever the mood struck.......and believe me, it struck quite often.
So I come by this naturally.
Hey, it could have been worse.  They didn't drink, or carouse, or fight.  So I guess I had it pretty good.

Anyway, time for the saw.
It was mostly a studded wall, as we expected.  But there was some lathe and plaster, and old wallpaper.
O.M.G.  what a freaking MESS.

But I love the results.
Wow.

LOVE.

On the chicken front, C put a "treat door" in my chicken run, for those who do not want to actually go in and mingle with the girls.
Not mentioning any names, or anything.
Not even going to talk about the hole cut in the chicken wire.
Nope.

I don't think the girls miss Bart one bit.
His new owner thought he had that rooster subdued, but apparently Bart forgot who was BOSS the other day, and he sunk his spurs into some shins.
Amazingly, he is going to get one more chance, this time de-spurred.  We'll see how that goes.

The chickie girls are quite content, although they will not like the 2x4 that C put across the coop below their nesting boxes.  NO MORE laying eggs UNDER the boxes, girls.
The times, they are a changin'.

🎶🎶🎵🎵🎶🎵

Yup, today is my birthday.  I am celebrating, mostly celebrating having survived the last few years.
As I've said before, you have to be grateful for what you have, because it can always be worse.

And when my ongoing headache gets me down, I start counting my blessings.  There are plenty of them, I am very lucky in so many ways.

Last night, we had a pot luck dinner at the studio, for my weaving friends.
We had so much fantastic food, we drank a little wine, we talked and laughed, and for just a little while, we forgot about Old Man Winter.

This is the cake that Lois made for me.   I'm so glad to know that I'm not getting any older.
Who knew??

We did a some  sharing of our weaving ventures, always so much fun, and always an inspiration.

We hope to have these get togethers on a monthly basis.

Today two of my daughters and three of my grands, came to have lunch with me.

And now you know what to do with your empty cones left over from weaving.


I missed my third daughter, and her two children, but she couldn't be there.





 Tomorrow I will get back to my weaving. 

Maybe the sun will shine.

It's good to have a birthday.  Age is nothing, really.  I have an amazing family, and so many good friends.   I have this incredible studio where I can weave every day.  I'm still on my feet, and doing OK, in spite of some bad luck and revolting turns of events.
I am still dreaming and planning and life is still good.
Happy Birthday to me.

Getting Through February

Finally got my dishwasher hooked up, and the new countertop installed.   I decided to keep my old stove, even though I had to push it to the edge of the doorway to make it work.  All this was because of the post in the corner.......the dishwasher wouldn't go over any further.
I just don't want to give up my old stove.

 

 I also don't want to give up my four prints over the stove.
I guess I want an old fashioned kitchen.

I've been slogging through the cold weather, pretty much like everyone else I know.

I weave on Möbius shawls, then mohair throws, then Fiesta rag rugs, and occasionally 16 harness dish towels.
Whatever keeps me engaged.

It has been brutally cold, but we have had sunny days.

The southern side of the house is bathed in sun on those days.

On other days, I've been "engaged" with sweet baby Dale.

She warms up any day, that one.

Also spending a little time with my other two girls.    We made  time for a little COLLAGE.

I'm shooting for  April 1st, counting the weeks off.
The way I look at it, only a fool would expect winter to still be around on April 1st.

Winterish.

While I try not to talk about the weather, here in the northeast, as well as a lot of the rest of the country, the weather is right in our faces.
Snow storm after snow storm, bitter cold, shoveling, paying for the plow man, feeding the birds, bundling up like you were headed to the Arctic just to go to the store, doing all the worrying and work that comes with WINTER.  There, I've said it.

We even shovel a path for Roy so he can do his thing without being in 2 ft of snow.

This week, my car is being fixed, from my unpleasant meeting with a tractor trailer.  It will be there all week.  My insurance would have paid a whopping $20 a day for a rental, but what would I get with that?  Something that would get through the snow without breaking into a cold sweat? 
I think not. 
So I am getting delivered to the studio in the morning, and picked up later, by DH.  It's not like I am up for any traveling other than that anyway.
I can do it for a week.

So alone at the studio, I looked around for what I would get into.

Today, I decided to go with "winter whites/gray skies".

 Besides I have a lot of this sock stuff lying around, and I wanted to get it woven and get the rugs put on the shelves.

I love these rugs, so reminiscent of birch bark.  They are heavy, and solid, and earthy.

 

See my old boots by the door.  I've been wearing them every winter for 14 years.   I like to get my money's worth.

 

These first two rugs off the loom, another finished and probably 3 more to go.

 

The rest of the afternoon calls for a hot cuppa tea, and my new book.

Yup, more winter.

All the news that is news, and some that ain't.

The bad news is that winter is sticking around for longer than I want to think about.

Oh, and Bart attacked me every time I tried to collect eggs today.  And filling the waterer was almost impossible.
He definitely has my number.  He is totally making my chicken farmer routine very unpleasant.

Continuing to make the day interesting, I dumped almost a whole bag of pellets on the floor.
Which I had to pick up quick, as someone thought it might be a new kind of CAT LITTER.
Not saying any names.

I spent the afternoon tying on a new warp, for more mobius shawls.   Not a problem really, just tedious.

 The good news is that my friend's husband came and took Bart home with him late this afternoon.   Last year, all his chickens but one, were killed by a marauding group of raccoons.   I gifted him with four of my young hens, to give him five.  
He went into the coop today, grabbed Bart by the legs, and took him home.   Bart promptly jumped up on the roost with the new girls, in his new digs.  He probably crowed.  Fickle b******.

Bart doesn't know it yet, but his new owner is not going to put up with any crap from him.  So maybe it will work out.
I will miss him crowing.  And that's about it.
Anybody know of a rooster recording that you can program???
Maybe I need to invent that one, for all those "roosterless" hen houses.

I am so excited, now I can go into my hen house, without being assaulted.



 Speaking of excited, tomorrow I am going to pay this little lady a visit.
It doesn't get much better than that.

Another cold day

I have been using my blog to see what March has been like for the last couple of years.  Perusing 2012, 2013, and 2014, it appears that March can go either way.  It might be lovely, and it might be just plain NASTY.
So I guess I will just have to wait and see like everyone else. 
I guess I will just have to count down to April, a much safer destination.

I feel bad counting the days until spring, but I am.  I think it is the super frigid temps that really get to me.  I don't mind the snow so much.

On the subject of Bart, it's not good.
I can't get in the coop, or the run, without him trying to "get me".  And he is serious.
I have read all the literature about changing his ways, but no, I am not going to carry him around to prove I am boss, and I am not going to beat him.
I could fix the coop so I can lock him out when I go in.  But that doesn't seem right.

I may have to admit, reluctantly, that my friend Karen has been right all along.  The fact of the matter is that I love hearing him crow, but unfortunately, the good experience stops there.

I see that a rooster is helpful, if you free range your chickens, but I have no intention of doing that.
So Bart may have to go.
I hate it, but I really want to be able to enjoy my chickie girls, and I can't get near them with him trying to protect them every second.

I managed to finish a Fiesta runner today, 10.5 ft long.  But I think I need to give it a rest, getting a sharp pain in the bicep of my right arm.  Too much weaving???   Say it ain't so.

I gave up weaving for today, and  I came home and made some potato leek soup (recipe in the recipe link at the top of the page)
The last time I made it was for my mother, a few days before she died. 
Making it always makes me think of her, she loved it so much.

A big salad, a glass of wine, and soup.  Oh, and toasted English muffin bread.

I am going to look at February and March as an opportunity to get things done.
I have to keep from thinking about the weather.
And how much I don't like it, because it doesn't help to hate winter.
Not one bit.

Little of this, little of that.

Cleaning the basement this past weekend, with the help of daughter #1, I finally unearthed this trunk, that has been residing behind the furnace for way too long.
It definitely has character, and I have a plan for it.

Of course, first off it has to be stripped.

But I think it will make a perfect coffee table.

And I can store my knitting inside.

 In a box, behind the paint stash, there were these dishes.  The newspaper they were wrapped in was dated 1991.

They aren't worth much  monetarily, but I like them.

On a business note, I told you that I sold the HTBS looper loom last summer, so I no longer have them.   But as circumstance would have it, I still have the LOOPERS.   I am taking a different approach to them though.  Lois and I are done with spending all our time handling them. So we aren't sorting them, mixing the colors up, NOPE, none of that.   I am sending them out to my "looper lady" to be cleaned of all the strings and such, and when they come back, we are packing them in 5 lb bags just the way they are, and selling them for $29.95.   As soon as I have 100 lbs, I am sending out a newsletter, to let all the looper lovers on my contact list know that I have them, and to let them know what colors are predominant in this batch.
And I will mention it briefly here.....as in I currently have 10 bags 5 lbs each, predominantly bright blue/turquoise.
And that's all I have to say about that.

There's nothing like a couple of warm loaves of English muffin bread on a cold wintry day.

Now for a message from Sydney.


"I don't like change.  At. All."

"I'm talking to you, Lois."