And the Loom is Ready!

A (wo)man is a very small thing,

and the night is very large and full of wonders.

~ Lord Dunsany

The last step in preparing the loom for weaving the Christmas rag rugs was tying the warp threads onto the front apron rod.  This went very quickly.  I learned a trick in my Craftsy video - the more threads you have tied on, the easier it is to tie them tightly (because the other bunches of threads are helping you hold the apron rod in place) - and you want all the threads to have the same amount of tension on them...  

So, my instructor explained that you should tie on about one third of the threads like this:  

And then tighten the apron rod a smidge, before tying on the rest of the warp threads.  

Notice in the picture above how the threads are tied in bunches on the rod and form a series distinct segments?  To weave, I want them evenly distributed - so first I put in a few weft rows of a thick yarn (actually, I think this is the stuff that we used to have in all of our mops).  

Voila!  Now the threads are evenly distributed!  And I am ready to weave!  

More than a month before Christmas!  

Will wonders never cease?  ;)

Color Selections - Part 1

Taste is not only a part and index of morality, it is the only morality. 

The first, and last, and closest trial question to any living creature is 

"What do you like?" 

Tell me what you like, I'll tell you what you are.

~ John Ruskin

Here are three of the color selections made by my friends:  

Top row: Red, White and Black

Middle row: Navy Blue, Light Blue, Camel

Bottom Row: Light Pink, Mid Pink, Bright Pink

I'm going to start by doing my rug - hoping to work out all of my mistakes before I get to any of the gifts.  Then, the goal is to get these three rugs on the same warp...  :)

Gratuitous Kitten Picture

I care not for a man's religion whose cat and dog are not the better for it.  

~ Abraham Lincoln

Popeye has been feeling sick for a few days.  Poor baby.  :(  

We took him to the vet and he got a bunch of medicine...  

He's still hiding, but instead of being curled up in a miserable ball, he is stretching out a bit...  I hope this means he is getting better!  

A$$ Over Teakettle

Sometimes things fall apart 

so that better things can fall together.  

~ Marilyn Monroe

I'm still working on preparing my loom for the first set of four Christmas gifts.  As I may have "mentioned" (i.e., bitterly complained about) already, the instructor in the Craftsy class I'm taking is teaching us how to warp the loom from the back to the front - and I've always done it from the front to the back.  

It's amazing how you can get some practice doing something one way and start taking for granted how comfortable you have grown with that method, until someone challenges you to do the same thing using a different method...  

In other words, doing things "backwards" has dumped me a$$ over teakettle!  

With my husband's help, I got the warp wrapped around the back beam - but there were signs that my tension isn't even, in that the exposed thread ends aren't all the same length - there is a discrepancy of several inches between the shortest and the longest!  That should NOT be the case...  :(

And you should have seen her warp on the video at this point - every thread exactly the same length and perfectly smooth!  :(

Next up was threading the heddles - I did groups of 4 and tied slip knots at the end of each bundle.  It was a little more complicated and twisty, because I had wrapped three lengths of thread at a time - so there wasn't a perfect "next one" at each moment...  

Step #3 - sleying the reed - again working in groups of four and "securing" each group with a slip knot - Ha! - as if that slip knot will secure the threads against Pepper once she discovers the dangling bunches...   

A close-up of the slip knots:  

Progress - the reed has been sleyed (long live the reed!).  

Another sign of messing things up - my warp is not centered in the reed - I have about 4 inches left over on one side and only about 1 inch left over on the other side...  This never happened before - although there is not really anything about this new method that should have made this step harder.  :(

Not sure how big a difference this is going to make - I'm probably going to try to go ahead and work with it - rather than pulling all of those threads out and re-sleying them into different "dents" (the slots in the reed).  

The last major step is to attach the warp to the front beam - hopefully I can squeeze that in some evening this week, after work.  

Let's hope that this is one of those times that Ms. Monroe was talking about and all this aggravation of learning to prepare the loom in a different way pays off!  

The Color Market

You should never hesitate to trade your cow 

for a handful of magic beans.

~ Tom Robbins

Well, yesterday was the "color market" at work.  I didn't have a plan, but no one seemed to want to dive in and start arm wrestling for little snips of yarn - so someone suggested that I shuffle their name cards and read them in a random order - determining the order in which they would get to make their selections.  I read through the 11 names three times - the middle time in reverse order - and each person got to pick one color each time her (or his) name was called.  

After that, everyone was free to bargain, negotiate and swap with everyone else.  Some people were really flexible, while others had their hearts more or less set on a particular combination.  As you might expect, some people had more fun with it than others...  

By the time the dust settled, I think that everyone was reasonably pleased with her or his selections.  

Here's the whole crew - each holding up her (or the lone "his") index card with the selections stapled on.  I work with some pretty awesome people - smart, funny and genuinely caring...  :)

(Oh, one couldn't make it, but someone else drew colors for her - hence the woman with two cards in her hands.)  

I'm not sure that I'd do it that way again, but it was something different and kind of exciting and I think that, in the end, it worked out.  Now let's just hope that everyone loves their gifts!  Fingers crossed!  :)

(Rail) Road Trip!

I travel light.  

But not at the same speed.

~ Jarod Kintz

Now that our foster daughter has turned 18, the great state of Florida considers her an adult and has "cut her loose", so she can join her extended family (aunts, uncles and cousins) in New York.  Over the weekend, we journeyed there together, by train.  

It's a 24-hour trip by train, and I just wasn't up to trying to sleep all night in a coach seat, so I sprung for the "roomette" - which is a private "room" that has 2 day seats (facing each other) that fold down and connect to form a lower berth and an upper berth that slides down from the ceiling, to give us bunk beds!  It also has a toilet and fold-up sink - although there is no privacy screen, so one party must leave the room if the other party wants to use these facilities.  

As you can see (above) our foster daughter does not share my problem with sleeping in a coach car!  ;)

We spent most of our time in our private room.  We ate 3 meals in the dining car and took showers in the shower "room" (I'm not sure, but this may be where the British coined the term "water closet").  

Watching out the window, as we progressed north, she asked me, "Why do the trees look like they are on fire?"

I passed time by reading a book on my Kindle - she passed time by doing teenage girl things - painting her nails, plucking her eyebrows, putting on her make-up, ironing her hair and using her smart phone to post selfies and chat with friends on Facebook...  ;)

We met up with her Facebook boyfriend in NYC.  Despite almost daily Skype-ing with him for months, she was nervous about meeting him face-to-face for the first time.  She kept asking me what she should say and I kept proposing ridiculous things that made her laugh, but I never managed to do more than temporarily relieve her nerves...  

So far, I'm afraid she's not a big fan of NYC.  Remember that she came from a very small village in Honduras and thought that Lakeland, Florida was a pretty big city.  "Lake-what, Florida?" you may be thinking to yourself.  Consider my point made.  ;)

Later that night, when we spoke on the phone, she was crying and said it was ugly and she hated it and it was the worst mistake she ever made in her life.   

My husband reminded me that I cried too, on my first night with him in our first place, in a new city, far away from everyone and everything I knew...  Now, 31 years later, I hadn't even remembered...  

I told her that story so that she could know that, no matter how she feels today, it;s not actually the end of the world and everything will be better with time.  :)

Happy Halloween!

Green Lantern: "What are your powers anyway? You can't fly."

Batman: "No."

Green Lantern: "Super-strength?"

Batman: "No."

Green Lantern: "Hold on a second... 

You're not just some guy in a bat costume, are you? 

Are you freaking kidding me?!”

~ Geoff Johns

Believe it or not, this was their first time trick-or-treating.  

They made their own costumes.  (I took them shopping for the supplies.)  

Carolyn was a box of "Jelly Bellies" jelly beans:  

She even had windows where you could look in and see the jelly beans!  

Now this one is harder for me to get my mind around.  

I tried to entice Brandon with the idea of being an astronaut.  But he stuck to his guns - apparently he has always wanted his Halloween costume to be:  

A crossing guard!  

Yes, a crossing guard!  I know, I know - that is so overdone - always beating out ninja, zombie, witch and fairy princess for the most popular Halloween costume of the year.  I hated to see him become such a Halloween cliche...  ;)

But they had a blast and scored TONS of candy.  :)

And isn't that, after all, the true meaning of Halloween?   ;)