Progress on dressing the loom. RLTS#4

Got all 510 ends threaded though the heddles. Next step is to move stuff around so that M has space to sit and turn the back beam as I tell him to while I manage the warp going though the reed. He's not feeling like it, that will probably wait until tomorrow. 

This particular linen is like the most excellent stuff, and is nothing at all like the frustrating experience I have had weaving with some sub-standard linen.The linen is from https://tiedtohistory.com, who is both an excellent vender of great stuff, nut also a nice person. . If you are convinced that you hate weaving with linen, make sure that you have tried good quality stuff before you let that opinion settle in your brain. 

It's funny how just the joy of having an excellent material in my hands can make me feel joy.

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Comment from after I did the first couple of turns: I currently have a 12 dent reed that I have been using for everything, but this project might have needed me to acquire a 10 dent or smaller reed. To get the epi I wanted I needed to go 3 ends in one dent every other dent. And as lovely as this linen is, it is perfectly fine with the two ends in the dent, but the three ends are not happy. 

This is not a failure, even if I can't get this to work as I want it to, but I have plans...but this is exactly what all these endless sampler projects are for, to learn all these things that I don't know. 

I mean, it's nice to get useable things also, but learning is the primary goal.

June 27, 2020

I had too much caffeine on Thursday, and I had extra yesterday to hopefully give myself a smooth ramp down, but, uhm,

I'm definitely feeling the lack today. I only got one load of rocks from the creek yesterday for the hill in done before the heat defeated me, but it rained last night/this morning so it should be much more humid today! What joy living in MO is. I did get a bunch of weeds pulled and some of the mimosa spouts trimmed up from the back patio area. I still need to cut down the finished flowering clematis's.  The yard is lovely and full of clover flowers. We have lots and lots of clover growing amongst the grass, which is nice. 

Yesterday, I also got half of the 510 threads though the heddles on this current weaving project (the samples for the 20/1 linen). I had been avoiding finishing dressing my weaving because after I got everything though the reed, I thought the linen was snarling. so I spent several weeks just kinda avoiding that project. But once I sat down and was sensible, the problem went away, and then the heddles were their normal tedium. I found one dent in the reed that was skipped so far, and I decided to do nothing about it, and will jus see what irregularity that gives the linen.  Mike says that he is going to make pizza for dinner tonight, so nothing that needs to be thought about in the food category, which I always like. He is also thawing a turkey because he wants to cook it for tomorrow. I think it is just a turkey breast, but I'm not sure now that I think about it. 

Today, I know I have lots of stuff I can do, but I think I will continue on with finishing the heddles on this project, and if I get far enough, I hope to gets M's help turning the back beam so I can get the whole warp wound onto it and maybe do a little set up weaving. I also have at least one, but I think two, 40/1 linen sample warps that have been off the loom and washed for ages that need ends sewn in or cut off, and then lengths separated and packaged to be sent out. I hope to get that doe and ready by this afternoon. 

Today's drawing: I was not feeling inspired, so I continued on with the one-point perspective from www.helloartsy.com/one-point-perspective/ that I enjoyed before. I wonder what they have up after one point perspective? 

Today's calligraphy: second half of the alphabet. This is just the lower case letters, and I think I will be ok with just practicing them for right now, so I should dig up the Facebook post where we talked about appropriate books of psalms to copy soon.  Numbers are grouped with the uppercase, so tomorrow might be prating the numerals, and the copying psalms might start on Monday.  I really like how my m and n's and zs look. 

Book: I finished listening to Alpha Nights and then switched over to Silver Silence but Nalini Singh. Not overly interested in it (this is not the first time I've listened to it) but it is something... I have a couple of new books in audible and on the library account ts, but not feeling inspired by any of them. I have Raven (about the Jonestown cult) waiting there, and I am really fascinated by it, but not sure I am feeling quite into the crazy at the moment. 

Current state of the snake coif. I posted this on Facebook a few days ago. And I decided to go with the single ply (yes, I know single ply is redundant, but I hate the alternatives) of the original green for the bottoms of the snakes. 

---Ok! So here we are. A picture of how the embroidery is so far. I only have 1/5th of the thread color left and for various reasons I don't want to/am unable to order more. It is a two ply reeled silk. The last picture is the available colors I have that are not earmarked for other projects. I pulled out the two yellow, a light green, and a copper color, and did a line of one ply of each color, paired with one ply(yes, I know saying ONE ply or single ply is redundant) and did a test line. I also, on the top did one line with just a single ply. 

The thought is, that in the remaining non-finished snakes, I would do the top with the two ply old green, and do the bottom of the snake with whatever combo I think would look best. Keep in mind that I also want to come back in and do something to represent the hatching that Trevelyon did on his snakes, and I will have to figure that at at some point. Though I might decided to use something that I can order more of, since I see that part sucking up lots of thread. 

Oh, also, on the left side of each try is the color the green is mixed with, and on the right side is a short line of the 2 ply green, just to show what it would look like paired up with the main color.

Anyway, time to make YOUR opinion know! What do you think I should use for the bottom?
1)The single ply of the original green?
2)the pale green?
3)the pale yellow?
4)the strong yellow?
5)the copper? 

6)you need a better picture of the attempts? 
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The manuscript page is from the Trevelyon Miscellany, and I tiled the page several times and carefully alligned the snakes so that I could keep the scale at as near to the size on the page as I could get, given the reported size of the book (496 x 326 x 494 millimeters), and then I traced the outlines onto a sheet of tracing paper, and then used that and a temporary light table made for by Harry Mencke. Go to this page and you can download a full pdf of the manuscript! https://www.wdl.org/en/item/11292/#q=trevelyon&

qla=en

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June 26, 2020

I had fallen off the wagon on my daily drawing that I started a while ago, and I kept letting the blank page defeat me on the calligraphy practice I wanted to start. To this morning I got up earlyish, and did both. I think I figured out WHY I had fallen off the wagon though. When mom was here visiting, I was being good about waking up before M left for work, and that gave me quiet time that I could use for the drawing. With waking up later, I felt that I should start the work of the day, whatever that work should have been, right away. So I am attempting to make myself wake up at an early-ish time. I think I might even see if S and P are walking, and what time they are doing it, and see if I can get myself back into the swing of that. 

I did DRAGONS for the first time in a while, and I did one after SlackWyrm, by JoshuaWright.net and several after various stick figured dragons I found on the internet. I am always fascinated by what minimal features need to be included for our brains to say.. "Oh, thats an xyz" and which features are unnecessary. Also, how what is needed can change between groups of people or overtime.  I also drew some multifora roses that were blooming outside yesterday. I wonder if they will still be blooming today. And my attempt at M's and mine's heraldry. and some ivy...

M is home today, not feeling well. Now that it is 10am, I think I shall eat some of the oatmeal I made a few days ago for breakfasts this week, and thinking of what I want to accomplish today.  Here is a partial list, we will see how much happens. 

-Cut off the suckers coming out of a bunch of the trees around the lawn area, and cut out some places where the mimosas are coming back where they should not be, both on the hill and not. 

-clamber into the creaked because it is dry and toss out some rocks to add to the beds

-weed the front beds, and pull out the hosts I want to move (it is being overcrowded by some ferns)

-see if I can bring myself to plant some of the asparagus into the front beds

-sctoh gaurd the chairs

-exersise at 1pm

-see if S&P are still walking, make plans to join them next week 

-untabngle my warps and finishing dressing the loom

-pull out Juli's dress and work on that, see if she would be ok with a brief visit to check fit before continuing. Maybe work on the others that are cut out

-work on army guy mouse, unbox the cowboy mouse hat, make a teddy bear for a mouse, and some an outfit

-think about dinner...

Ok, there is no way all of that is happening, but we will see. 

June 25

New attempt to make daily posts. Today I drove over to St Louis to drop off wool with a friend (she took 4 bags full!) before mom gets back down here withe the boys and this year's haul of wool.  I put like 8 bags in the car, and let her chose from what was there. She Tok four, some for herself, and some for a friend. I then went down to JC where I picked up some Lava rocks from Gabby, who also gave me a bag full of pork/boar(!) that her husband had hunted. Which was unexpected. Thankfully, We reorganized the chest freezer, so there was actually room for the stuff. I look forward to eating it. I also offered help with the butchering when the time came for the next hunt.

One of the things I like the best about the people I know is how generous most of them are. I get wool for free from a friend, I give the extra away. A friend gave me some fish for free that she did not like, and it just all goes around, and no one nickel and dimes each other with a strict accounting. It is so nice to have the financial flexibility to give what I can, and receive without feeling guilty.

By the way, I still have wool left, and I am about to get this year's haul.  Let me know if you want any. 

Here is my little hill with the sones added. Mom painted a bunch of little stones a couple of weeks ago, and I needed to move some of them so that they would still be visible. 

Also, one of the roses in the front is blooming, and while I know they are invasive and need to go, the blooms are so pretty!

And look at this monster weed in one of the blackberry patches. Plantnet says it is pigeon berry but I don't know what that is so not very helpful.




Books for the day: 

I finished Dawn Caravan by Elizabeth Hunter last night. Loved it. Here is what I wrote about it last night. 

So. I have stopped reading series because the author got this great tension between characters, and then never resolved it in any meaningful way after 17 books. Ok, I stopped reading well before th 17th book, and the particular books I am thinking about are probably way past that number anyway. But for some reason 17 popped into my head as the number to use here. No idea why. 

But to get back on my topic, I was kinda dreading this book that I just finished, because it was a continuation of a story that had some great sexual tension that the author has been setting up as background in like 9 books, and then used as the foreground of like 3 books/stories and it was starting to get to the point where I would have stopped reading. And I did not particularly want to do that because I love her writing. But... it was starting to become very annoying. 

Now, paradoxically, by near the end I was worried because she finally resolved the tension exquisitely, but now I was wondering if she was going to hop onto different characters for her next book or how she was going to make the next book “interesting “. Like, was she going to invent something to put distance between the two that she had just masterfully managed to bring together but not make it too HEA, which I know is tricky for a writer. 

I was so relieved! She managed to use the last 5 pages to NOT invent a ridiculous new tension betweens the protagonists, but to make me all interested in what was going to happen next! While not feeling like it was an awful cliffhanger. I mean, she set up her next story, but I don’t feel like the story she just finished was unended. 

Which is really hard thing for a writer to do! 

I am really so very impressed with her writing. 

By the way, if you are wondering what book it was, this particular book was Dawn Caravan by Elizabeth Hunter. 

I would, however, recommend, if you are new to her stuff, that you read A Hidden Fire, a book that is actually FREE right now on amazon. I think Dawn Caravan has enough back story filled in, that if you are familiar with paranormal fantasy, you would be fine reading it, but I think you would enjoy it more if you started her world from the beginning.

And I have been listening to the audio book version of Alpha Night by Nalini Singh. I read the book a bit ago when it came out, but am borrowing the audio version from the library because frequently, the first read though of a new book by an author I like is just a gulp it down so I know the story, and then I listen to it to actually get details and enjoy it at leisure. It is very similar to her past books, but I have enjoyed it nonetheless.  I do like that, unlike with Mercy's and Adira's books (and some of the others) there was not the whole thing about the man needing to be strong enough to best them. I mean, she does talk some about how strong Ethan is, but he doesn't need to be stronger then her. I always think of it as the Red Sonja syndrome. I would still love to see her write a Dominate Female and a Submissive male (not BDSM, just how she has things in her world).