Wednesday, July 30, 2014

New shoes.........

New shoes arrived in the mail yesterday - whoo hoo.  Friend Kathy B was wearing a pair of these at the last spinning get together, I tried them on and decided I needed some. They're called Jambu. She bought them from ShopHQ, someone she works with is the ultimate shopper and this is where they were the best price.  The bottom and toes are similar to Keens, one of my favorite shoe brands.

So I could just stop at one pair - I needed the green because I love this shade of green and wear it often. I can wear these pretty much all winter long here with some lightweight socks.

Now my friend Loyce turned me on to these shoes, Corky's, also similar bottoms and toes to Keens. What enablers my friends are. She bought hers from Amazon, I bought mine from ShopHQ just because I was buying the others there. I was a little worried about these fitting but they fit perfectly. They only came in whole sizes and I wear an 8 or 8 1/2 depending on the shoe brand - I read the reviews that said they ran a little small but was still worried about ordering a 9 - they fit perfectly. There are so many different styles - I might have to get another pair in a few months. Same as the others, I can wear these in the winter much of the time.

This was what I was up to yesterday afternoon after twisting fringe on another chenille shawl and listing it my etsy shop.  A long overdue chore of recording all my (important) books in a spreadsheet in case of fire. I have so many out of print weaving books. And even though I've taken photos of book shelves while documenting our household I could never remember all the books. It took hours to get through the weaving, spinning and dyeing books. This morning I'll finish up with the knitting, crocheting, quilting, craft books. These shouldn't take as long - at least that's what I think.......I also thought I'd get the entire job done yesterday afternoon. That blue book on ikat along with 3 on kumihimo were a challenge as they were written in Japanese.......finally just had to write a small description since I can't translate the titles or authors names.

Forest fires have been gobbling up Oregon acreage this year, mostly in Central Oregon but last week there were 39 lightning caused fires in our area, luckily all taken care of quickly. We, on the extreme west side of the valley heard the thunder but got none of the lightning but this week may be a different story - dry lightning expected for the next 7 days including us on the west side.

A fire 25 miles to the south of us is now 90% contained - relatives of mine lived there for 28 years until they moved to MT 6 years ago, their former home is currently being protected by fire crews. Saw in the fire calls that it started as a grass fire........hmm, don't think this one was lightning caused as there was no lightning reported there.......probably human caused.......

Have I said recently that I hate fire season?  Sam hears it everyday. We're only halfway through fire season (if we're lucky) and the worst is yet to come as everything dries out even more. Fire season will probably not be over until October but sometimes we get much welcomed rain in late September.

Now off to finish up my library inventory so if a wild fire did come through here I'd have a record of all the books I'd want to replace.....and yes, that list along with photos of everything in the house are kept elsewhere........





Monday, July 28, 2014

New roving in etsy shop

I finally listed some newly dyed rovings in the etsy shop. Last night while we watched tv I spun up small sample skeins of each roving.  Not sure when I'll get back to the dyepots with the 100+ degree temps. This week will definitely be a week of inside projects.




Sunday, July 27, 2014

Dog Days of Summer



I haven't posted any Etsy Treasuries I've put together lately, I've made many, just run out of time to get them up here on my blog to share.  Today because I love dogs I thought I'd share my latest one. As always it features fellow members of the etsy team Handweavers of Etsy........plus some fun dog finds from other etsy shops.  Visit it HERE - favorite it, favorite the items and shops, enjoy.......maybe do a little shopping......there's something in this treasury calling Bailey's name..........

Friday, July 25, 2014

Another dye day.....rather morning.....

This morning I thought I'd take advantage of the cooler temps, this afternoon back into the 90's, after that for at least the next week into the 100's again so I had to sneak in some more dyeing while I could stand the temps.  This morning it was merino/tencel. I was focusing on silvers and golds as I have customers asking for them. But then that last little bit I had to throw in some color - purples.

I'm thinking I love these purples so much I might have to keep this roving and spin it for myself.

Red and Black Scarves ready to sell

I finally got the fringe twisted on the red and black tencel scarves and photography work done........such as it is. I sent pix off to my customer who said she'd like the first scarf so it's up in the etsy shop as a reserved listing waiting for her to purchase. The other 2 scarves are also up in the shop for sale......hopefully someone will fall in love with them, they are lovely but so often pictures just don't do them justice..........at least when I'm taking the pictures...........




Thursday, July 24, 2014

Pay it forward...........

Ok, so let's see how many of you out there I can get to try Fireball Cinnamon Whisky - straight, on the rocks.  Friend Teresa from over on the coast introduced me to this at the NWRSA conference last month. You all don't know me but I'm not a big drinker, I like a glass of wine here and there, I have some favorite after dinner liquors once in a while, but when it comes to straight alcohol I want it disguised in a fruity drink with salt, sugar or fruit on the lip of the glass and a pretty umbrella.

We went back to Teresa's room as she  had something for us to try (me and Pat) she pulled out the Fireball. I was skeptical but am up for anything......well, almost anything, I'm not eating jellyfish in a Chinese restaurant, been stung by too many over the years. I tried the Fireball and loved it. I immediately texted Sam knowing my cousin Jim was with him and would be traveling into CA, then back into OR to get home which means cheaper liquor store over the CA border.

Text from me - Tell Jim to pick me up 2 bottles of Fireball Cinnamon Whisky
Text from Sam - Really????
Text from me - Yes, really
Text from Sam - A fifth?
Text from me thinking a fifth is tiny - No a big bottle, 2 big bottles
Text From Sam - Ok, how much have you drunk to want 2 gallons of this stuff?

Since then I've enabled friend Kathy B up at the Complex Weavers Conference, she even tried it one night mixed with cranberry juice at the suggestion of the bar tender. We're thinking it might taste good in hot apple cider this fall. I told neighbor Carol about it, her husband Merle picked her up a bottle last week.  Now, who out there is willing to give this a try??? I did see it in those tiny little bottles at the checkout at the liquor store so you wouldn't have to invest in an entire bottle to give it a try. Lest you all think I'm a lush, not so......I might have a little glass of it once a week if that...... 

Blame it all on Teresa if you love it........

Dye day

Today the temps were in the low 80's, only in the 50's in the morning - a perfect day for dyeing. What a change from the 100+ temps for the past few weeks.....but it's coming back - 100's starting Saturday all the way through next week.  Friend Kathy G asked if she could come over and help me, she's not a spinner so doesn't deal with roving but that didn't matter.  It was a fun day of dyeing and visiting.

I asked Kathy if she wanted to dye 2 pounds of roving - she mixed up southwest colors.

There's Kathy's roving on the left,  a bit brighter than southwest colors now but really nice.

Dyeing hundreds of pounds of roving every summer is wearing me out so this summer I'm only dyeing around 50 pounds. It's hard on the body standing on concrete all day plus I want to spend more time painting/dyeing warps for weaving.  Those will come after the roving is all dyed..........and after I wind a ton of warps.

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

New towels in shop........

I had a special order for some of the embroidered 'I heart weaving' towels in blue so I decided to make some extras - there are 2 of the blue and 2 of the red now available in my etsy shop. I sold out of them a while back but just didn't have the time to stitch more - today I made the time. What a great gift for the weaving friends in our lives......or for ourselves........come to think of it I don't have any for myself......hmm, think I might have to make myself a set in sage greens.



Thursday, July 17, 2014

On a whim......

On a whim I entered the Webs 40th Anniversary Contest back in May. There were 4 categories that were to have 3 winners in each; First Place, Runner-Up and Honorable Mention. All weavings had to use at least 75% Webs Valley yarns in them - Webs is where I buy my tencel so my scarf used 100% of their yarn. I sent photographs of one of my Iranian Tilework scarves to Webs, it was judged in the accessories category and made it to the finals. Final judging took place last week but winners weren't announced until 7:30 east coast time tonight in the Webs booth at Convergence in Rhode Island. I received an email this evening with the list of the winners - My Scarf got Honorable Mention. There were actually 2 honorable mentions in that category so the judging must have been difficult. I won't get my scarf back until fall as it will be in an exhibit at Webs for National Spinning & Weaving week the first week of October. I'm hoping they post pictures of all the winners on their website because I'd love to see them. Oh, and a fun thing is that I get a gift certificate to Webs - hmm, maybe some black silk in my future........ 



Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Sunset

 There is a spectacular sunset tonight - this is looking off the deck.......

.....this taken less than 5 minutes later......

From one warp.........

Here are 3 scarves that came off the same painted rayon flake warp. The same scarf, just a bit different colorway. I love tencel but when I use rayon in the warp and tencel in the weft I love it even more - these scarves are so soft and drapey, I love the feel of them. I put them up for sale in my etsy shop although I keep eyeing one of them to keep for myself......will give it thought.

It's that time of year again - blueberry time......blueberries in smoothies, yogurt and on cereal. After I got home from town today I 'had' to bake a blueberry pie - it's not a beautifully made pie but I'm sure it's going to taste yummy........with vanilla bean ice cream tonight........

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

On the needles.......

I finished knitting a slouch hat the other evening and looking in my knitting bag I found around 1" of this sock on the needles so I pulled it out, figured out what I had done months ago, and got to knitting on it last night. It's a feather and fan pattern, I'm using some Opal yarn from my stash. This may go on the back burner again for a bit as I want to get back to knitting on the felted bag in the evenings and there are a couple shawlettes waiting in the wings..........

Forecast for 107 seems to have been downgraded.......maybe 104 instead........no matter, it's still hot.

Monday, July 14, 2014

Uncle......

I've made some progress on the tencel warp put on the loom yesterday. I finally cried 'uncle' due to the heat. Scarf #3 will have to wait and since I haven't decided on the weft color yet that's ok. I got some good feedback on colors to consider and tried them out in-between these scarves - the navy blue is a thought but I'm not positive yet. I've been wondering about gold with the red and black, will have to give that a try before starting the final scarf.

Here's the scarf using the same red for the weft as was used in the warp. This is what I'm thinking might interest my customer the most from what she said....or not......   The white grosgrain ribbon is my measuring 'tape'. I have it marked for 60", 65", 68" and 70" - I generally weave a scarf 70". I also have it marked at the midway point for 65" & 70" as there are times when I'm weaving something with a definite direction that I want to reverse mid point in the scarf.

Here's the version with the black weft. I like both of these scarves but the black one is really striking. I love this pattern so much I might just have to weave some towels next using it.  I got the draft out of the Carol Strickler 8 Harness book, pgs 106 & 107 #384-3.

Now off to find something else to work on up here in the air-conditioning...........

New on the loom....

New on the loom yesterday is a black and red tencel warp for 3 scarves. I have a customer wanting that  color combo - not sure if she'll like what I weave or not......if not, she doesn't have to purchase. I usually don't weave custom orders but after thinking about this one decided it might be fun.

Here I'm auditioning weft colors.  I'm definitely using the bottom red weft for one scarf - from the flash of the camera it looks like a different shade of red but it's really the same as the warp.  I'll also weave one scarf using the black for weft - with the flash it's looking more gray here. I haven't decided what to use for the 3rd scarf.......I don't care for the other colors I tried out, 2 different shades of red. I could end up weaving another in the first red or maybe do a combo of red & black.........will decide that when I get to it.

It was so danged hot yesterday that after winding the warp and getting ready to weave I just couldn't sit there anymore to start on the scarves - I need to have so many lights on to see well that it makes it even warmer in the room. After auditioning the wefts I moved on to twisting fringe on 3 scarves woven recently. Will weave today until I get too warm....then will move upstairs to do something else.

And yes, we have air conditioning but it's on the upper level of the house only - there are 2 furnaces in this house (overkill for the size) and only the one upstairs in the main living area (kitchen/dining/living/2 bedrooms) has a heat pump so there's air conditioning upstairs. The lower level is a daylight basement with the garage and 2 more bedrooms/storage area I use for my studio - it has it's own forced air furnace for heat. My thought is the previous owner figured if they used the wood stove insert upstairs in the winter that they'd need to somehow heat the downstairs since the stove heat wouldn't reach there - it does make sense. For the most part downstairs stays cool since it's a (daylight) basement but when we've got numerous days weeks of over 100 it can get stuffy down there once I close the windows for the day after letting the early morning cool air in.

Saturday, July 12, 2014

Road trip

This morning neighbors Carol & Merle called asking if we'd like to take a drive over the mountains to Agness.  We've never done that 'hairy' drive so knew it would be fun, and Merle is such a good driver there were no worries on my part riding along those narrow, no guard rail, mountain roads.

This is not terribly far up from where we live. The brown is part of the remnants of last year's big forest fire that was close to us.
 
Here's a better photo of that section of the fire area - it was ravaged by the fire - such steep dangerous terrain for the fire fighters to work.

This is the infamous Bear Camp Coastal Route sign near where the Kim family got stuck in the snow and the husband perished trying to walk out to save his family. Personally I've never understood why they tried to drive this way to the coast even if their GPS told them it was a route. After starting up in elevation and quickly running into snow I would have turned around rather than to go even higher into the mountains into deeper snow. There are signs on the road leading to our place warning against taking Bear Camp Rd. but the Kim's must not have seen them, or had turned off the road before seeing them.......I've always seen them starting fall through spring. Very sad incident.

We live just off the right lower corner of the map to the right of Galice - today we drove all along the coastal route to Agness on the far left of the map.

Here's another view of part of the fire area from the pullout spot where the map is - it's immense.

This was just a nice overlook we stopped at - I loved the stone wall. We were at around 4700 ft in elevation here - warm but much cooler than the 101 in the valley.

Loved this flag painted on that stone wall.
 
And really loved the smiley sheep dog/poodle mix dog we met there.....
 
....and his smiley sister.
 
Here we've finally gone past the fire area and are into the coast side of the mountain range - much greener than our side of the range.

Finally to Agness where we had lunch at a seasonal restaurant that caters to rafters who come out from their 3 day trip down the Rogue River. There's a tiny little post office in Agness that gets it's mail from the mailboat that comes up daily from Gold Beach on the coast. We've ridden along the mailboat twice - very fun riding the jet boat up river through the more wild areas than the river here on our side of the mountains.

Heading back home after a lovely day - I couldn't get a good picture (without falling off the cliff) but the Illinois River comes into the Rogue River at this spot.

It was nice to escape the brutal heat for around 7 hours today, no escaping it this week, temps of up to 107 expected. Since I will be spending time in the air conditioning I'm hoping to get some fun projects worked on.




Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Feels good to be weaving......

It's felt great to get some time to weave these past two days - I haven't had all day at the loom but a partial day is better than what it's been lately.

Here's scarf #2 on the painted rayon flake warp - this one has a mauve tencel weft.....

....this one a gray tencel weft. I could have finished up this warp today if it weren't so danged hot - I gave up, will finish it tomorrow and get them washed......then on to the next warp which was going to be another painted warp but I have a customer who wants a red with a bit of black scarf so a warp for that is up next.......need to give thought on the structure/color combo.

Beach cottage kitchen update

The beach cottage kitchen remodel is still under construction but thought I'd share a few pictures of the work in progress.......it's slow going as we're not over there all the time........and drywall mud takes a long time to dry over there.

So, here is the before showing that cabinet hanging down over the stove. It really closed off the kitchen from the dining area not to mention being in the line of sight seeing someone on the other side. I wanted that set of cabinets removed and the soffit above them.

Here's another view showing soffits that have no reason for being. I wanted them all removed but when Sam kept balking about the work involved with having to take down all the other cabinets to do it I compromised and said the small soffit above the sink and part of the one over those cabinets had to go - we're not sure why they followed the cabinet line until they got to that section of cabinets - it really darkened up and closed in the corner. Sam was concerned the vent from the sink went through the soffit and he'd have to move it but it didn't so no extra work.

So here is it as of this past Monday. Cabinets and soffit gone from over the stove - a section of those cabinets will reappear on that empty wall to the right of the window. Small soffit on the back wall gone, that area of drywall is slanted to keep with the slant going in the dining room where there's a cathedral ceiling. Soffit to the right of the fridge over the cabinets cut back (cabinet doors are off at the moment as they were in Sam's way). He's got a tiny bit of drywall touch-up, then texture and painting of the ceiling and wall. It's really opened up now - I love it - no more worries about hitting our heads on those hanging cabinets.

Next up will be to hang that section of cabinet on the empty wall, hang 2 pendant lights we recently bought over the counter , re- hang the small scallop shell light over the sink (I found the scallop glass shade at a second hand store, Sam made it into a hanging light). I haven't found the perfect ceiling light yet (we removed ugly fluorescent) I saw an old fashioned green glass globe which Sam wasn't sure of so we passed it by, when he went back to buy it, it was gone......so still on the look-out for something.

After the ceiling and wall work is finished up I'll start painting cabinets - I'm going white with sea glass green knobs. A new white dishwasher and stove will be coming soon as these are toast and new counter-tops too.....when we get to that point.....and when we pick them out. I'm thinking for a back splash wood bead board painted and distressed, maybe a sea glass green.......still in the thinking stages on that.........would love sea glass colored tiles but we're doing this on a shoestring and those are most probably definitely out of the budget. The flooring will be wood but that won't happen until we're ready to lay the floors through the entire house.

Boy the kitchen sure looks bigger in the pictures than it is in real life - put 2 people in there and you can't move.



Tuesday, July 8, 2014

More scarves.......

Just got more scarves listed in my etsy shop
 
 

Back to weaving

It felt good to get back to the loom today. I was going to weave plain weave/tabby on this warp but you know, I just love the drape of twills so I went with a very simple manifold twill - I wanted the drape and hand but didn't want the pattern to fight with the painted warp. First scarf woven with a purple weft - two more scarves to go that will be woven in different wefts. This is a painted rayon flake warp which accounts of the thick/thin areas.

Before I got to spend time threading heddles, the reed and get to weaving I had to do some photography works (argh) - many photos taken of 6 scarves, editing still to be done, then listing in the etsy shop. I've recently sold several scarves and shawls so need to get more listed.........and I've got more in the studio to sell, I just run out of time to do the photography work to get them all in the shop.

The heat is oppressive today due to the humidity which is rare in this area - one of the many reasons I left the east coast - the humidity. There's a chance of thunderstorms all week which is not a good thing since they come with no rain, just dry lightening........have I said it yet today that I hate fire season???



Monday, July 7, 2014

4th on the coast

Ultimate laziness or just plain worn out - we didn't feel like walking down the hill to watch the fireworks at the water's edge. When the first boom happened I went out in the front yard to see if we could see the fireworks over the trees - well, yes, we could, perfect view from the sidewalk in the front yard. There is a power line in the pix but I never noticed it while watching them. Bailey even got to go out and watch - he thought it was grand, his tail wagged the entire time. My little camera did ok, wasn't expecting much.






A huge, I mean huge, barge is coming into the harbor to dredge to keep it open for fishing and pleasure craft going in and out to the ocean. It's sitting right where the Coquille River meets the Pacific Ocean.

Here is it as it's making a turn at the inlet. I wish I had gotten a picture of one of the fishing boats that passed by it to show just how immense this barge is.

Bailey's ready to play fetch the stick on the beach......well, almost ready.......

Get that stick Bailey

Run Bailey Run
 
Pushing Bailey to his limit - he doesn't like the water touching his belly - what a water dog he is. Come to think of it, our last golden didn't want to get above her knees wet - I thought golden's were water dogs......

Success - and he's not letting go of it
 
Oh, life is good

Now back into the heat - 100+ in the valley