My Mountain Home

Always Something New

There was enough lettuce yesterday, from the window garden, for two plates of salad.  I've been adding the fresh baby lettuce to butter or red leaf, but the leaves on our own plants are finally getting bigger. It would take building shelves, adding lights and planting many more seeds to supply all our lettuce needs as we have salad once or twice a day, but the leaves we do harvest are full of green goodness!

In the crafting sphere, there is weaving.  A new loom has joined the collection, this one a 12" Ashford Knitter's Loom.  It is just right for scarves, sampling and small projects.  

My first FO was a wool scarf of really nice sock yarn. 

Currently I'm working on a chenille scarf.

On the Glimakra Ideal, my "big" loom, I had a rug warp on for far too long.  I had cut off the living room rug, woven the Pendleton wool selvage rug and then abandoned it for other interests.  That seems to happen to me as I cycle through my craft projects.

 Finally I completed the warp and got the resulting rugs finished today.  Here is the one for the kitchen:

I'll be adding four more shafts to the Ideal, which means a change to a countermarche tie up.  My next project will be linen handtowels. And, I'm adding a second heddle to the Knitter's Loom.  So much to learn, so many challenges ahead!

More Interesting than Football

I know there are many fans glued to their tv sets today, but I'm not in that crowd.  I did some quilting, weaving, baking (bread, crackers and pretzels) and spinning today, but the big news is our dinner featured several leaves of fresh lettuce!

I carefully snipped about 7 leaves for each of us and filled out the plate with butter lettuce.  The butter lettuce comes with its roots so I'm going to plant it and see what happens!

I finished up 50" of the yellow rag rug for the summer kitchen.  That warp, what's left of it, will be a quite small rug to go under the dogs' water dish.  

This next picture illustrates what the right tool for the right job can do.  Our Craftworks plates have a bad accumulation of stainless marks.  I've tried everything, bleach, Comet, 3M pads, and nothing would take them off.  On Pinterest I saw a tip, to use Barkeeper's Friend glass stove top cleaner, and it worked!

Next week should see the warp off the loom, a skein of brown Border Leicester lambswool ready to knit, a new Block of the Month (pictures to come), and hopefully the sashing finished on the Dresden Plate quilt.  That's the plan anyway.

Tuesday is Weaving Day

Marcia and I are determined to jumpstart our fiber endeavors this year by setting Tuesday as a weaving day and Thursday as a sewing/quilting day.  This has worked for me, being only the first week but getting my brain in gear to accomplish something.  

This Tuesday though I had something else come up so the weaving bench was not occupied until Wednesday, but I did actually weave--and it was very satisfying.  Too long a hiatus contributed to this feeling, I'm sure.

I'm continuing on the warp in place.  The first part of the warp turned into a living rug, posted previously.  A year ago?  The next piece was the Pendleton selvages.  Now I'm cutting up an old sheet with large yellow flowers; it must be 30 years old.  This will be a rag rug, possibly for my kitchen.

I've also returned to the Dresden Plate quilt and am making some progress on that.

I laid the blocks out on the guest bed and decided it should be bigger so I'm working on making 4-5 more blocks.  This will be sent out for quilting, and will find its permanent home on that same guest bed.

Period costumes have also captured my imagination and I've been working on a Victorian cape, skirt, muff and bonnet.  The first three items are finished and I just received the trim and ribbons to finish up the bonnet so I'll be posting pictures in a week or so.  I'm not sure where/when this will be worn.  To the grocery store?  To the community concert?