Good Morning and Happy Sunday! The landscape is certainly turning toward winter even with the blue skies out my window today. It's cold! I did have to laugh at Mother Nature's little temper tantrum here yesterday with winds, rain and snow falling sideways before giving way to sun. Totally understand how she felt.
What happened this last week? Well first Serra's school and then the entire district made the decision to go back to being completely online through the remainder of the year. Can't say that I'm surprised. I was hoping for one more week and was planning to let Serra stay home from her two days a week once Amanda got home anyway. I love my girls but have to admit that I enjoyed my stolen days the last four weeks. I know that the kids probably shouldn't have gone back at all and that the days were not stolen but actually a gift. Can't say that I won't miss them though.
Crafts were a little quiet this week. Knitting inspiration is taking a breather. I did hop on the Just CrossStitch Magazine Christmas Ornament issue again for 2021. The link will take you to this year's issue with my Guiding Star pattern that made the cover. I treated myself to some gorgeous Camel/Silk fiber from Greenwood Fiberworks.
It will be my first time working from batts so I'm curious about the differences. This will definitely be going on spindles and I think I'm going to order some dyed silk for plying it.
Max got a little quieter this week with a suggestion from a weaving group. Foam furniture pads to deaden the sound of the levers.
I happen to love the sound of the levers moving back and forth hitting the castle but have to admit that when you are moving 16 with every throw of the shuttle it can get to be a little much.
The Masks project has taken up my spare brain power this week and has gotten started! I mentioned yesterday on Facebook that I have found a secret to managing 60/2 silk for the loom. I love silk. To me it is almost the absolute perfect fiber to work with. The one thing it does that I can't stand is stick to itself. This stickiness can cause all sorts of problems for getting it on the loom especially when working from warp chains. The beauty of being Multicraftual (yes I made up a word but to quote Thor in Avengers: Infinity War "All words are made up.") is that I have different methods for thinking about how to make something work. In Japan the art of Kumihimo has been practiced since the time of the Samurai. Braiding cords for different purposes using silk. Well they don't have any problem with silk so what are they doing? The answer: Tamas. Tamas are weighted bobbins that keeps the silk under tension. A thread that is under tension is a well behaved thread. I measured individual inch widths of silk in the desired color order and wound them on my tamas like you would hair on a roller. Next I took the tamas to my loom and was able to wind them on cleanly with the tamas helping to maintain tension and keep the threads from sticking to each other.
With the tamas I was able to wind on 4 yards worth of silk in only 90 minutes! Considering some of my epic battles in the past it is totally worth the extra time at the warping board. Next the tamas will come off and each thread will be threaded and tied to the front beam to get started. A little different from my usual method of threading first but anything that keeps silk in line makes me happy.
As for me this week has been overall good. Met a few bumps in the road but they were ones that were coming anyway. Been doing a lot of thinking the last couple of weeks. Changes in personal philosophy, rejoicing in the now, looking ahead, this kind of thinking tends to happen this time of year. I vacillate between wanting things right now for fear of them never happening and being patient and knowing that everything I want is already here, even if its not in the form that is accepted or expected.
Next week!! Rapunzel and I are going to get the silk going along with another multicraftual revelation I had last week for the Mask project. Breathe, take care of you and I'll be back next week :)
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