In 'Lotus Land'

White Hellebore

These images are for Lynnette... I promised to show them to her to prove I'm not kidding about spring being here. We are experiencing the warmest winter in recorded history. From the newscast reports of the snow fall in Washington, D.C. being five times the normal recorded snow fall, I think we can all agree that we are now in uncharted territory!

This one is for Dorothy. Its our lightest coloured heather, a soft pink.

If anyone knows the name of the shrub that produces these little perky blossoms, please let me know!

This is Pieris Japonica (aka lily-of-the-valley shrub) with a nice display! New leaves come in salmon pink and turn green slowly over late spring to early summer.

Then one of the true signs of spring... a crocus.


Early returning hummingbirds can feed here... quince blossoms are budding up!

The small but elegant snowdrops...

I normally think of winter as 'prime' weaving weather and this time last year I had a great start on the inventory box. This year? Not so much. I'm finding that the renovation disruption and a chaotic home is not conducive to feeling connected to the loom and projects. Granted, since I reached a 'certain age', being able to mentally focus some days can be a challenge all in its self!

This past week ended with my old kitchen being ripped out and right now we're somehow managing to make coffee in the morning, the toaster is set up in the bedroom and we dine out nightly. Since there's no sink anymore, I wash up dishes in the bathroom sink. Rustic is a good word to describe our situation.

Once I have served up coffee and treats, double check the work on the agenda for the day, I find that its best to leave the tradespeople to do their work. So I retreat to the studio where I now balance the check book, call more tradespeople, fold laundry, do ironing and, oh, yes... weave! Every room is now multi purpose :)

Since the work upstairs can get noisy, I plug into my iPod and I'm enjoying various podcasts, avariety of music, and I have downloaded my first digital books. The current 2/8 cotton towel project on Emmatrude, previously described in my last post, is under way and the treadling is blissfully simple: one through to ten and back again. Another variation is simple one to ten and repeat. Not complicated and that's a good thing! I'm not doing contrasting borders as the pattern and stripes are busy enough, so my challenge is to find good weft colours to coordinate with my warp stripes of plum, moss green, salmon pink, melon and taupe.

Challenges? Some of you may chuckle when you see this:

Yup, I forgot to take the apron rod over the knee beam. I had the warp all nicely tensioned and good to go too!

That's better! I call these 'keep me humble moments' :)

Blogger is turning pictures again so just imagine them as vertical stripes! The dark weft is a slightly lighter moss green than the stripe green and it really shows the pattern in the stripe boldly. The lighter weft is a pale pumpkin and it really mutes the entire pattern. There are some weft pics that look like a double weft throws but there is a subtle difference between them. It appears to disapear with the dark weft. One of those neat optical effects! Last time I wove towels in this pattern, the most popular were the ones woven with a dark royal blue. One commenter said they looked like fun peasant ribbons!

Here's a shot of the moss green under way. I've used the same plum as in the warp as weft and have tried a neutral taupe as well as the pale pumpkin. I'll rummage through the stash for some other options.

I've enlarged and framed the hearts that are back to back and below is the neutral beige for a softer look. I'll only do one as I prefer the effect of darker wefts.

It's gone all quiet upstairs so they've gone for lunch... time to make a dash for my fridge or I'll not get a snack till supper!

I'll leave you with a picture of my guest room. Yes, there is a bed under there, somewhere... and a floor too. Note the (rapidly aging) Christmas shortbread tin is within reach as emergency rations!

Its a dirty job but....someone's gotta do it!

Edit: I have photographed the paper draft I have here and dropped it here for those inquiring about the pattern. This was created by Laurie Autio for a compilation CD for Complex Weavers.

I hope you can make out the colour sequence: 3 beige, then 3 pink, 2 mid peachy-pink, 3 soft yellow andthen reverse from the yellow. There are 5 beige between groups. I would recommend the addition of extra beige on the selvedges so they draw in and look similar to the beige between stripes. I didn't and wish I had now. Next time I wil add at least 4 to 6 extra. I am using a floating selvedge either side. Susan Feb 9/10

*click on image to enlarge*