Fresh Beginnings

These are my grandparents Louisa and Reginald enjoying an English country side picnic with a young son Frank. I would say this is about 1931.

Roll the clock forward to spring 1956 and here's that same young man but holding me!

Here I am again with my mother Vivien, most likely in my grandparents garden.

Here are four generations: me, my Dad, my grandmother and great grandmother and I believe this was 1957.

My children's baby pictures are stored and I must scan them, but here are my son Chris and daughter Carrie some years back in the mid 1980's.

They were all dressed up for a family member's wedding and enjoying themselves! Both are quite grown up and married, with busy lives, jobs and friends and in laws.  The time flies by and they grow up so fast!

Yesterday afternoon my daughter in law Lisa posted this picture:

Its a picture of a monitor screen so pardon the shadow but if you look carefully, you will see a little face!  We are about to become grandparents in 12 weeks time! We are just thrilled!

Then the weaver in me went into panic mode.... and I have been busy planning a baby blanket.  I'm going to use a draft I've used before and weave three. All details on draft and such will be posted at another entry but for now the warp is 8/2 cotton, 22 ends per inch and 7.5 yards long and 36 inches wide. My last blankets were 24 ends per inch but I thought it could be a bit more open, but not by much.

I put a 'big push' on and just finished winding this warp of over 800 ends just before supper last night! Still a lot of work to go but the first major hurdle is done.

In other news:
I have finally finished twisting the fringes on the three scarves that came off this loom and they are now ready for beading.  There isn't much warp left for the snowflake runners left and so the last one will be a bit shorter than I was expecting!  I'm busy planning a shawl warp for this loom so best get busy on that!    There is lots going on and all in progress but nothing ready for their close up (sorry).

My belated Christmas gifts to myself have been arriving in the post and I hope to play these cd rom's soon and freshen up my perspective on warping and general weaving techniques. Interweave Press had a 60% off sale and I couldn't resist!   Heck, they are by Madelyn van der Hoogt and I reckon she knows more about this stuff than I do so it couldn't hurt my skill levels any  :) I like to try new ideas out from time to time and see if there is anything I could be doing better. Bad habits and ruts can creep up on you before you know it!

I haven't had a minute to watch them as yet but will give you my impressions hopefully soon.  (I did try to photograph the cd cases but the glare off the shiny plastic was blindingly bright). Their package was also accompanied by this book:

Like the cd's, I have yet to get into this book as winding the blanket warp took priority over all else. Getting texture into my projects is my second task, after working with more colour. I  normally go for smooth fine threads and so is about me stretching my boundaries. Well, that's the plan.....  

A postal card tells me my yarn order has finally arrived (ordered from Webs on December 6th!) and is ready for pick up so that will be a fun trip to town.  All these goodies were funded  by my recent Christmas sales but the party is coming to an end.

One last gizmo gift to show you and this time its courtesy of our Airmiles points. 

Its an iRobot vacuum cleaner, called  Roomba. I have back issues  and doctors say that vacuuming is the worst thing for it. But I like a clean house!  While this won't replace a full on vacuum job, it keeps things tidy in between and so you can go longer between sessions.  I decided to test this units proficiency and so used our fairly new German made Sebo vacuum (with Hepa filter) in my studio and then set this fellow loose! It gently bounces off walls and furniture and takes strange routes around the room. In the 30 minutes it took, it criss crossed every inch of carpet (some a few times) When done, it used wifi  to guide it home and it ran home to its base to recharge!  Next it played me a song to tell it was done. (If it gets into trouble, a voice calls for you to come and help).  The dust cup is at the bottom end where the black button is and it was full

I'm almost embarrassed to show you this picture as it all came from my so called fresh clean carpet! I suspect that a lot of this is lint from deep in the carpet  from weaving things like tencel as it sheds a lot.  Needless to say, we are impressed!   The company even has a model that washes floors (bathroom and kitchen) I like where this is all going!  It cleaned while I wove.  What's not to like??