High Days of Summer

Its been beastly hot here.  There's been no weaving going on and not much in the way downsizing in the last few days either.  Its entirely too hot and I don't do heat very well.  It actually makes me feel ill and so I camp with a fan and an iced drink  and wait it out.   Fortunately tomorrow is supposed to be 3-4 degrees cooler.    My 'cool' basement studio was 82 degrees F.  I hate to think what the upper level was.....

I took all these pictures about ten days to two weeks ago and so everything was at its peak of perfection.   Not too hot, not too cool and all the baskets and gardens were lush with growth.

Well, roll the clock forward and add a heat wave and now the leaves are turning yellow and dropping off, and everything is parched.  More telling is that its getting dark much earlier now and the bracken fern's stems have turned bronze gold. This means they are starting to shut down and die.  Despite the heat there are clear signs that summer is about to come to a close. 

These two scarves were woven on the same 8/2 tencel warp, a new colour called "birch". Its a lovely soft silvery pale green.  Its an eight shaft fancy twill that I found on handweaving.net and adjusted till it met my needs for scarf width.  I used 8/2 tencel in the colour "slate" for a softer more muted look. I carried on weaving but wondered if it was too soft a colour?

This picture shows the scarf's length.  I woven them to approximately 74-75 inches on the loom. After wet finishing they both measured 72 1/2 inches in length.   My standard length unless a client requests either shorter or longer.

This picture shows the pattern and its fully reversible. Its very much like a twelve shaft fancy twill I wove a couple of years ago but lacks well defined reversals in the pattern . Four extra shafts makes quite an impact to detail like this.  I know, I know.... it always seems to be about more shafts, a bigger better loom.  If you are into the weave structure and pattern work, then more shafts was always in your future anyhow. 

The drape is lovely and a good hard pressing brought out the tercel's shine and set the pattern.

I had a harder time deciding the second scarf's weft colour. I auditioned a few options and went with deep burgundy or "eggplant".  It crisply defined the pattern!

There's enough length to do a double wrap and wear outside of a dress coat.   The green looks more grey here. 

I enjoyed weaving them, so much so that I wound another warp and and started some more.  These are now waiting my  time and pleasure.   As soon as the weather takes a turn for the cooler I plan to get some time in on the loom.   They may well be my last project until after we move as we have a lot of work to do before the trucks roll up.

And now for something a bit different....

We have always had a small rabbit on the property.  Small and dusky brown with a snowy white fluffy tail.  We know that it not likely to be the same rabbit (we have found bunny bits, including a fluffy tail, in the meadow one spring) but we always call it Peter and assume he's male, after the Beatrix Potter tales.

Here he is:

We had just pulled into our driveway and he stood up and checked us out.  It seems we arrived at an awkward time as he was trying to impress someone:

Isn't she sweet?  She was over in the edge of the tall grasses ignoring him and us for that matter. 

I suspect the new owners will find there will be more than one rabbit this fall and who knows how many next spring!