22 Hour Flip ⏰

 So my Megado 110 looked like this yesterday morning at 9:30 am

Ready for the final parts to come off and for that I needed help.

What I had managed by myself....  

The box contains small wooden parts and bags of nuts and bolts hardware in a separate box. The bench ultimately came apart too.

The dobby  was wrapped in bubble wrap, then into a box and surrounded by towels.

The new owner, Jessica, came at 10 am yesterday and the loom was hustled out the door to a truck with a sliding canopy cover. They had a drive down island, a ferry ride and another long drive to get home. The Summit on the Connector between Merritt and Kelowna had the first snowfall of the season too.    They likely got home last night about 10 pm or 11 pm.

Then at noon today, 22 hours from the first picture, I saw this:   😳

Apart from tweaking the dobby, she's ready to thread!    We are apparently very keen and very excited..... and didn't sleep much last night.     The loom looks great there and will be making new cloth  probably by the end of the day. 

Meanwhile, here : I had a large empty spot and so got it all vacuumed thoroughly but there's no disguising where the loom sat for 9 years.    I moved a few things around to make it look and feel less empty.  So here's the studio view as of today.

You can see her 'foot prints" in the carpet pile.

Just me and the new kid now with her view of the garden. I'm leaving her here and thinking about what's next for the space.  There's no hurry....  

Today is Canadian Thanksgiving and I'm wishing all my fellow Canadians well as they gather for a meal. 

🍂🍄‍🟫🍁🍄🍂

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??

Miss Calli

This post is totally off topic. There's no weaving, no fibre, no looms. I think you will enjoy this post none the less though.

Its been five, going on six months since our Connor passed away. We are past the tears and now recall all the good stuff. We went from NO MORE DOGS to...'" so if you were to consider it, what kind would you like?" So it didn't surprise me when in time I found Bruce cruising the web looking at different breeds. Connor was a Lakeland terrier and while there are breeders out there, they are few and far between.   So Bruce did some research on other terrier breeds. We like that irascible terrier attitude (or is that terrorist?) The focus for a while was Welsh terriers which seemed to be a happy alternative and a couple of months ago we even put our name down for a puppy this spring.

Fast forward a a bit and one day I looked around my kitchen that is just a year old and suddenly put it all together. Puppies CHEW and piddle and it lasts for months.   Oh, crap.... time to review. How did I miss that part?  Oh, yeah... they are cute.

So we sat and talked about things over a cup of tea of just what we are looking for and what do we really want in a dog?   We have had small terriers for the past 15 years and the purpose of the 'small' stature was that at one time we lived on a boat for five years and needed all the attitude in a portable pooch!   Way back when I met Bruce he had a large (and I mean large!) Airedale named Samson  or Sammie for short. He was a big gentle bear of a dog and my daughter Carrie played for summers with him at her side. We never worried about her because Sam was there with her. I'm sure she will verify this and her tom boy ways (or was that shenanigans ?) I tried to find a nice picture of Sam for this post but he passed on so many years and so many moves ago. They are in a box somewhere along with pictures of the cats, other dogs and parrots we have owned through the years.

So we came away from our chat deciding that we wanted an Airedale again,  approximately one year or older, the gender didn't matter as it was more important to have a dog that is calm, no obvious issues and has a balanced personality. I still wanted a girl and Bruce a boy though. We withdrew from any commitments that were in place with our thanks and then started a new search. We did find one 2 1/2 year old female Airedale who showed great promise and based on the information we received, we got excited and arranged to meet her. She was beautiful but as a mature female she would be bred two times as part of a breeding arrangement and would spend large amounts of time at the breeders. We took her for a walk and it was a bit of a struggle She knew only 'show dog' commands and apparently, we did not. The word SIT  was met with a blank look of 'what??'   Oh, dear... this just didn't feel right and we are not about to force things to fit.

The next dog we viewed is also a female, ten months old and fully house trained and leash trained. She lived and mingled with other Airedales and other breeds of dogs that came along with their owners who stable their horses at the property there. We spent a good deal of time watching her interact with the owner and other dogs. Then we went for a walk and ran into a playful pit bull (yes, I said that right and in fact it was the most obedient pit bull I have ever met!) They played with no barking or growling. The border collie we also met could have used some more manners as it bounced its muddy paws off my new fleece jacket! I never saw it coming. There were large horses moving around us... cars passing on the driveway and she behaved beautifully.

So long story short, we bought her and brought her home on Wednesday. This past Friday she has had a vet wellness visit and was totally relaxed about the whole thing. She even licked the vet while he listened to her heart beat. Then there was the cranky pit bull who was not having a good day at the clinic that didn't phase her and she stood her ground; no growling, no barking. The pit bull was literally pulled out like a belligerent school bully after clearing everyone present down to one end of the waiting room. The slim built woman owner was a bit rattled and could barely hold onto the dog. (It begs the question: why get this breed of dog if you can't train and work with it properly? Anyhow, I digress....)

Today was the beauty parlor visit and she went through with flying colours!  So with our further adieu, may I present Calli    (formerly known as Calypso)

Calli was a scruffy girl before the cut, though she had had a bath by me. I don't know who was wetter: her or me or the entire bathroom? So here's the before shot to show how well she cleaned up!

Quite the improvement huh? She likes to lay by my feet where ever I go which is really nice. Normally all pets we have ever had have bonded with Bruce. She may well switch allegiance too but for now I'm loving it!
We have only heard one bark at the stables, but here at home no barking* (see edit below at end) and there has been no growling at all. But we are singing all night in our kennel as we adjust to all the new stuff in her life, which if you think of it, is a lot! She's very affectionate and loves her pats and hugs. Show her the leash and she's raring to go!

But one thing we know she likes and has a sense of ownership over, is her new pink martingale collar!  Its for a big Airedale gal with attitude :)

So we missed the early puppy stage but I can comfort myself with pictures. Now, doesn't this pup look sweet? Look at the size of those paws!  Now this may not be Calli but this pup is from the same breeder.

The best thing is we have a cookie jar back on the counter again. My daughter bought this for us many years ago and it now has its first fresh load in a long time!

Understandably there hasn't been much weaving happening around here as I still heal from the bad back (and wait for the new chair base)   and I also have been fighting a virus bug thing that is making the rounds this time of year. Hope you are all keeping  keeping warm and healthy as winter runs its course.
To borrow from friend Theresa,  here's a parting shot:

Feb 22nd. 2011
* edit: we have had our first bark! wow... impressive. We were in a pet store shopping and she barked at a well 'shaved'  small white dog walking by. (It looked more like Babe the pig) She didn't bark at the pit bull but this? Then the store manager said "looks like a rat... I'd bark at that too! "