Day 46

Today's post is mostly an excuse to show you pictures. I am not sure how to get the post formatted properly, but since the top picture shows the untamed broccoli, cauliflower and beets that were taken over by grass and the bottom one shows my handiwork at digging them out of a months' worth of overgrown, it is somewhat fitting that the formatting is untamed. Since digging them out, we have had two rainstorms and I am sure that they are all about 10% larger than they were in the second picture. We'll see if we get any actual edible things out of it, but mostly we grow a garden for entertainment.



The other pictures to show today are the weaving ones. I am trying to learn about double weaving which is where you weave a two sided piece of cloth and am having some technical difficulties which I think are mostly caused by my decision to use a long warp so I could just do a lot of different experiments in a row. The yarn at the edges is sliding off the wrap of yarn at the back and stretching differently than the rest of the yarn, leading to tighter, unhappy edges and looser unhappy middles. I have a hokey fix involving bolstering the distance the middle yarn has to travel, but it doesn't work very well and is ugly. the other solution is to just keep cutting the coasters off the loom and re-tying the warp on. Time consuming, but each time I do it, I get to experiment with a different way of solving the problem--all have been equally unsuccessful to date. I think the real solution is that I will not use a long dense warp again if I can help it.

Anyway, here they are. Each has exactly the same warp (the long thread that goes from fringe end to fringe end) and the differences are because I used different weft (the thread that goes perpendicular to the warp). Some of the wefts are one colored, some are two colored and the first coaster has three colors of weft in it (yellow, light green and dark green). All the warps are three colors (yellow, light and dark green).

Side A

All coasters stay in the same position, but flip over onto your bellies so we can see your other side.

Otherwise, today, I took Ellie to Nordstrom to buy her back to school clothes. She loves to shop so it's fun to see her having such a good time, but I swear they put something in the air at malls to make people sleep. I still haven't recovered and am going to bed early.

She got this wild reversible vest that has fake fur on what she will wear as the inside and a knitted gray exterior. It actually looks good with almost everything else she picked out and the clothes she wore there so it seems like a good find. She also picked out a light gray blazer, a gorgeous dress, a black cardigan, a nice pair of jeans (that were specifically checked with the new fringed boots of two days ago's post) and several new shirts. A backpack completed the look and we are officially done with back to school shopping except for supplies which the school has not informed us about yet.

Ellie is leaving for drama camp in the middle of August and coming back the Saturday (Aug 25) before the Monday (aug 27) school starts on. I will hopefully be all recovered from HIDAC then and--God willing and the creek don't rise--will be able to get her happily to Middle School for the first time. (first time in Middle School, not first time there happily)

The next step in our grand plan is for me to go to bed so I wish you good dreams and happy starts.