Sunday, March 10, 2024

Snow, Snow

Welcome to March and Daylight Savings. After two lovely weeks of spring, we are back to winter and snow. The snow actually began early this morning and has been accumulating the last hour or two.


This was on my way to breakfast; not too bad. It's really snowing now.

I understand those arbor vitae used to be kept trimmed. They have grown to an impenetrable wall ahead of three exit doors for suites down there. They are a sparrow condominium now and sparrows are always flitting. I can see one because I know it is there.

On the way to supper last night, I saw a hawk on the concrete barrier, looking down on all the activity. I've seen him (or a close relative) keeping watch from one of the chair backs. I startled last night's hawk by reaching for my phone, and he left. Maybe next time.

I very cleverly got involved last night in beating my game of Mahjongg, and didn't get to the clocks and bed until eleven. I am still one wall clock behind. It will be awhile until it is changed.

Here is another thing I intended to mention at the time. My new model, Helyn. There have been several Helyn's over the years. The first was a wicker head, woven by my sister, for the purpose of displaying the caps she sewed from our handwoven fabric. The model was from the armpits up, and so resembled our sister-in-law Helyn that the name just fastened itself.


Then I had a real dressmakers model, and of course we named her Helyn. I left her at RiverLight when I began weaving towels rather than clothes. I wasn't about to invest in a new model, for no other reason than space, or lack of. I relieved the cafeteria of a plate and fastened it at 5'4" on my spool rack, exactly as tall as I used to be. Some day I'll ask Jan to give her a face. 

This week was not stellar for weaving. I am almost finished with a leaf green scarf, probably the length of the rose scarf pictured. Probably one more leaf green scarf of undetermined length and the warp will be finished. I'll thread up for Whig Rose.

Kitty fell asleep with her rainbow snake in her claws:


And I'm listening to a great book, "A Stone is Most Precious Where it Belongs", Gulchera Hoja. I linked her to the GoodReads review, last year. Ms. Hoja is a Uyghur, in what is currently East Turkestan. It is not a fun read, but compelling. I am crying and listening and weaving. I don't want to add writing to the list, so I'll just recommend it to you.


Saturday, March 2, 2024

Happy, happy good news

I asked Betty to bring her new hearing aids to breakfast and let me help her get them situated. That was a week ago, Thursday or Friday.  She presented the box with a tangled mass of cord and charger. Such a mess that my hope was low.

First I extracted the instruction book and gave it a read. Very like my own pair, except scaled back. Turn them on, put them on and you will hear more, better. Take them off at night, turn them off and park in the charger. Except I found no instructions to turn them off. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, so I forged on.

I pressed the on/off button. The miniscule button! It turns green to indicate "ON", but is completely covered by the thumb. I used my fingernail to see if the device was turned on. I wound up placing it on her ear, she pushed it into her ear. We used the same method for the other ear.

Someone suggested doing it again, for practice. I vetoed that at once, and Betty agreed completely. There was tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow at breakfast for that. I was more interested in watching Betty adjust to a new world.

Even a week later I cannot write about the event with dry eyes. It was a new Betty and I told her over and over how happy I was. She could hear and participate, and what an articulate, animated woman we had with us. She wanted to know what I found so different about her. I said I didn't have to face her to talk to her, I didn't have to raise my voice and repeat myself.

"And I thought I had you all fooled," she said.

And on to my project for the weekend and next week: scarves on the website.

There are two new scarves on the sewing table waiting for hems. That will come next, after this bit of writing.  Yesterday I tackled the web page. It came so easily, and after three or four hours I was mostly satisfied with the first page and ready to move on to the second.

Except, I could not find the second page! I tried all that I could "intuitively" bring to the project, including deleting some things I tried and had to get rid of. So, last resort, I will wait until Tuesday, when Blake is coming to help me.

I have so much else to do, the page can wait. I must photograph and describe the scarves I have finished. Then there is a little inventory problem I'm wrestling with. My towels were identified by color; past that they were identical. Each scarf is individual.

Personally I am offended by including an obvious inventory number with each scarf, but I have not come up yet with an alternative method. So for now they will be identified as The First Scarf, The Second Scarf, and so on.

One of my followers, Margaret Butterworth, in Australia, wonders if I could find a model, so people can see scarves modeled on someone. That is a great idea that has never worked so well for me. Back when I used a professional photographer, he used a professional model. I attempted the same with a friend, but it was less successful. Neither of us knew exactly what to do. So I'm still pondering this bit.

Monday, February 26, 2024

Missing in action, again

 I haven't been around much lately. I've been much in the real world of chores and meals and dratted exercise classes, but also in some nether world of imagining up my new web site and the fun world of sitting at the loom, weaving.

Much of the business of photographing my new work is thought out.  We don't always consider how new things require new methods. I can put several photos up for each new scarf I weave, but the method must be thought through.

Over the weekend Beth helped me put up a rod for hanging a scarf. There is always the top view I used for towels. And today I saw a photo that I can adapt, with a little cooperation from Kitty. I saw a scarf rumpled up atop a drop leaf table, and its pattern end hanging against the vertical drop. Very effective. Kitty's window seat will be perfect.

Then there is all the verbiage to explain what is going on. Those are a lot of words, of which I am quite capable. They simply need time to percolate, to be written and rewritten. It's all coming together.

Here's a conundrum. Betty, one of our table mates, was in a severe decline a week ago. Close questioning by concerned friends revealed she was, in our collective opinion, giving up, tossing in the towel. The weekend she appeared, too confused to function and feet and legs painfully swollen, we asked management to notify her several children (seven of them, plus grands and great grands) and tell them Betty needed an intervention.

It happened. I understand four children were here. Betty is back on her water pills and other meds. She's eating more. And, one son appeared with hearing aids for her purchased on Amazon. However, she does not know how to use them.

I offered to help her, and told her to bring them to breakfast tomorrow. Tonight I also looked at Amazon hearing aids. Betty says he bought the highest rated. I did not find the brand I wear, Phonak. I did purchase them from an audiologist office, for several grand apiece.

On Amazon I found every auxiliary bit sold for Phonak, but no actual Phonak aids. There are many kinds of hearing aids similar to mine, but no Phonak. The most expensive pair I found were $899. Hmmmmm..... I'll look at hers and see what I can figure out. If they have to be BluToothed to her phone and programmed, I'm lost. However, her phone is an old flip phone in her drawer. We'll see.

Saturday, February 17, 2024

Bits and pieces

I just published a post that disappeared! I have no idea what happened. I've done this going on fifteen years and two thousand posts and never lost a blog. Or a paragraph or a word.

I'll try it over again. I've slacked off this week. The scarf has been off the loom for a week. Fulled and finished last Sunday. I did have to put the row of single crochet down each edge to disguise the uneven selvedges.

I am a master of decent selvedges, as you can see by the rest of the scarf. The second half of this pattern is more consistent than the first. I wonder if Hosta leaves are perfect. Pattern weaving errors notwithstanding, it's not an unpleasant look.

The scarf is nine inches wide and eighty odd inches long. I'd hoped for a little more draw in when I fulled the scarf, but this will do until I thread a new pattern. In future I will put the hem even with the pattern end. The sewing machine stitch holding it is near to invisible. This scarf also is more dense than I want, so I'll weave fewer pics per inch next time.

I started a new scarf yesterday, with a blue leaf. The floating selvedges are working well for the even pattern selvedges. I wove a couple of inches for the hem and then wove exactly five rows of pattern. Three times I sent the shuttle straight through the warp, thread around parts of the loom, shuttle landing somewhere under the loom. I quit for the day.


I took this on the way to breakfast this morning. Coming back an hour later the falling snow had filled the waffle holes, caving in the edges. My only doctor appointment next week is Thursday, and the temps will be back into the fifties, with rain, by then. Well, this weather is good for maple syrup!

For breakfast today I had an egg Benedict. This has been on my mind for awhile; I love them. Yesterday I saw Matt for a bit and asked him about the possibility. "Not without more people to help," he replied. "And, we don't have Canadian bacon!"

I realized he was talking a poached egg extravaganza; him making and serving poached eggs out in the Bistro and other people filling short orders in the kitchen. I told him I'd have "real" bacon and would be at the counter toasting my English muffin while he did the rest in the kitchen.

Then I thought of the Hollandaise and was defeated. "Oh, I have that all the time"! So this morning I had one egg, poached, a slice of bacon and Hollandaise on the side. Matt brought it to the counter just as my English muffin popped up. I put it all together and had the best breakfast in about five years. It's still on my taste buds, and it's lunch time.

Well, time to wrestle some of the monster bag of cat food into the canister, then on to another weaving attempt. But first, this post better not disappear.


Friday, February 9, 2024

Back at it

Well, a week of sulking and I'm back, mostly, to my self. A long week of paying little attention to the world and relishing my own misery. It has been interesting. Yesterday I took Rose to have her hair cut, at her old salon! She was so pleased, and it's a very nice haircut. 

At supper she reported it had caused quite a kerfuffle. "Damn!" I thought. Her daughter found out. After we had gone off to the local CVS for Covid and RSV vaccinations, her daughter was appalled at Rose's description of using a stool to get into my van. "Never again!" from her daughter.

While we were out this time, a friend of Rose stopped to visit. Rose didn't answer her door, so the friend returned to the desk and instituted a fairly full fledged search for Rose. Housekeeping and food service searched. Even the bookkeeper was involved. She looked under the bed. Rose's daughter was notified. 

Our return went unnoticed because some rude person parked in my assigned place. So, my car went to some other place in the lot. But at least, when Rose saw her daughter, she could report she can get into my car by herself, and stow and retrieve her walker. Lovely spring days produce wonders.


As for the ambitious warp on my loom, here it is now! I cut and taped the sections I'm not using. That apparent mess to the left is the section that did not work out mathematically. A couple of its threads are in the last warp on its right, and impeding forward motion. So I am chaining off the bout. The great plan is to be able to run it through my tension box in future and reuse it. That may be a hair brained scheme.

The edges of the flower pattern are a little ragged; I'll single crochet along just those edges when the scarf is off the loom. For the next scarf, I'll use a floating selvedge to eliminate the problem. Old tricks of the trade can take time to remember!

When the scarf is off the loom, I'll weigh it to see how much thread I used. Then I'll know how much to charge for it. The weft this time is much finer; 10/2 in the dialect. I think the scarf will be fairly airy and floaty. If not, I'll change the pick's.

So that's it for this week of weaving. Now I need to get back into blog reading. No more sulking.