Topsy turvy

 It seems I am grounded for awhile. I was weaving this afternoon, with my treadle foot stripped to my sock. After some time I decided that foot was wet. Actually, the sock was sodden. I looked for the source of the water for a bit. Where had I stepped in it? It was dry around the refrigerator and the kitchen sink. Same in the bathroom.

A mystery. I changed my sock(s) and took my length of fabric to the laundry room. Back in the living room, I realized the carpet might be wet. It felt wet to my hand, and did not pass the tissue test, which came back wet.

The ensuing hours have been a whirlwind. Maintenance came, removed the front of my HVAC unit and saw it was about one third iced up. The thermostat was turned off, two big men moved my loom and several other things on wet carpet. Up came the extractor, which sucks up water. Then the industrial fan, which exceeds OSHA noise limits, in my opinion. Kitty retreated to the back of my bedroom until I came back from dinner and unplugged the damn thing.

The HVAC unit is disassembled. Two windows are wide. Temps are forecast to be very low fifties tonight. Maintenance tells me they will have it all back together by tomorrow afternoon. I barely believe that. For now the giant fan is off. My ears are still reeling. I'll turn it back on in the morning. Kitty may have a nervous breakdown.

Back to the surprise birthday party! Rose was completely surprised. Completely. One hundred people did not spill one bean. She was not dismayed. The affair was organized by two people she would have suspected, a daughter and son-in-law.

But also in attendance were a son from California, two great grandchildren who also live there, and the grandmother of the grands. It was a very nice party.

So, wish me luck returning quickly to a normal life. For now, it's a very hot shower and winter jammies.

I haven't gone over the edge yet

A silly little meme has popped up several times recently. It's profound, actually, and needs shared: If the earth were flat, a cat would push everything over the edge.

Kitty does not work from that direction. In fact, since that great television disaster the first month she lived here, she's made no effort to jump up on anything.

She tried to jump onto the chest that holds the TV, but sunk her toenails into the mat under the TV and dragged everything several feet to the floor. No cat was injured, and the TV likewise survived. 

Now Kitty is content with standing on her two back legs and surveying any flat surface she can see. If something is enticing, she claims it. Chap stick and pens are most fascinating, and I am currently reduced to pencils. I guard my chap stick closely.

The warp I wound on end of May or the beginning of June is gone. I only put on fifty turns because I did not know how the current towel would be received. But all the towels left on the shelf were hemmed and put there tonight. so I should weave more towels next time.

Jan is coming to monitor the spools on Saturday, and then I'll be tying on the current warp of probably a hundred turns. That should turn into maybe fifty towels and perhaps I can get a little ahead. The rosepath towel is very nice, and there are other small weaves that will be good for towels, too. I think next I'll try a birds eye weave.

You would think in a building of a hundred residents it would be hard to keep a secret. I'm privy to one that has been kept. Tomorrow is Rose's ninety sixth birthday. Rose is adamant there will be no singing or fuss. In fact, she instructed the dining room director the staff is not to sing and there will be no cake.

Rose's daughters have outwitted her. Every Friday most of the residents gather in the Bistro for live entertainment and "Happy Hour", in the hour before dinner. Unknown to Rose, her daughters, and probably sons and daughters-in-law, will appear and lead the party.

Rose is one of my dinner partners, and it's clear no one has tumbled, and Rose is pleased as punch tomorrow will pass without a fuss. At supper tonight, she didn't even mention that tomorrow is her birthday. 

More news

First and foremost, a happy holiday to all. I hope everyone could celebrate with friends or family, or both; and there was plenty from the grill to eat, with baked beans and coleslaw and watermelon.

It is raining here, which is good for the flowers in the atrium, though there may be a damper on fireworks tonight. Just a tiny corner of the atrium:

Speaking of outdoors, an amazing amount of work went on this past week. Plenty of landscaping has improved the view from my window immeasurably. 

Temperatures last week approached or exceeded one hundred degrees. The landscaping crew consisted of Amish men and women, who planted hundreds of specimens. 

I cannot find any use for the concrete in the middle of the yard. The patios do not connect to it. The only access is from the back, utility entrance. But, the interiors are coming along. There are blinds in the lower windows and the stickers are gone from the doors and windows.

I finished weaving the light blue rosepath towels and have them on the web page. Bobbins are wound for the next set of towels. They will be lavender. 

I'm still here

The red rosepath towels are done and mostly hemmed. I put eight towels on the web page today. The loom is tied up and I think I'll weave the light blue next.

I believe I like the roses with no path best. Here is a one over one comparison:

Or perhaps deeper rows of roses before the path. We'll see.

In other news, we had an astounding presentation last weekend. A group named Matsiko performed. It is a troop of orphaned children, mostly from Liberia, singing songs in their language. The songs were accompanied by energetic dancing and footwork.

The first two photos need to be animated to convey the volume and dancing. Here is a video from earlier this year. The singers circulated in the audience during their opening number, shaking all the hands they could reach.

After the performance the children ate supper with us. There were three at out table. but the girl at the end of the table was off for more ice cream, dessert. All three ate plenty of supper, and plenty of ice cream.

The girl across from me was eighteen, the girl next to me sixteen and the one off for more ice cream was the group's youngest at fifteen. This last also had a sister in the group, as did Elizabeth, across the table. 

Among our three we had a future doctor, geologist and undecided. That and a bit about their life on the road was all we could elicit. They simply did not stop talking and had been primed with endless questions to keep us talking.

How old are you?

How many children do you have? What do they do?

Where have you lived?

What did you do?

And on and on and on. Irrepressible. And maybe high on ice cream.

Where have you been?

It's Sunday morning. I'm doing laundry. There are two machines in our laundry room, and generally I am using one and Sandy the other. But this morning EMS took Sandy to the clinic. I teased Maddie, the other machine is free this morning. Old folks humor.

I did eat breakfast with Maddie in the atrium, after she watered the plants. This is the other atrium, the one I pass every morning, going to breakfast. The Japanese dogwood is in full bloom. The other atrium is surrounded with plants that Maddie and our activities director, Joan, take care of. 

That atrium is like working in my old gardens, except I can't, anymore. I did decide this morning I can carry the watering can on my walker tray and take care of the plants in pots, so I'll do that. I asked Laura to bring me a shovel full of pinks from the old garden.

In other family news, my oldest daughter is in Ireland, on a hiking trip around the Dingle peninsula. I'm sort of jealous, but not so much. I can't do that kind of walking any more.

The first is the Dingle Bay. The second an historical library somewhere in southern Ireland, or a train ride away from their base lodging. Perhaps another time she'll head for Omagh or Armagh, where our Presbyterian ancestors originated.

And my other daughter bought a house. Not the first but hopefully the last. This house is half a mile from her sister. Isn't it amazing, how siblings can fight like cats the first twenty years and be friends ever after.

I'm weaving red rosepath. I'm weaving the paths as well as the roses. I like the look of it and can't wait to get it fulled. That will be next week, earliest.

It's been some time since an update on our two year old construction project. It has devolved into mud. In addition, I wonder how attractive apartments renting for thousands per month will be with a view either into someone's window or the street with traffic; cars, trucks, ambulances! Anyway, here are some views:

The top picture is right out my window, across the trash strewn parking area. These apartments are several feet below grade, as you can see. There is no water retention area; they are the retention area. Aurora seems to have no master water plan in effect.

The second picture is the concrete poured between these apartments and my building. Excuse me, but wtf? Just one more nail in the flood plane problem. What about those second floor balconies! They could at least have installed beige railings!

Moving along, the third picture is the sidewalk to nowhere and a view across the parking area, stacked with excess siding, so the dump trucks bringing in dirt from who knows where have an awful time getting it dumped. The sidewalk to nowhere ends just under Kitty's window. I need to get down there and figure it out.

And finally, see that chunk of red in the last picture? That's just another piece of trash they didn't bother to pick up; all that concrete is poured over any piece of siding, pipe, drink bottle or 2x4 in the way. 

Every one I explained these problems to just rolled eyes way back and said "Not in charge!" Well, my second floor apartment won't flood, come the big storm. 

I'll take pictures when the landscaping is done. Probably next summer.

On the road again

 A remarkably short trip this time. Last Tuesday I had a dental appointment, followed by a picnic supper at my sister's house. The dentist was not so good; more than one cavity and the same old hygienist turned surly. I do not like the modern method of tooth cleaning by water pick. As I've told her time and again, if you can't keep the water from blasting down my throat, please do the job the old fashioned way.

Dinner with Jan and Tom and Laura was fun. Standing in Jan's new kitchen and chatting was fun. And knowing that in my absence a box of new weaving thread was scheduled for delivery to my door was even more fun. Jan and I arranged that the very next day, Wednesday, she would come in the afternoon to be the official thread changer, putting on a new spool of thread when an old one ran out.

When it was on and we were clearing away the tools of the beam dressing trade, Jan said she was very pleased; the entire warp was beamed without a single knot. She used to put on rug warps that way, but wondered if we had ever managed another in our long career. I don't know.

It is lovely. The warp is also two inches wider than previous towels, twenty four inches, not twenty two. It's weaving at twenty two inches, a bit more than ten percent take up. That's good.

But to continue with the boring bit. I spent Thursday, Friday and Saturday threading heddles. This is the part that can put me to sleep, it's so mesmerizing. I'd realize suddenly I'd threaded 4-3-2-1 instead of 1-2-3-4, and that would be it for the day. There still was one threading error to straighten out this morning.

Today I started weaving Rosepath. It is lovely. So far I'm only weaving the roses, not including the path. I'll try a bit of that before I begin weaving towels for sale. The current batch are rose thread, to free up all the bobbins I wound. This time the long float, that is so good at soaking up wet, is horizontal, not vertical.

One more thing about this pattern, and then I'll leave off and go weave some more. When I used to devour old weaving patterns in interesting sources like Dover reprints or Foxfire or Whole Earth, I loved the weaving notation "tromp as writ." It's from the days when intelligence was shared on scraps of paper, and the sharer, having used a precious scrap of paper to transcribe the threading, condensed the remainder of the weaving by noting to treadle exactly as threaded. This pattern is a true tromp as writ.

A couple of weeks in review!

 I suppose it's to be expected in an old folk's home, but it's still taking me by surprise. There are some really old people here. Audra turned one hundred last week. A fellow named Merle will be one hundred in December.

In addition to that, we celebrated the seventieth wedding anniversary of a couple, Faye and Fred. Neither of them is ninety yet! There is only one other married couple here, but one is in this building and one is in assisted living. They are Bert and Gert.

As someone who is terrible with names, I am fascinated by all the help from the names themselves. There are three Mary's here. I only fastened on Jean's name after I realized there was a Gene and a Jean, not related. Gene has gone to another facility, but I got Jean down in time.

It seems most everyone has a name not currently popular. My particular friends are named Maddie (Madelaine), Marcia (my great grandmother's name), Rose and Betty. The last is a version of Elizabeth, my daughter's name.

I bought a couple of crooks for hanging plants in one of the outdoor atriums, and asked Maddie to buy mandevillas to hang there. She called from the nursery to tell me all the mandevillas were already trained on hoops. I hadn't considered that old problem. Laura and I always deconstructed them and repotted into my metal hanging containers.

But ever resourceful Maddie had a solution, dipladenias. Best yet, buy one, get one. She came back with two of them, red, and her son and dil helped her plant everything she brought. I didn't think to take a picture this morning, so here is one I stole from the internet.

And last, but not least, the thread I ordered is scheduled for delivery Tuesday, next. I hope to be started loading the new warp soon after. Tuesday I have a dental appointment (cleaning) and then a picnic at my sister's, with some of the grands. Hamilton, Blake and Laura. Maybe Bek.

So, I'll get serious after that. I've decided first to weave off the few spools of thread left, and then to weave with red, yellow, blue and green to start. The new pattern will be rosepath.

Mysteries

Today was cleaning day. Any day is "cleaning day" if I see something that needs done and I can do it. A while back I grabbed the Swiffer and dusted all the chair rungs. It was a mental throwback to an early job when I was at the bosses' home, having "tea" with his wife and some others. We were sitting on the floor, around a lovely low table. Suddenly she looked under the table, took her napkin and began dusting the table legs and rugs. "A place the cleaning lady never looks," she said.

Such I always thought about the cleaning staff, and what the hell. They have a lot of rooms, and people with differing habits and wants, and then the whole huge building. I can dust my chair rungs every so often. And Diana was just leaving my bedroom when I grabbed my Swiffer to clean the chair rungs. She asked what I was up to, and I told her. I blamed it on the construction dust from outside.

"Not so," she said. "It's all from your humidifier."

You probably cannot see, but against the lamp standard rising in the back is a faint cloud of steam from my little humidifier. It is a cold air unit, or as my father used to say, it flash fries water and spits it out. I bought it the winter before last, and it ended my bloody noses at once. But according to Diana, it is responsible for this:

All the white, powdery stuff that settles on everything in the apartment. I don't know. I'll keep running my humidifier and dusting the furniture rungs.

I've also emptied my loom and am ready to embark on a new project. I think it will be towels. But I need a new treadling. The Shaker towel I've woven for years is a little workhorse of weaves, dense but not heavy. It sops up water.

There are other interesting weaves that I'm sure would work. One is a pattern I first found in a Dover reprint of an nineteenth century weavers manual. I wish I could remember its name. It was a list and description of what a journeyman weaver should be able to produce. Sort of the thing Benjamin Franklin might have set and printed in his brother's shop.

The pattern is a variation of herringbone twill and was called Irish Fancy. I threaded it up more for the name than the pattern, but it turned into a staple of our weaving studio. We wove all the fabrics for our heavier garments in the twill. One popular garment was an over shirt with a Henly throat, a thick, soft cotton in that twill.

My daughter and her boyfriend way back then each had one. After a camping trip Rich told me the shirt was incredible. Dried him off after a swim and he sleep in it at night. All around versatile. I bet it will dry dishes well, too. 

The other possibility is Rosepath. It's another twill weave, but one I've never tried. In my opinion, it needs to be expanded as an overshot weave, and that is very time consuming. But I found a Rosepath treading that expands the little flowers with a bit of plain weave between the rows of flowers. Interesting.

So, I'll thread up each and see which I'll choose. Then I'll have to order more thread, fix my web site again, etcetcetc. Several price increases of thread later, I'll have to recalculate cost. I wonder if I'll be shocked.

Things happening this week

I glanced out Kitty's window this morning and saw men unloading scaffolding from their trucks. Great, I thought, they will start putting the roof on the new building.  Wrong. I left Kitty eating her breakfast and went to eat mine.

I came back from breakfast to see the scaffolding set up right outside of Kitty's window, and then for the next couple of hours the loud noise of cutting the mortor from between rows of bricks. Two hours of incredible noise. The man handling the grinder has ear protection! Here is some of the work. I wonder if it's to point up the bricks.

Laura visited a week ago, and borrowed my wheelchair. Her friend's mother needed a chair to go with them to a concert. Laura left behind a norovirus that left me incapacitated much of last week. It's awful to be out of commission.

One afternoon I decided to be a recliner vegetable and settled in to watch Netflix. I bought a Roku stick for my fairly old television about eight years ago. The Roku controller is probably that old, and has fresh batteries, I knew, because I replaced them quite recently and had to buy them first.

Nevertheless, my controller, henceforth known as The Clicker, didn't work. I could not get it past Hulu. Eventually I quit its game and asked Beth to come have a go. She did and eventually announced the Down button did not work. She could still navigate with the Up button, but nothing down.

All the replacement clickers on Amazon said for Roku television, not for Roku stick. I got on the Roku web site. No phone number, but a chat site, with a robot. It didn't know what I wanted, and offered to connect me to a technician. First it wanted credit card info to handle a one dollar charge.

My bank objected and asked me to authorize a charge for fifty five dollars (apparently refundable to one dollar). I did not, and that was the end of Roku. Back to the search. I may have found an old bit of OEM clicker. It should be delivered today. If not, I'll just click backwards. 

Odds and ends

Bear with me on this first odd. I've gained ten pounds. It could be the mocha or the ice cream or the thyroid, or all three, or one or two. I was pretty scrawny a year ago, after the pacemaker episode and the hole in my lung and the norovirus. The pacemaker doctor asked me to get back to 120, and I did all that by last April or so, and then paid no further attention.

Until this past week, when I realized it's getting warmer outside and soon I will ditch my elastic waist corduroys for jeans. I have not worn elastic waist trousers since childhood, and they may have seen the last winter! I put on a pair of jeans this week and faced zipping up like a teenager, flat on the bed and stomach sucked in. I got it done

But I see that heart doctor in a month or so, for the annual check up, and it would behoove me to present better. In short, a diet that does not include mocha and ice cream, for starters. It could also revert to my sister's lovely oatmeal muffins for lunch. Somehow we lost track of them this past year.

My sister just got a new kitchen. She and Tom bought a little house three or four years ago. It all worked for her except the kitchen, which had that crazy, post World War II housing type of little kitchen. She's pretty good at laying out kitchens, having done it twice at the old house. She knows what she wants, and she got it!

Small kitchen, lots of function. And more important, a new stove with oven to make oatmeal muffins.

One day last week Jan stopped to deliver a batch of muffins and catch up on gossip. And get her kitchen warming present.

I had some left overs to finish up for lunch, so it was today before I got to the new oatmeal muffins. And, oh dear, they were dryer than a bone. I manfully worked through the one I took, thinking "How can I tell her her new oven really needs calibrated. Or fixed!" I called her this afternoon, and tactfully, I hope, broached the subject.

And when I got done, Jan said "Well, that explains why I still have buttermilk left in the fridge! I forgot to add it." So, I need to lose ten pounds and hope I have a start on it.

I have been remiss about weaving this week. Each day was less productive than the previous, to the point of my doing exactly nothing yesterday. Nada. Zero. Zilch. I did get out of bed this morning feeling remorseful as well as guilty.

Fortunately, I encountered Betty and Margaret at breakfast. They are pleasant women. Betty is my table mate who I helped with her new hearing aids. And both are Tea Party, proving strange table mates can come to a truce and get along. The best part of seeing Betty so early was needing a scarf model and there she was, again.

We posed in front of the pool, in the atrium. Several women were in the pool, in the midst of their weekly exercise lesson. For the first time I am strongly tempted to join them. Eighty degree salt water sounds very tempting. I'd even buy a bathing suit.

My remarkable week

The week is remarkable only because I am making remarks upon it. It is Sunday, the last day or the first, depending on point of view. As irritating as I find that hashtag, POV, it was relevant there. So far today I've had breakfast (a poached egg on an English muffin). learned both the Guardians and the Cavs won yesterday and started my laundry.

Yesterday, Saturday, was interesting. As the morning progressed, I grew colder and colder. Eventually I checked the thermostat and found it blank. I opened the little door and saw two triple A batteries. Bonanza, I knew I had some (of indeterminate age). 

I fiddled with the two batteries in the thermostat and managed to light up the screen once to find it had defaulted to "Off". The room temp read 64, and when I pushed the temp button, it began at 52. I got it up to "my" setting, 72. On the way up, the heater came on.

My replacement batteries did not work, of course. I called the front desk, and began explaining the problem to Cathy, a lovely woman but not the best in analytics. I explained why I needed two new batteries. "I'll bring them right up and put it on your statement." I explained why I preferred not to pay. 

"Ooooohhhhhh................." Long intermission while she explained to a bystander why there was no work order for Monday, and she was taking up "stock", not "maintenance." Fast forwarding to the conclusion, within an hour or ninety minutes, I had reliable heat again.

I've been weaving. My first "maze" attempt was laughable, so I pulled it out and began threading up a new pattern. The threads feeding into the heddles now are a tangled mess, but the warp is dwindling down, so I'll go back and comb them occasionally.

So, I threaded this maze, and wove essentially one complete diamond. This pattern is fascinating. not what I was expecting In this drawdown I see all the escape paths. On the fabric I see expanding pools, like a stone in a pond. I think I need a heavier weft to approximate the drawdown, but I don't have it, so pools it is.

And finally, I took Rose for a haircut. So much excitement at the old folks home! We were an hour early, because I was trapped by digital time. Laura should have been here to laugh at me. The appointment was 1:45, but in spite of Rose's best effort, I could not get my "quarter of's" straight. 

Since I was the ride and Rose wanted her hair cut, she played along., right up to not laughing or saying "I told you!" when we pulled in and I suddenly grasped the error. When Rose made her next appointment, I insisted it be a whole number. Next haircut for Rose is May 31st, at 1:00 pm.

My week in review

In reverse, yesterday I had a visit from Ann. She came for lunch yesterday and left just before supper. In four or five hours we discussed all the problems of the world, as well as our own. We solved none. We have not seen each other except for an on the fly visit immediately pre-pandemic. Yesterday was a wonderful time.

Toward the end of the week I visited the quilt show at Lake Farmpark. I took Jane, a quilting friend who lives a few doors down, and we met Ruth, who needs no introduction. Or, as I explained to Jane, "We are the world's most fortunate mothers-in-law."

Ruth and I have visited this annual show many times in the past, but the last time was also just before the Covid lock down. In fact, there may have been no show this past two or three years. Ruth arrived a few minutes before Jane and I, and met us at the door. "Joanne, we have never seen anything like this." Indeed, we hadn't.

The next is a vintage, hand appliqued and hand quilted entry. I can visualize it gracing a child's bed for many years. It certainly could have been on my childhood bed. Following it is a picture of the description given it by the person who entered it.

Ruth and I always have a little competition. We compare notes at the end of seeing the show and see which one we would pick "to take home." This year I picked the following, a small wall hanging. I could be very happy looking at these little birds all day.

There were close to two hundred quilts entered. I've missed one or two of the photos I took. I like clean looking quilts, and see I generally took pictures of very busy quilts. My sister quilted several quilts I took notice of, and one of the ones she quilted was so dark I wondered how she could see the work to quilt it. Can't find that picture.

And finally, because it probably was the last in my lifetime, The Eclipse!

We had an absolutely stunning day to view a total eclipse! It was warm, the breeze was light, and the chairs comfy.