New vagaries in bird photography

Today began with freezing rain that degenerated into all day rain.

I set up the camera on the tripod under the front door overhang, 

after I saw the red bellied woodpecker on the safflower block.

It left, of course, but at least I had the tripod to keep the camera steady. 

A chickadee and a nuthatch.

I noticed the birds sharing the feeders today, no adverse possession.

I wonder if it was the foulness of the weather that fostered sharing.

The nuthatch.

Several of the bold little chickadees were around my feet on the porch,

cleaning up stray seeds from the seed cans.

I couldn't manipulate the tripod down, so they went unphotographed,

The little piggy finch.

They always share the feeder.

Last year the finch used mostly the mesh niger feeder, and if full to the top,

the feeder was invisible for finch.

This year the girls are putting the niger/cracked sunflower mix in this feeder and it has a lot of finch at the plate.

A female cardinal.

With the camera on the tripod the initial framing was not too easy,

and once framed, the birds might not cooperate.

I've also noticed that while the camera makes no sound to startle the birds,

they are very attuned to the big lens, as if, 

"My god, if the eye is that big, how big is the preditor?!"

and off they fly when I move the lens.

 A sparrow I do not recognize.

Or perhaps a female purple finch.

A purple finch and a male cardinal.

A cardinal. I see them seldom, perching at a feeder.

They prefer being flat footed at a tray feeder, or ground feeding.

However, the seed on the ground is pretty wet.

Or the doves and the blue jays already cleaned it up.

Peace among birds.

The cardinal, the purple finch, and a chickadee.

 And, a female cardinal.

For all I moaned about waist deep snow last year,

it made a better background.

No more pictures from the porch.

The birds are too aware of the BIG EYE.

They all are comfortable with cars coming and going in the drive, and

I can hold my elbows steady on the window ledge, so

back to bird pictures from the car window.

Also a warmer venue.

Everyone remains on vacation

As Emily got ready for bed last night, the phone rang. A little late, but the caller identified herself as from the ski resort, and Emily was called into work today. Starting time: 7 a.m. The girls usually are on the school bus at that hour, so getting up to go to work was no hardship for Emily. I’m usually under the covers for another hour, so getting up at six was extreme hardship for me.

Excepting the arctic bout in November, we've had no winter. After the coldest November on record, we've had the warmest December with temperatures in the mid forties, although cold at night. I was surprised the resorts had been able to make snow, but they deemed four inches enough and opened their season at seven this morning, not the usual noon, to capitalize on the last day of the holidays.

That’s what Emily told me on the way home at three in the afternoon, plus, they called so late because they called down the list to put together a crew, and a lot of that crew said they were still on vacation. So, the sixteen year old who worked lifts today is scheduled every Saturday and Sunday for the rest of the season. You snooze, you lose, as is said.

Driving home at seven a.m., watching the sky grow grey, and narrowly missing two deer in the dusk I thought I’d just go back to bed. But it was seven thirty, so I took a shower, ate breakfast and went on to work. I needed to distribute the road department payroll and there were a couple more jobs I could get done before Monday, when all absenteeism should be over.

Job One was to locate the end of year manual among the files loaded to my computer in Auditor of State’s last upgrade. I thought I knew; I was wrong. I looked at every other file (I thought), then called. No answer, so I emailed, politely. Eventually someone who apparently wished he were on vacation today told me the last line of the printed instructions for the last upgrade would tell me where the manual is located. Having made his point, he also cut and pasted that last line.

In the meantime I had moved along to putting a fairly important letter to the county prosecutor on township letterhead. Our attorney drafted the letter, all three trustees reviewed it and the attorney sent it along last Wednesday. I set to work on it that day, and quickly unearthed two omissions, so I called. Of course, they all were not in the office. They weren’t there at eight a.m. this morning, either, but I got the call back going on ten, and our attorney thanked me for finding the problems and promised me a new draft.

So, the person with no authority set aside the letter that had been written by an attorney and reviewed by three trustees with authority, came home and wove some more fabric before retrieving Emily at the end of her shift. Now I have been out of bed going on fourteen hours, so I think I’ll empty the dishwasher, reset my alarm for seven o’clock (the shift starts at eight tomorrow), and go to bed. Tonight I’ll sleep like I’m on vacation.

Fibers I passed in the night

Linda Starr is a potter who uses textiles in her work on occasion. She asked if I wove with more than the cotton I enthuse about, have I used linen, hemp, silk and knoff. The last I do not know and turned up nothing concerning. I've fooled with the first three.

Linen and hemp are bast fibers and thread from them produced in essentially the same way; linen thread comes from breaking down flax stems, extracting and processing the fibers into very long threads that can be spun into very strong thread. Hemp is processed from our friend the marijuana plant in the same way. Hemp was essential to the rope industry in this country through World War II.

Many plants produce bast fibers that earlier civilizations harvested and used for rope. The long curly fibers that separate from yucca leaves in the fall were collected and twisted and used centuries before flax and marijuana were thread crops in this country.

Linen is a less forgiving fiber for hand weaving.  It’s crabby stuff, actually. The threads of all but highly mercerized (gassed) linen yarns tend to stick together; every shed must be cleared by hand to pass the shuttle. It is a far more brittle fiber than cotton, and the threads must be kept moistened as the work advances. That involves a spray bottle of water, and on consideration I did not want to constantly subject my fine maple looms to a mist of water. I wove some linen once on a small loom I used for fun.

Hemp became available for hand weavers only in the last twenty years or so, and still must be imported as marijuana growing is in its new infancy here. Since most textile manufacturing has left the United States, and since third world manufacturers are far less regulated in the production and manufacture of yarn and fabric, I've read that much of what we purchase as linen anything actually is hemp. Hemp continues to cost far too much money for me to be interested in weaving it, but I understand it behaves just like linen.

Silk is a protein fiber, not just from silk moth cocoons. I've spun silk, to see how different it is from spinning cotton, flax or wool. I've never woven with it. Again, it is an expensive fiber that rises in the price chain according to the amount of processing. The most silk I could afford were cocoon caps, and I didn't like the feel of them, loosening the silk fiber to spin a thread. That was nineteen eighty something.

So, we explored cotton. We could source it inexpensively enough to weave fabric by hand to turn into affordable garments. People liked them and bought them, so we made more, and sold more, and made more and so it went on.

I did weave things Linda could never have asked about, though. Out of my highly engineering focused manufacturing background an old colleague appeared with carbon thread and asked me to weave it into a small square they could heat to a high temperature and turn into ash for some lab thing they were doing. I wove a two inch square of carbon fabric on an old Weave-It loom from childhood.

They didn't ask me to make another, but did send along another entrepreneur. This fellow showed up with fluorescent thread to weave fabric their company could make into fluorescent dog coats. We put it on another little loom we used for classes and demos. When we turned off the lights and left the studio at night we could look back and see the fabric glowing eerily. 

Apparently the fellow produced it at a shareholder meeting, and, Steve Job like, took center stage and held up this lemon yellow piece of fabric. No reaction. The lights went down and, I’m told, the audience oohed and aahed. I don't know if this is the stuff or not. Handsome dog!

Don't bleed on the goods--another old lesson

Emily graciously wound bobbins yesterday, and in four hours we had a hundred turn warp on the warp beam. About fifty yards, I believe. I didn't keep track last time, as I should have.

There it is, thirty eight inches of twenty ends per inch. 20 epi, in the parlance.

It's also thirty eight inches to throw the shuttle, substantially more than the twenty inch towel warp I just finished.

Across a warp with no race on the bar.

Well, I used to throw forty five inches and not think about it. Just keep the tip of the shuttle up when it's released.

Before another warp goes on that loom I will get a man in town to build me a proper spool rack.

If I knew who bought the two we sold, I'd be knocking on their door.

Another old lesson:

Don't bleed on the goods.

In the old days, when someone rushed to the bathroom, clutching a bleeding digit, the rest of us in the studio chorused after, "No bleeding on the goods."

And old skin pierces far more easily.

I did that on the thread guides, and became much more careful when I had to work around two bandages, too.

This morning, counting the ends in each bout to be sure all were there, I looked through the loom and found myself under the watchful eye of the supervisor.

The view through the heddles, ready to begin threading.

I like the curl of the cotton behind the wire heddles.

Half done. I quit about three quarters done. Tomorrow is another day.

I promise, if I encounter any more old lessons I will save them up.

Old lessons

You know I named my little Etsy Shop Everything Old is New Again.  My first thought was simply that I am weaving again, after leaving it so cleanly eleven years ago. We sold literally every loom, every pattern, every jig and tool we invented over the years, and we sure invented a lot. Production weaving on floor looms takes a good deal of ingenuity and a brother who can build anything described to him.

So, I opened a little Etsy shop and stocked it with scarves. Everyone loves scarves. Then I added my world renowned towels, for kitchens, dishes and tea. I put on a ginormous towel warp and wove blue ones and red ones and natural ones. I didn't even start the green ones. It was a lifetime supply of kitchen towels.  I finished the warp off in plain weave and reprised the old shirt.

Shortly into our weaving career I realized rugs and place mats would not work for us, we needed to make clothing. Nothing fancy; we were not fancy weavers. But, we knew cotton, the workhorse of the fiber world. We wove good cloth in great colors and turned it into shirts and jackets and the occasional skirt, that were two thirds of our sales.

This past week, I freshened up the look of the old shirt, shortened it (although I can make it longer in a heartbeat), made three shirts and started a forth. Sadly, my towel width fabric can only go to a size small shirt, so the initial stock will be small or extra small. The good news is, tomorrow I’ll ask Emily to help wind bobbins and I’ll put a new and wider warp on the loom.

I made and posted three shirts to Etsy. I put one on my Etsy link here on the blog. I went to supper. I came back and found the one I picked to show on the blog is sold, to a customer from twenty or more years ago. Tomorrow, before I even begin on the loom, I will take new photographs of the other two. I know better than to put such a light color in front of a pale background. More old lessons.

New fabric for the old shirt. I am becoming fond of the grouped thread arrangement that makes light cords. Visually, I would prefer even more cords, but then the fabric would not be stable enough to make a sturdy garment.  I don't do fiddly, an old and not to be forgotten lesson.