Chasing the super moon

Pure luck shot as I adjusted my settings by the glow of my cell phone.

Civilization's ambient light and heavy overcast.

Three mosquito bites by now. Little buggers.

OK, the clouds won.

Back in 2017.

Experience and reason

We arrive at values by different routes.

Many years ago I staged a surprise bon voyage party for my in-laws, the weekend before their departure for Hawaii. I enlisted some of my husband’s cousins to help keep Mom and Dad Noragon at home, and we all descended like vultures. Laid out Mom’s china and silver, set out the food we’d prepared and settled into enjoying ourselves.

An hour in I was literally felled by the flu. Dad drove me home. Later he drove some cousins home. The husbands got themselves home. Mom kept all the children involved, as parents were too sick to leave their beds. Mom and Dad cleaned up behind us. Yes, they went to Hawaii and No, they did not get sick.

This experience became the core of my maxim, “it’s stupid to perpetrate a big surprise.” People best make their own choices. Simply, don’t do things to people.

However, I listened in on a discussion between Emily and a friend recently. The friend denigrated the ethnic background of someone they saw with a remark about skin color. He needed Emily’s agreement to make his point. There was a loud, silent pause before Emily replied coolly, “I didn't notice the color of his skin.”  As effective as a bucket of ice water. I attributed that to reason.

The past weekend the girls’ father asked to take them to a big picnic. The kid calendar already included a band show in Columbus for Emily and a birthday sleepover for Laura. I calculated each would be going to the picnic on three or four hours sleep, so I asked their dad to hold while I asked if they wanted to go, even knowing they might fall asleep with their eyes wide open. Of course they did.

On picnic day Becca, the oldest sibling at 22, fortunately, called to tell me they were on the way. I said I would go at once to bring Laura home from the sleepover. “But don’t tell them,” Becca said. “It’s a surprise.”

I opened my mouth to tell her it was not a surprise; her siblings are actual people who were consulted. I closed my mouth. I dislike homilies, too.

On another note, the blue towels.

An old stacked stone retaining wall. 

Dad's fall blooming crocus, the colchicum, are up

And every open bloom has been nibbled, surely the chipmunks.

Soon the garden will be a sea of lavender blossoms.

And, the last gerbera daisy of the season.

It surprised me.

Taking control

I've smiled much of the summer over the audacity of this little creeper,

And the boldness of these grasses.

A shortage of hand woven dish towels!

My first loom was a 36” LeClerc Fanny, the sweetest little counterbalance loom in the universe, and I learned to weave using my aunt’s old Marguerite Davidson pattern book. I still have the book; she and my uncle wrote charming little notes to each other about their weaving in the book.

I wove some beautiful, soft as butter fabric on that loom, made a lovely shirt, sold it for too little money, back in the neophyte days. The loom was not very practical for yardage fabric and we went on to 44” looms for fabric. My little Fanny kept busy with place mats and dishtowels, and that sort of labor intensive, small profit products neophytes are prone to. Eventually that Fanny went onto a creel and wove rugs to the end of our weaving days.

When I wove towels, I wove them as yardage, not as individual towels.  I fulled my yardage, cut 40” towels, hemmed them and put them on the towel shelf in the booth. If I found a weaving error, or came up short, that piece became a house towel. They still dried dishes. We have a drawer and a half of house towels; our heirs and assigns will be tossing them.

A Shaker towel, about thirty years old. Raggedy, but serviceable.

A checkerboard towel I wove twelve or so years ago. Good shape.

A twill towel Beth wove maybe fifteen years ago.

But friends? They didn't have a drawer and a half of house towels; maybe only a dozen or so they’d been gifted. At her house one day Linda held up a towel and said to me, through the face sized hole, “You know you’re not forgiven for giving this up.” From all around, I heard “My towels are wearing out.” As if twenty years were not enough.

Former weavers don’t let friends down. I borrowed my daughter Beth’s little 8 harness Harrisville. It had close to a full towel warp that she put on in probably 1998. She wove for us before she was married, which was 2000, but her looms collected dust from the day she met Bill, in 1998.

Her loom was threaded for an undulating twill on six harnesses.I simply could not pick up any rhythm or speed on the pattern. I was the weaver now; I’d thread up something else. It took me a month, I’m sure, and I threaded up an eight harness checkerboard I used to weave on another LeClerc loom I had in the old days. Beth’s Harrisville is nice, but really cramped; just not enough room to comfortably make a thirty treadle sequence down there. My LeClerc’s were so nice.

The undulating twill pattern.

Undulating twill off the loom.

In the "fulling machine."

Thank God I did not live a century ago.

After the washer and dryer. I think it resembles flying geese.

I moaned to my sister that I needed to take time to reconstruct that Shaker plain weave/twill variation I used to weave by the yard; I was through with all this six and eight harness nonsense and ready for a sturdy little workhorse of a pattern and towel. “Well, if you still had the bible,” she said.

I was off like a shot to rummage in the book case. The bible, where we wrote down every pattern we wanted to make again, because we learned bread and butter is weaving what we sold, not selling what we wove. At least not until we introduced the new stuff next season.

The bible was there, right beside Marguerite. I tore down the loom another time and threaded again, for another month, plus the week I went to Ann’s. I simply don’t have the time I used to have, when I did this for a living.

The Shaker towel!

Rethreading the loom, one more time.

I took a dozen butter yellow Shaker towels off the loom last weekend, plus one short house towel and I’ll finish off the warp with a lovely teal. I've given away the half dozen yellow checkerboards I wove, and half the Shaker towels, with the other six earmarked. In fact, tomorrow I’m mailing off a couple to a customer from twenty years ago who recently tracked me down and sent pictures of her poor, dear jackets we wove.  A story for another day.

Hot off the loom Shaker towels.

The next towel weft.

When Beth’s loom is empty I’ll warp up again for another round of Shaker towels. I know more chief bottle washers who might like a couple of towels that will outlast them. If I don’t already know your address, don’t be surprised by an email asking for it.

I've also asked the universe to find me an old 36” Fanny at a good price. Wouldn't that be nice!

A 1951 LeClerc Fanny counterbalance, four harness, six treadles.

About the vintage I bought from my Aunt Laura in nineteen eighty something.

Rainy Sunday afternoon

I stood on the front porch this morning, admiring the rain, and a squabble broke out at the end of the house. I came in for my camera and on the way back, I snapped off Toby, in one of his "leans." I caught him off guard, he despises being photogenic.

Back to the porch, where two house finches sheltered from the rain. The initial squabble had been a third bird, trying for a bit of gutter out of the rain. Unsuccessfully.

Back in the house, Toby won't acknowledge me, perhaps thinking "Get a life."

He is a feral foundling, and unlike any cat I've had, even barn cats turned house cat.

It was raining just as hard out back, and far more interestingly.

Shiny.

Shiny with splatters.

Done.

Drops.

More drops.

Only the rain is out to dry, today.

No little girls visited my new glider this summer. One thing and another.

Toby is interested in what happens in the house, and out, and he stays on his side of the raindrops.

Rainy Sunday afternoon.