So, as I said, I spent a lot of last weekend cooking.  In fact, I’m still eating leftovers–it’s a good thing I don’t mind doing that.

Lamb/cauliflower/carrot curry. Local ingredients: ground lamb, cauliflower, carrots, onion, garlic, milk.

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Roasted veggies. Local ingredients: cauliflower, beets, carrots, parsnips, onion.

Once I ran out of leftover rice, I switched to eating the lamb curry over the roasted veggies.  Not bad at all.

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Granola. No local ingredients that I recall, except for the maple syrup. I usually make granola with honey, but I had just barely enough maple syrup in the fridge for this granola, so I figured I’d use it, instead, and get to open a new jar of syrup. This was a clean-out-the-freezer batch of granola, too–I put in the remaining bits in bags of hazelnuts, almonds, wheat germ, pecans…and enough of the wheat bran to fit it into a smaller jar. And it’s tasty. Mmm.

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I’ve also been doing a bit of weaving, on and off, since I set up my loom. I finished that first sample; it’s pretty clear that I gradually learned how far to pull the weft before beating–the edges are much nicer toward the end than at the beginning.

And then I decided to play around with two-heddle weaving, to see if I could make patterns.

It didn’t come out amazingly well, but I think it’s a decent step, considering how much planning I didn’t do. Next time, for example, I’ll know to pay more attention to the exact order in which I tie the first couple of warp threads to the front apron rod–it didn’t matter much in the plain weave, or if it did, it all worked fine so I didn’t notice, but part of the reason I got impatient with this sample thingy is that I messed up the beginning of the warping. The weaving set on flickr includes closeups of several of the patterns I managed; I think the half-basketweave looks pretty nice on both sides, but I need to write stuff out and maybe just play with threads a bit in order to figure out how to get twills.

Both of these samples were warped with Rowan Linen Drape; the main weft is probably Cascade 220.

As I said, though, I was getting a little frustrated with the two-heddle sample, so I figured it might be time to warp for an Actual Project, one playing with color more than texture (well, texture just in yarn and not in weave structure). I hope it will actually turn out to be useable…

The idea is that it will become a scarf. The warp is two colors of Silky Tweed (I had one ball of teal, and two of green). Halfway through warping, I remembered having heard that it doesn’t do well as warp, but it seems to be okay so far. Probably in part because I’m not trying to make a really dense fabric (going for drapey, just hoping it’s not too terribly open and floppy) and in part because it probably wants a denser epi. But I still only have 10-dent heddles…for now.  The warps visible in this picture are a smidge of handspun merino (the light blue at the bottom), some of each color of silky tweed, and some…Mountain Colors, I think.  It’s a mohair-blend single, in “New England Autumn”, which includes almost exactly the same teal as the teal silky tweed.  I have the rest of these, plus a couple other yarns that seemed to go; I’m going to do more or less random stripes, trying to keep it somewhat balanced so it’s not too colorblock-y.

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Anyway!  Enough typing for this evening, unless I’m going to do some actual work.

Last Sunday’s sunset, from my kitchen window.

(Check back this evening or tomorrow for a post on All The Cooking I Did Last Weekend and some weaving.)

Whee!  It’s been a long week, with lots of frustrations.  So, sort of appropriately, here are two photos I took last Saturday, after I couldn’t do the work I’d planned on because of maintenance work in the building:

Not such a bad “silver” lining…  My big plan for tonight is to go home and spin for a handspun swap.  And then go to bed early.

I may be in a small minority here, but I prefer Standard Time to Daylight Time, at least this week.  I am not a morning person, at all, though I can pretend to be one when I have to.  This, combined with lab schedules, means that early sunset just makes me feel better about working late–there’s no way I’ll leave before sunset, so why not stay the extra hour to finish that experiment–and I actually get some sunlight before I have to leave my house.  So, taking advantage of some of that sunlight: this is my current walk-to-work spinning, an Abbybatt in Hibiscus.  (This is 3 mornings’ spinning, so probably about an hour’s worth.)

And, though it’s not terribly attractive yet, here’s some other knitting I’ve been doing:

This is my Zombies yarn (which may need a different name…), a couple of rounds into the lace pattern of the Bird’s Nest Cowl from Elann.

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In other news, I think I’ve figured out how to convince Mel to sit in my lap: keep the heat low enough that I want to knit with a blanket on my lap.  He’s always been fond of the acrylic blanket that was the second rectangular thing I knit, but he seems okay with fleece throws, too.

Last night, as I was waiting for the bus to go to fiber night, I realized that the batt I was spinning was a good match for the skirt I was wearing:

Heh. Maybe I’ll eventually wear that skirt with a shawl containing that batt… That’s an Orange Blossom Abbybatt all spun; I’ve moved on to another, in Hibiscus. (The plan: ply Hibiscus with Orange Blossom, Girl Drink Drunk, and the remaining Hibiscus. Have a set of orangey pinkish yarns for a shawl.)

I got some knitting done on the bus, too (and at Rhinebeck, for that matter), so I have a bit of sock toe:

Not much other spinning or knitting, though–my at-home fiber time (as well as about half the housework time) this week has gone into figuring out how to weave patterns with two heddles. Maybe I’ll post pictures over the weekend, when I might get better light.

This has been a near-perfect fall afternoon. I have made soup, drunk tea, watched the sun on the turning leaves outside my kitchen window, eaten an apple with sharp cheddar, and….woven on my new loom.

Yep, new loom. I decided that I’d go ahead and get myself a loom at Rhinebeck, as an early birthday present for myself. I got a Schacht Flip, with a 20″ weaving width; it’s about 24″ wide total. I also bought an extra 10-dent heddle, so I can try some 2-heddle patterning once I get the hang of the basic process (should be soon, unless I decide to try color patterning first).

I warped it last night with a ball of linen/rayon that I had lying around. Using it for both warp and weft was making a more open weave than I wanted, so I dug out some mystery wool (probably but not definitely Cascade 220) once I got past the header.

I’m gradually getting the hang of how to work the loom more efficiently and how to have not-entirely-terrible edges.  This is going to be fun.  (This photo is lit by actual sunlight, in the corner of my living room that’s farthest from the windows.  Sunday afternoons are great.)

These’re a couple more photos from that trip to Valley Forge, partly because I haven’t processed my Rhinebeck photos yet, partly because there wasn’t much bright sunlight so these are prettier.

Happy Friday!

So, as I was getting ready for Rhinebeck last week, I realized that my hats are all still packed somewhere, as are most of my scarves.  I briefly toyed with the idea of knitting a hat in the car on the way up to the campground, going so far as to ball an extra skein of yarn, but then I decided that a third knitting project for the weekend would be overkill.  (Y’know, on top of the three spindles-with-projects.)

Still, when I came home, I wanted a new hat.  And now I have one.  There had to be some kind of silver lining to two sickdays right after vacation.  (I’m feeling better today than yesterday, but fever on top of feeling like crap…I stayed home.  And napped more than I knit.)

It’s another Foliage–decent pattern, top-down, and I wasn’t going to make up a pattern, even a simple one, through this headache. I wanted a top-down hat because I wasn’t sure I’d have enough Rhubarb, and I figured the Roses in the Snow would be better as a stripe along the bottom than a patch at the crown. And, as it turned out, I really like the way the Rhubarb striped.

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Rhinebeck was great.  Way too short to actually spend time with all the people I wanted to see, but I got to at least say hello to many of them, and cabin-camping worked out pretty well despite the loss of electricity from Saturday afternoon on.  I may have said this last year, when it was even more true, but I love my down sleeping bag.  It kept me toasty and warm.

The weather this year was less beautiful than last year, but the forecast snow never materialized, and there was hardly any rain, either.  It was sufficiently damp and muddy that I went with Keens and handknit socks rather than my trusty plastic Birki’s, but it was nice to be wearing handknit socks in such surroundings.

I’m still sorting through my scenery pictures, and I have yet to photograph all of my purchases, but here are two of the more exciting things I bought:

That’s an ounce of icelandic lamb with alpaca and silk, from Frelsi Farm, which was rightly labelled as the nicest of this year.  (At least, nicest of the stuff they had, which was pretty much all nice.)  I bought an ounce, plus a couple of other blends of theirs, and I think they’re going to grow up to be a Flicka hat from the Knitter’s Book of Wool.   The braid of beautiful greens is Finn top from Gnomespun.  I don’t have set plans for it yet, but I’m thinking it might become a sweater yoke.

Foliage pictures and the Really Super Exciting Purchase (early birthday present) sometime later.  Maybe for ECF.

Is it overkill to post two ECF things and more pictures today?  I hope not…

I spent yesterday afternoon walking through Valley Forge National Historical Park with Anju, though we bypassed most of the historical stuff in favor of trees and flowers and fungi and the river.  It was a pretty good walk–about 8.5 miles–and a beautiful day to be outside.  I even brought along my film camera for the expedition, and it was well worth the weight.

Here’s part 2:

I got three of these lovely, lovely Abbybatts this week. The colorway’s called Jungle Love, and they’re merino/silk. Mmmmm.