Foggy

It's been a foggy week.  Every day with the fog.  I'm tempted to drive into the mountains just to get above the darn clouds.  Enough already!  OK, the fog finally broke for the "higher" elevations (the valley below us was still socked in, but we got a bit of blue sky here).

With the fog has come cold and frost.  Every morning (at least the school days) I've had to scrape windows.  What's frustrating is that last year I bought an ice scraper and now it's nowhere to be found. I've had to pull out cards from my wallet--zoo membership cards, Costco cards, etc.--to do the job.  I should probably just go buy another stupid scraper.

The long weekend passed uneventfully.  Kelly didn't have Monday off, so it was a day for me to sleep in a bit and then get some of the usual housework done.  Laundry, dishes, more laundry, and even more laundry.  I think I folded six loads yesterday.  I'm still missing two pairs of jeans.  I don't know how these things disappear.  Maybe they're in someone else's dresser and they'll finally figure out that they're not theirs in Spring.  I know it's not in Ben's, anyway.

With Ursulmas just around the corner, I decided I needed to get some weaving pieces finished for the weekend.  The sale of these pieces will help defray the cost of me going to the event as well as the fabric purchases I made for my Costumer's Guild challenges.  I still have a couple left over from last year, did a couple after the last event, and had one on the loom for a while.  This first one I called the Ithra weave.  I had intended to keep this for myself, but the joy of it is that I made it...and I can always make more.  So I decided to finish it up and put it out for sale.  I haven't measured it, but it's about 4 yards, like the rest. This is a variation of one of the patterns I found online called "Acret" (similar to the one below) but I added a few extra cards and did an 8 forward-8 back repeat (turning the cards 1/4 turn 8 times forward, passing the shuttle after each quarter-turn, then doing the same thing in reverse).

This one I quickly warped up and started weaving on today.  I got over a yard done just today, and it's going much faster than the others.  Since it's only 12 cards, they turn rather easily, so I think it'll be no problem to get it done by the weekend.  The pattern is called "Sed"; no idea why.  There's a lady on Deviant Art that weaves a lot of stuff and that's what she called it.  I've done a number of her patterns.  I picked one out that I really liked the look of and actually got the first card warped up before I realized it was for a six-hole card.  These only have FOUR holes.  I don't own any six-hole cards.  I blinked at it for a few seconds, then went to get another cuppa tea.  After choosing a FOUR-hole pattern, I warped up 12 cards of green, white and purple.  This is the first couple of inches...

And this is about a yard of it.  You can see the cards on the strings, and the larger peg with the green bungee wrapped around it is the tension peg.  The tension peg keeps the strings taught.  The bungee is to hold the ruler that I use for my shuttle.  Tres fancy, non?  This is a 4 forward-4 back repeat.  Very simple.  The band is wrapped around the pegs in a giant 4+ yard circle, tied together at the ends...hence, the big, hairy cluster of strings at the bottom of the photo.  That's where I started weaving, and will end about 6" from it at the end.

Girl Scouts was today.  I tried to do a lesson on drawing, but I don't think it was very successful.  I think we a) needed more time, b) needed more assistants--me vs. 12 girls...um...no..., and c) the girls have had virtually *no* background in shading, perspective drawing, and still life painting.  A couple of them actually knew what it was...that was a start.  I think I needed to a) have a larger drawing board or chalk board to demo on, b) my own ruler, c) more paper and d) a large alcoholic beverage.  Wrap up the meeting with some name-calling and parent-conferencing, and you'll see the necessity for step d).  That took a little time to decompress from, but the parents in the situation were *awesome*!  I can't say enough how well the parent end was handled.  I hope that the consequences set in place make a lasting impression and we don't have a recurrence of this issue.

I have a bunch of work to get done on the documentation for the weekend...and some more weaving...and maybe some sleeping.  G'nite...later.