Cookie Day and More Weaving

I didn't get to Omi's today.  I delivered some cookies to a customer first thing this morning and ended up chatting with her for quite a while.  She's very nice, but seems to be in the midst of boyfriend chaos and needs to unload him.  When I left, he was arriving with a small bunch of flowers.  Oh dear...time to go!  I needed a cuppa, so I pulled into the Starbucks and while I was getting my drink, the handyman called and said he was running late due to an emergency at one of the apartment complexes he works for.  I got home and once again, I waited around for the handyman to show up for several hours.  Kelly got home just after 2:00 and I ran off to get the little kids from school as well as one of the Girl Scouts who was scheduled to sell cookies with Cammie today.  We got back to the house, grabbed the last few things for the cookie sale, and I got the call from the handyman that he wasn't going to make it after all.  He'll be here tomorrow all day to finish the tiling, which he got about half-finished yesterday.  it's looking really good so far, and he estimated that we'd have the bathroom back this weekend.  Maybe Monday...



So we got to the store to set up, and started by going in to talk to the manager and gifted him a box of cookies.  He already had a set of girls out there selling (their shift was scheduled to end at 4:00, when our shift started), and was really surprised and delighted by getting a box of cookies!  He laughed and said that since there were witnesses (other employees) he supposed he'd have to share them...and he did!  Another employee came out and said he had a couple.  Cool!  The girls danced and hawked their wares, and ended up selling 60 boxes in 2 hours. Pretty awesome!  14 of them were gifts to our soldiers and their families.  We gave little thank you slips from us to most of the buyers.  We did have one woman who was vocal about not supporting the Girl Scouts, although she DOES support Boy Scouts. OK, thanks for sharing your political views.

Aside from cookies and home improvements, I got thrown back into weaving again.  Over the last day or two, another tablet weaver asked about a pattern she was experimenting with.  She's new to the weaving gig, and she's already jumped into the intermediate and advanced pieces.  I like her gumption!  She's doing great work and enjoying it!  So she asked me to look at a pattern on Guntram's Tablet Weaving Thingy (that's the actual name of it) and see what's going on.  She said hers "looked funny".  So I quickly warped up a couple yards (not the full length) of the weaving pattern and gave it a go.

Well, first I had to figure out how to get the darn program to work.  It has a really unusual file type, so I had to download the program, then monkey with the guts of my computer for a while to find the program and get the computer to recognize the files and open them.  That took another 45 minutes of my time.  Once I got it to open the files, it worked like a dream.  They have lots of cool patterns and somehow you can create your own patterns on the Tablet Weaving Thingy.

Like many of the other Anglo-Saxon weaves, you have to separate the odd and even numbered cards and turn them alternately between shuttle throws.  I followed the directions turning the odd pack first, throwing the shuttle, then turning the even pack.  Repeat a few times.  First problem, that first card wasn't weaving in properly; the shuttle was missing it entirely.  I unwove back to the start and decided to make card #1 part of the even pack instead of the odd pack--just make it another card 2, as it were.  That solved that problem--no more stringy bits hanging off the left side.  However, turning the odd cards first before the even ones still made the pattern look odd.  Certainly not like the picture.  I stared at it, scratched my head, unwove it, re-wove it backwards, unwove it again...then started looking at the white designs in the pattern.  They're supposed to be diamonds, but it was weaving up out of order.  It struck me that maybe the directions were wrong...maybe the even numbered cards should be turned first...

I gave it a try after having woven a few passes starting with the odd pack.  As you can see, the first centimeter or two "look funny", then the next few repeats are a fun twisted diamond pattern.  I sent my findings to Debbie, so hopefully this is the same issue she was having and it will be corrected on her weave as well.  I love being able to help out someone else with their weaving.  I'm not the expert...not even close...but I love a good puzzle.

The other great thing about these Anglo-Saxon patterns is that they are double-sided.  The front and back look the same!  This is what the front and back of this piece look like.  Very cool!  I'm not sure if I like this color layout...I think I might try this again but reversing the green and white for higher contrast.