Pretty Plant

A bunch of lettuce seed got spilled around the garden last fall when Joel was cleaning lettuce seed that he grew. A lot of it ended up in various places and so we have had volunteer lettuces here and there. This one has bolted. I haven't pulled it out of the lily bed because I just think it is so pretty.

Back at Roche Harbor

I spent my first day of the season out at Roche Harbor manning our booth. One of my partners has been opening it on weekends in June but now that we are open 7 days a week the three of us will share the work. I do enjoy being out there and seeing the artist friends in other booths some of whom I don't see all winter. I will be running back and forth from island to island a lot in the next two months.

Weave On

I am almost finished weaving this batch of placemats. The fabric colors are working really nicely with the 9 colored warp. I will have 12 placemats and one runner out of this. Should be finished tomorrow.
And I did get 16 of the mug rugs that I was weaving on my new little table loom finished and labeled and ready for market. I have finished weaving wool rugs for the season having woven up all our wool and am making these out of little bits and pieces leftover from those. I've got 3 shades of grey wool and white. These are great as coasters as the wool is really insulating and keeps heat from whatever they are set on.

Nice Little Table Loom

Last summer one of my Farmers Market customers came by my booth to tell me that she'd found a table loom at a garage sale for $10 and bought it thinking of me. It came with a bundle of flat shuttles and lease sticks that were worth more than $10 themselves. I said sure, I'd take it. I can always use another loom (!).

Well, it's a sweet little table loom. I've never seen one like it. I can't decide if it is commercial loom as it has no label or just a very nicely crafted home made one.
It has a unique sliding beater that makes the beater always 90 degrees to the warp which is really nice, and bright color beads that lock into slots to raise the harnesses.
The brake consists of a peg that fits into little holes. If anyone has ever seen one like this and knows what kind it is I'd love to know. I'm weaving little wool mug rugs on it to try it out. I had to replace most of the cords. It came with an old cotton warp on it padded with newspapers that referred to Nixon as President. It is weaving very nicely.

Birds

I took my camera on a walk today and came upon another owl being mobbed by robins. This time it was a Great Horned Owl. It sat there so patiently while the robins dived at it and scolded.
On the way back I walked through the pasture and watched the cowbirds ride around on the backs of the sheep. These birds apparently developed with the herds of bison on the Great Plains. They fascinate me as do all brood parasites. How do they know how to be cowbirds. They don't grow up acting like warblers or wrens or whatever sort of bird raised them. All nature and very little nurture here.

Playing with Color

I haven't been keeping up the blog. Last week I was hustling to get ready for the Studio Tour and this week I'm digging out the house and recovering. I had a wonderful time and sales were great in spite of it raining hard most of Sunday. I sold a bunch of rugs including the two on the screen in the back in the picture above. I also sold a lot of placemats so that my stock of them is seriously depleted.
So I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about the sale and placemats and thought I'd make up a batch of placemats similar to the rug on the far right above. It has 9 color wheel colors, interspersed with navy blue. So I just finished winding a log cabin warp of navy blue and 9 colors and digging out poly/cotton sheets in 9 colors to make sure I had everything I need to do that.
And, while I was at that I started thinking about the colors I was working with and decided to wind a couple more warps, one of the blues and greens and one of the reds and oranges. These will be symmetrical with yellow in the middle. I had a hard time deciding what to do with the purples but ended up with the blue purple with the greens and blues and the purple and red purple with the warm colors. Think these will work nicely. I'll weave the latter two warps with print fabrics in similar colors.