Peace in January

As I age I like January more and more. Quiet contentment descends after the furor of the holidays. My world s settled, undisturbed, in a routine. I like that after Christmas.
The earth seems quiet too, in her sleeping dormancy. I don't think of nature as being dead in winter; I think of her as resting deeply, gathering her strength for spring.
But not yet.
Let's enjoy winter first.
I know I can say that glibly, away from the threat of ice storms and snow mountains and sub-zero blizzards. We don't have them here.
Winter in the South is a peaceful season. We often have balmy winter days in the 60s or 70s, near perfection. Winter is a time to be outside quite often.

 Adam's mom bought us this wonderful sign for our farm-to-be. Right now, it's not really a farm yet because we haven't produced anything or sold anything or in any way made the property pay. In fact, it's made us pay, if you know what I mean. Hopefully in time that will turn around. But the sign does give us hope. It's right by the driveway as we come in.

 After much deliberation, hemming and hawing, trial and error, I think I've finally settled on the soap packaging I want ... for now.

I wanted to get away from plastic for the most part. Perhaps some customers still want plastic? I don't know. And I did not like wrangling with burlap at all. Then I lit on this idea: strips of paper .... but what kind of paper? At last I found packages of scrapbooking paper on sale at Walmart. 50 sheets for $4.00. I cut the colorful sheets in strips and use my label to secure it, and tada!! New label! I'm also getting rid of the ugly round stickers from Dollar General I was using for the price tag. Instead I got these little tags-on-strings. I've needed new price tags forever. I'm very slow to change things. Anywho -- the new packaging is above. What do you think?

Cool Things at Christmas

Here are a few cool things I received at Christmas. Of course, my loom is the coolest gift of all.

This is weaving project #7, I think. It will be a cover to lay on top of my piano. Look below -- can you see the glaring error? No? Notice that the red column, second from the right, is wider than the others. (Sigh!!!)

I threaded one more eye in the heddle than I should have, in that section,, even after carefully counting over and over again. Oh well. It's just for me, and I don't mind. I'm quite picky about what I'll sell, but not so picky about what I'll keep.
Here's another nifty gift -- jewelry organizer (mostly earring hanger). I've accumulated so much jewelry over the years. Not much of it is "fine," but it's not costume either. I've kept it in little bitty boxes and such.

 This caught my eye at a local pottery store where my soap products are carried. Look at it from the top:

 There are so many little holes! Each one holds an earring, and because I prefer dangly earrings, this is perfect for me. The center bowl can hold bracelets, larger earrings, necklaces, or whatever you like.

I really love it.
Philip and Kara gave me some specialty teas that I've been enjoying SO much, especially the past few days when the temperatures have been dropping. It's cold! But the tea is hot :)

Anna likes the pomegranate, but I love the citrus lavender sage. What an aroma!
So, did you get anything for Christmas that has warmed your heart? Please share!

To Jennifer, Wherever She Is

Thirty-four years ago as a freshman in college I made some amazing friends. Some I still have (thankfully!) and some I've lost. One I lost is Jennifer. She lived on my floor, was a musician -- a singer and guitarist. She had long red hair and a bold personality, but also a sad depth in her soul. I liked her a lot. On September 2, 1981, I sat in my room with the window open. She sat in her room a few doors down, playing her guitar and singing. I wrote this (very bad, but normal for a 17 year old) poem:

A Few Doors Down

Your haunting notes flowed through my window

On the back of the chilling mist.

There was a mellow warmth in your tone;

I knew you were singing all alone.

I took in all those lines you'd kissed

And blown out to the world.

You stopped, but I still heard them

For I'd taken them as my own.

I  don't know what Jenny was singing that day, but it was probably something she'd written. I probably shared the poem with her, a kind of reciprocal gift, and I imagine I was silly enough think it worth sharing, and she was silly enough to think it good. And if you were ever a student at Covenant College, you probably know exactly what kind of day it was, when that cloudy mist that shrouds the campus and blots out the world slides through your window and begins to take over your room. I loved that school, but the weather was formidable.

Jennifer graduated that May and I lost touch with her. The one time I saw her after that, while I was still at the college, she seemed distant and changed. Angry, lost. And as we often do with people who change on us, I held onto the Jenny I'd known, and I did that by keeping her music.

One evening we two sat in the dilapidated wooden building that passed for the college's practice rooms, looking over a song she'd written called "Moonbeam."

Jenny wasn't a great music writer but she had heart. Most of the piece is clunky and poorly written. She wanted me (a pianist of sorts) to embellish and improve it, which was way beyond me. But I kept the piece because I keep things. I've had it for thirty-four years. I pull it out every few years and play through it. It has one especially beautiful portion that (for me) redeems all the rest.

The only way to share it with you is with a recording, which I will attempt to do. If I succeed in posting it here, please forgive its poor quality. I hope you can hear the lovely interplay of piano and vocal lines. It's simple, but really lovely. The poem is by Wm. Zieglar. I can find nothing of him online. Jenny wrote the music.

To Jennifer, wherever you are, I want you to know that your music made a deep impression and continues to do so. Music does that. Poetry does that.

Moonbeam

If I were the sunlight

Through your window in the morning I'd shine.

But then I'd miss you in the night,

And that's my favorite time.

If I were a moonbeam

Glowing from above,

I'd shine my way into your dreams

And offer you my love. 

Offer you my love.

Love is all I have to give.

Unweaving

I finished a lovely table topper in scarlet and gray with a center in houndstooth pattern. Houndstooth has to be warped by alternating the two colors, back and forth, as you see below.

I looked at that back-and-forth threading, and I did not want to cut and retie each strand as it wound around that backstick. And I wondered if I could just not cut the yarn, and lap the two colors over each other as I moved along. So I did it, and it seemed to work fine.

I wove the piece and it was more beautiful than I anticipated. Toward the end the shed (the opening where you shoot the shuttle through) got smaller and more difficult to manage as the warp threads pulled awkwardly. That was my first sign that my threading choice might not have been a good one.

Sure enough, I made mistakes as I tried to shoot my shuttle through that shed. If you look closely above, you can see the many errors. On the left edge of the houndstooth are two weft floats near each other. And look just left of the center of the piece, going up and down one warp line -- there are FIVE errors in that one warp thread alone. Argh! It was quite discouraging to see that on my finished piece after taking it off the loom and beginning to tie the knot fringes on the ends.
Below are those two weft errors I mentioned.

Below is that warp thread with the five errors. It's the thread that runs down from the needle you see at the top of the photo:

I put it aside overnight. This morning I turned to Google for help. How do weavers correct their mistakes?
Some said to leave it. The mistakes aren't ugly; they make the handwoven item unique. Hmm. No thanks.
Some said to do a patch -- work a short piece of yarn into the location correctly, snip its ends, and then snip out the bad part, wash it, and allow the weave to hold in all those raw ends. I did not find that satisfying either.
Some used terminology I didn't understand.
Personally, I wondered why I couldn't just pull that warp thread all the way down and reweave it by hand correctly. I couldn't find anybody who advised that. Why not? Was it dangerous? Prone to disaster? I couldn't know until I tried, and I felt it was the only solution that I would find satisfying.
First I threaded some light twine onto a blunt darning needle. I threaded this twine down the same path as the naughty warp yarn, careful not to pass the twine through the yarn. If the two became joined, that would be disastrous.

See how the twine lies next to the naughty gray yarn?

This particular warp thread needed to be rewoven for most of the length of the piece. As I put the twine into the line, I pulled the yarn out so that they would not be in the same spot for very long.

The twine is saving the place for the gray yarn, for when it will be retracing those steps.

Periodically I'd check the backside of the work to make sure it was looking good back there too. I did all this on a hard wooden board too, for support. I think that helped a lot.

Below is one of the errors. The needle end is pointing to it. The white twine is passing over the horizontal gray yarn, but the naughty gray yarn from above doesn't cross over it there. It went under, which made the weft yarn look like a float.

After slowly working my way down the piece, it was time to pull the naughty gray yarn through, thread it onto the blunt needle, and ascend the line again, careful this time to pass correctly over and under all the wefts. I constantly reminded myself that all I needed to do was follow the twine, like the poor children in the forest following the bread crumbs to get back home.

As I rose through the corrections, I also slid the twine out of the work. It was lovely to see it become perfect.

Table topper in houndstooth with Simply Soft yarn, deep red and gray

It all required time and concentration. The two weft floats were trickier to correct. I actually had to pull down two warp yarn lines to make it right. But in the end I unwove and rewove all the bad yarn, and the piece is perfect. I really didn't want to settle for anything less. Tomorrow it will be at the farmers' market for sale with my other woven things. I think so far, I like this one best.
This afternoon I decided to warp up another piece, a scarf in a variegated brown worsted weight yarn. I also had some pretty orange yarn and thought the brown and orange might be lovely together, kind of autumnal and masculine.

I do appreciate my family. They are honest with me. I called Adam, Anna, and Julia to the loom. I'd done the warp in the brown, and had done a chunk of weft orange on the bottom. It was very orange. So I did a bit of brown, transitioning into a creamy white (which you see above). The brown and white also looked awful. I weft-clasped some orange, trying to tie in the first color. It went from bad to worse. I asked them -- what do you think? They responded with an embarrassed silence. "That bad, eh?" I asked.
So I took it all out. I kept the brown warp only. I started again with a weft of browns and light and dark olive greens. Much better.
All that to say, I spent most of my weaving time today UNweaving, or as I like to think of it, honing my Penelope skills. The queen of Ithaca spent many night hours unweaving. It's a good skill to have. One cannot expect every project to be beautifully conceived or perfectly executed. Surely one of the best tools in the artist's toolbox is the ability to undo his mistakes.

A City of Bells

There are rare nights when I cannot sleep. I close my book, wrap up my chocolate bar, click off the light. A few quick minutes later my mind obediently drifts into sleep. A half hour more, and I wake again, alert, thinking, and unable to sleep. They say it's best at that point to get up and do something.

I'm reading a book. A City of Bells by Elizabeth Goudge has been recommended to me for years, and Adam bought it as a Christmas gift. Bless his heart – I knew her books were hard to find. The used copies he located were in terrible shape, so he bought a new one from a very small printing and it cost a fortune (in my opinion) for a new book. Well, I'm enjoying it.

That's my latest weaving project underneath the book.

Here's what Goudge says about thinking. Rather, here's what one of her characters says, but he's a wise old gentleman, so I suppose we may attribute the words to the author. “That's right, dear boy, that's right. But mind you do think. Don't just take out your feelings and look at them, which is what passes for thought with most of us pitiful, self-centered creatures. Look at the question from everyone's point of view …” (84). I like that! How often we call ourselves thinking something out, when really all we're doing is rehashing our worn emotions regarding the matter. We wear ourselves out, getting no closer to any understanding of it. We refuse to see it from others' perspectives for fear of not being true to ourselves.

I'm not that far into the book and I've found a good quote about joy. In the middle of a sorrowful situation, the same wise old gentleman admonishes us to pray and make inquiries, “… and that was all they could do .... In this beautiful world that God had made joy was a duty” (49). What a strange idea! We think joy, like love, is a spontaneous breeze that blows and disappears on its own inexplicable whim. Joy, a duty! The quote from my blog banner expresses a similar sentiment. Joy is something you can look for, find, and choose. It's up to you.

The ruminations of another character present us with yet another interesting idea, a morsel. “His bent of mind was a scholarly one and his outlook on life that of an artist. Regulations had irked him, and red tape, and that life of routine that so often stifles imagination” (27).

Now there's something folks disagree on! Ask Anthony Trollope, who rose quite early each morning, spent a set amount of time for writing novels, and then began his day and went to work. He was quite regimented, quite artistic, quite prolific. Some argue that routine is the very life-blood of creativity. They scoff at the excuse-makers (like myself) who put off their art, waiting for the illusive muse to descend. I'm not sure which position to take on this and am inclined to think that different people create differently. Clearly Goudge's young man in this book is a waiter of muses.

I find Goudge's books to be long and luxurious like a good meal or a soaking bath. They are best consumed in small bites and savored. She does nothing in a hurry, and her settings, plots, characters, and conflicts are thoroughly presented and fleshed out. Her books stay real to me for years and with a flitting thought of them, suddenly I'm back in them, back in the place and the feel of the book. That's a gift.

It's now after midnight. I finished my fourth weaving project today, went to town with Adam and saw the new Star Wars movie, and ate at Chipotle. We are still quite damp, mucky, and nearly flooded around here. The ground is saturated. More rain is forecast for tomorrow, but after that we hope for an extended dry spell. It's too wet to walk in the field. How the wheat and greens are surviving is a mystery.

This Was Christmas

I had such a nice Christmas because I decided to stay home. I didn't let the allure of town and shopping and movie theatres and restaurants draw me away from my front door. While others dashed to town on busy roads, I stayed home and did weaving :)
On Christmas Day I burnt all the Advent candles down to nubbins.

We invited two gentlemen for Christmas dinner and they enjoyed themselves. Meet Dave and Joe. Adam's wearing his apron.

I don't often set a fine table, but I made the effort ... cloth napkins too! Peter dug out my red Christmas chargers from the attic.

Adam was in fine cooking form that day! He started with the most delicious, soft cinnamon rolls with a cream cheese glaze. I ate these two. Then I sent all leftover rolls to a friend's house with Peter and Julia. We didn't need those sitting around tempting us!

Adam bought a very fine roast, which is a rare extravagance for us. He cooked it to a perfect temperature. We also had: Yorkshire pudding (made popover-size), small red potatoes with butter and parsley, mashed sweet potatoes, green bean casserole (with homemade fried onions because he forgot to buy them, which was a blessing!), dinner rolls, roasted carrots and turnips. There were horseradish sauce and olives on the table, with all manner of little nibbles and sweets.

Dinner was at 4:00, but at noon he offered us a place of roasted turkey, cheeses, and crackers.
Adam made a chiffon spice cake for dessert. Oh my -- lighter than air!
Each doggie got a bone. They were quiet on the back porch.

Anna's been doing lots of cross-stitch while I've been weaving. We're quite a pair!

She was given a friend's embroidery floss stash, and is having so much fun discovering cross stitching. I saved a Christmas cross stitch magazine from years ago (1989 or '90) that I"d made one stocking from. She's started on a second stocking; there are six stocking patterns in the book. She looked it up online. You can still buy copies of that magazine; they cost $20. My original copy cost me $2.95. It's a really good one from Better Homes and Gardens.

That's my latest weaving from last night. It's called Art Weaving (I think). It's done by capturing the yarn strand on the right (some silver/sequined yarn on the bottom section, and some pale blue yarn on the top section), and drawing it through the weft part-way with the dark blue yarn. It's quite fun and creative because you produce the shape as you go, according to your own whim. Here's the youtube link I watched for it:

He calls it a clasped-weft method, and also shows how to do simple inclusions.  He makes it look so easy, but I had to practice quite a few times before I mastered this technique.
It was a peaceful Christmas. Anna, Peter, and Julia were here, which was lovely, and we got to talk with Philip and Kara, who traveled to her folks in Illinois. It was a peaceful Christmas for me. Our church's Lessons and Carols Service was particularly lovely this year. After the hubbub of music and performance earlier in the month, it was so nice to be off work, done with commitments, and just be home. I hope your Christmas was wonderful too. Now I must click "publish" before I'm utterly distracted with more fun weaving videos on youtube!

Christmas Eve Weave

Without too much detail, I'll say I finished the "sampler scarf." Like an old-fashioned cross-stitch sampler, I wanted it to contain much practice for me, a beginner, especially on changing colors and incorporating a little bling. Just a little.

It's washed and drying outside in the 85 degree chill of a Southern Christmas Eve, haha!
The family members think it's quite pretty. I think it's rather garish, but I did try to limit myself to a handful of yarns ... I hope it has a "theme."
I did a little hemstitch with some youtube assistance on the tassel edges.

Adam conferred with his biggest cookbooks, hunting for all the best recipes for Christmas dinner tomorrow. Tonight he's just making a little shrimp and cocktail sauce for supper.

And yes, I've started on my third weave, another scarf. This time I'm going more subdued: dark blue, light blue, with a touch of silver sequins.

But I've put it away for the next day or so, to focus on Christmas. We're having company tomorrow for dinner, and the house is full of yarn and doggies :)