Field and Fen

 Mutts observes the day

Seems only fair.

Yesterday because of the unexpected free afternoon, I roasted the chicken and the rest of the yellow potatoes. 

Chicken stuffed with fresh sage, thyme and lemon balm. Butter and olive oil, coarse seasalt outside, you see it here after I did the leg test for doneness. That was a fine supper last night.

Now I'm set. Sliced with pasta salad, chicken salad, curried chicken, ending in soup. I made mayo again, just a cup, enough for now.

I've been spinning with the spurtzleur again.

This waiting period may involve quite a bit of production, one way and another. Last evening's audio pod with friends was very helpful and supportive. They didn't quite understand how it's easier for me to go in alone, for the retest of,  better than with company. It's how I roll.  I'm a solitary person in some ways. 

But I did promise them to  recruit Handsome Son to come if we find I need treatment, to the first appointment, to make notes, because I won't be able to listen and think. The hearing aids are a blessing right now! At least I'm catching much more of what's being said. So there's that.

Today's walk yielded evidence of recent wind and rain bringing down white oak foliage 

And a berried plant that might be sumac or not 

And, at the pond a flock of wild ducks swimming in formation, about a dozen, here's the front group 

Speaking of production, as  I was before I rudely interrupted myself, here's a couple of the many, some prizewinning, images I created in my early-adopter computer assisted art period, waaaaay back.  

I had to program, using early software, two screens,a keyboard and a stylus, not just click here and there. This was cutting edge stuff then, I think in the mid-eighties. Uphill both ways, you kids. 

Only two printers in the country could print this, one in Colorado, one in California, not available to the likes of me.  So I worked with a camera set into the computer system, and fed in 35mm film for photo processing. The processing staff at the shop were intrigued and baffled by how I made the images, and became fans! Too funny.

Full credit to the two art professors who set up this complex station, Frank Rivera and Rudy name escapes me, and who signed off on letting me work in the computer lab any hours, way beyond those assigned to my class. 

Happy day, everyone! Enjoy whatever displacement activity you get caught up in. Pro tip: everything is displacement activity. Unless you're running for office.

This is why I'm staying indoors, not even a brief round trip to the mailbox today.

Sunny, yesterday's cruel wind which kept the house cold has abated now, after felling trees, but it's not a good idea for me to be out.

Meanwhile I'm about to roast a plump little Misfits free-range chicken who had a brief life but a merry one, if the farmer is to be believed.  I literally thanked her as I seasoned and buttered.  First whole chicken I've had in decades.  Picture later when cooked with roast potatoes.

And aside from sleeping when I was sure I was knitting and listening to an audiobook, I've been spinning, knitting, and, halfway up the first glove realized that I was into yarn chicken. 

That's a knitting expression,  meaning knitting on feverishly in the hope of finishing before the yarn runs out.

No hope, as you see, with only this much matching roving left. So I tried my go-to Goats Magosh and found she was sold out, help. 

Another search through various Etsy shops in search of something approximating the color of spinning roving I need. So many sites only have roving suitable for felting or needle felting, not for spinning.

I did find something likely, and it will be here in a couple of days, with luck. I also fell prey to some beautiful sari silk reclaimed fiber for spinning, in a marvellous golden, yellow range. A present for me. Pictures when the rovings arrive. 

This afternoon I order Misfits and hope for eggs and various other items which will let me stay home. I made another batch of mix brownies, for which eggs are vital, so my supply is low. 

And there's my favorite supper of pita bread filled with egg salad. Last night's had blue cheese crumbles and kale. I freeze kale solid in a bag, then thump the bag angrily with my fist, releasing my annoyance with everything, and reducing the kale to splinters just right for mixing raw into egg salad.

So that's where we are Chez Boud, so thankful not to lose power,  fallen trees not having fallen on any power lines. I'm wearing gloves in the house though, even to knit and spin,  aged digits easily chilled. I even wore them sleeping last night and slept well. Who knew? 

Also thankful that my investment people who usually only put tax forms online making me scan and print, underwent a change of structure last year. 

This year I got actual paper tax reports in the mail. This saves my having to buy a cartridge for the printer, not in my current budget, and that's a cause of joy in itself.

I always do my own taxes, even back when they were more complex, hanged if I'll pay someone to do what I can do by keeping calm and following the instructions wherever they lead, also known as a merry dance.

One year a tax accountant friend of Handsome Partner was worried that I might be missing out on valuable deductions and persuaded me to show him the returns for his advice.

Two days later he came back and said how the heck did you do this? You found things I'd have missed. After that he didn't worry, I guess. 

The clever part about taxes isn't filling out the forms, which takes patience and calm more than anything. It's planning ahead to avoid accidentally incurring charges and missing legal  tax-abating opportunities. 

But if all you do is take a bag of receipts and pay someone at tax time hundreds of dollars to fill out forms, you're missing the most important part. 

Most of us aren't in the income levels where we need tax advisers moving money, postponing and timing income, all that. So we may as well diy. 

No criticism of people who hate it so much they gladly hire someone else to do it, none at all, different strokes, different folks. 

Keep warm or cool as the case may be where you are. Happy day everyone, may all the good stuff arrive in the mail. Keep well

And take a look at these women hand carding fleece for spinning. Look at their unlikely location, too!

Today's Textiles and Tea featured this weaver

Fourth generation of a family of weavers, based in Oaxaca, Mexico. He works with family members in their home-based weaving and natural dyeing enterprise 

His parents here at work

They create rugs, and are particularly insistent on processes that don't harm the environment, minimal use of electric power, preferring natural to synthetic dyes.

They're now opening a rug showroom, to bring more visibility to their products. They teach basic weaving techniques, too.

He has an engineering degree, and as you see, an eye for color and form. He has also studied the color theories of Josef Albers.

I'm so happy Textiles and Tea has got more into the sources of textile arts, and is showcasing the people whose designs and traditions are often the forerunners of north American weaving.

More humbly, I spun some, more, finished the current gloves

I'll be using this with, I think, two strands of white cotton.

Today I got out to the local library, returned the all red all the time puzzle, and borrowed another. Slim pickins, but here's a reasonably good one, though it's flowers again.

I had hoped for a change of subject, but the other choices either I'd done or I'm not up for them. "Primitive" paintings, balls of yarn, shelves of preserves.. no baskets of kittens though, so there's that.

On the way back to the circulation desk to check out, I passed the "take any number and don't bring then back" deaccessioned book table, so this came along.. I quite like Joanne Trollope, haven't read her in this persona though. 

And they had federal tax forms and instructions, which will save me a bit of searching online and printing. I still, dinosaurus boudicus, do a paper return.  

At home I had the second of the tilapia plates, heated with a bit of butter on top, and it worked fine, with some pickled beets.

Then a bit of drawing and painting

Mixed media landscape with tree. 8"x8", butter, beet juice, basil on  Corelle background.

About healthy food, my Misfits box, full of vegetables that make Gary shudder, he only likes cucumbers, reminded me of his doctor's recent advice.

I think she really knows him and his devotion to frozen dinners. So she wants him to improve his diet, and acknowledged he wasn't going to give up his favorites. So she suggested he just add  in green leafy vegetables. Whereupon the only green leafy vegetable he could think of to buy was collard greens from his childhood 

So he got some and boiled them. Then came rushing into my kitchen, boiling pot in hand, greens looking pretty good, and said "What happens now? How do they get out?" 

And I showed him about draining! And how I didn't chuck away beautiful greens water, but he insisted it was mine because he didn't want any part of soup made with it. 

Anyway he went home with his drained greens, came back immediately to leave some with me, way too much for him, once he thought about it.  I never found out whether he did add them to his dinner. Mine went into soup with the greens water.

After the trip to one library this morning on puzzle business,  I wasn't  up for another trip to the other, further away, library to the knitting group. Just didn't feel like talking and being in a group, however nice, and they are.

But I did get to spinning and decided to wind the yarn off the spindle to make it easier to knit.

Resulting in this, first of the pair 

I think quite a few blogistas got this one. 

Happy Remains of the Day, everyone! Celebrate whatever day it is where you are, why not. Your mental health may need brownies, or puzzles, or spinning. Go for it!

 

 Today was the first delivery of the new partnership of Misfits with Imperfect Foods, and I'm very happy. I'm hoping this how they go on.

The box arrived mid morning, many hours earlier than FedEx used to deliver, from the food folk's own delivery van 

 Both names on the box

It's the year of the rabbit, unless you're Vietnamese, then it's the year of the cat. For the Chinese, that figure in the moon is a rabbit. This year earth tiger, my birth sign, has given way to water rabbit, all about peace and prosperity. Sounds good.

Either way, cat or rabbit, good health, long life and good partying! Along with the many East Asian countries who celebrate.

It's a single, that's a single thread, not plied, so it works. I have no idea how much I need to spin, so I'll do it the way I did the vest of many colors. Just stop when I run out and spin a new supply! 

Serious spinners will be shocked that I've skipped the washing and weighting and drying and all the other approved steps before using the yarn. I did all that when I learned to spin, and when I was dyeing my yarn. 

But when the roving's already dyed, I don't see a downside up to now to skipping. I just knit sometimes right off the spindle. Gives a new meaning to just-in-time manufacturing.

About the terminology in this blog when I talk textiles. This is probably the downside to combining the two blogs, the art blog with this one. There the audience could be assumed to be was mostly familiar with the language if various arts, all of which are just everyday speech to me. In the combined blog perhaps not so much 

However I can't guess which terms are unfamiliar to readers. So I rely on you to alert me if you want an explainer, and I'll do my best. 

Just specify which words are obscure. I do try to guess, and often insert an explanatory phrase, but I'm open to hearing specific questions. 

Speaking of specific, the puzzle with all the ells is:

ILLEGALLY!  So you can now unfurrow your brow, very annoying when you've been assuming any puzzle answer is probably a noun. I did at first.

Happy evening everyone!  Celebrate if it's the start of your New Year and good health to all of us!

I never made it to my knitting group today.  Tired after a busy week, I was in the mood to spin a bit. Then I thought I'd rest a few minutes before going out to my group. Woke at four pm. Half an hour after the group ends.

Anyway here's what's up

A spindle sticking up from an assortment of roving, that's the fluff you spin. It's a mixture of fibers including silk. 

You haven't seen me plying the spindle for a while because my shoulder was not happy for a couple of months and the actions of spindle spinning need a shoulder that works. But it's better now so I'm doing a bit.

I was reminded of this by a passage in Golden Fleece where she discusses spinning and her mother's expertise. 

She mentions the spindle but learns on her mother's wheel. And she and her editor both missed a flub: you usually spin singles z twist, clockwise. Then ply s twist, counterclockwise. She gets the names reversed, oops.

Anyway I've been wanting to spin a bit, but one thing and another, and this spindle among the roving is my highest tech one: 3D printed. It's a good spinner, light but balanced.

Here are my others. Some spinners have tons of these, but my collection is modest.

The ones with points at both ends are beautiful handmade supported spindles I have yet to learn, my shoulder having intervened. 

You rest one point in a dish, spin off the other tip. This is good for very fine fiber, maybe silk.  And it's a whole new skill. The button and the metal thing are my versions of dizzes, used to draw roving through to smooth out and draft. The name is ancient.

While I was pawing through the spindle collection, I found myself reviewing fiber prep and weaving gear.

Here are my hand carders, for drawing out the fibers to lie parallel and creating rolags, little sausages of fiber ready to spin. Those are fine wire teeth.

Then can weaving be far behind

Then there's the collection of paperclips I used to fashion a four selvedge loom on which I created this tapestry, which was awarded a purchase prize in a regional juried show. I used embroidery floss for the weft. 

And these scary things are circular saw blades from my handyman artist friend Mike, on which I've created circular weavings, now in various collections.

These are not stray bits of cardboard, as you might think, but left is the loom I made to weave this seamless bag, the handle made on the weaving sticks you saw earlier.

On the right of the picture is the loom on which I made the yoke (top part of the bodice)  of this vest.