Finishing Day

Today was chilly and gloomy outside, no incentive to go out and play outdoors. The American Shakespeare Theater had a performance by their travelling troupe on the Blackfriar’s stage via live stream with no live audience on Facebook today of Midsummer’s Night’s Dream. I had seen a different troupe perform it on that stage live with eldest son a family a few years ago and very much wanted to watch the performance today. There were so many people watching it that the stream was choppy and the words weren’t with the mouths. After about 30 minutes, I logged off of it disappointed. Son 1 said it improved once the viewers dropped to around 1300, but I had quit by then.

Instead of sitting here on social media and news, I shut down all electronics and went to my sewing machine instead. About a year and a half ago, we joined Son 2 and his family in Hawaii for a week of their 2 week vacation. One evening, we went to Polynesian Cultural Center to the various exhibits and later a luau and show. During the afternoon, the two older grands wanted to take a ukulele lesson and even before the lesson, begged for a uke. While they were taking their lesson, hubby and I purchased them one with the Hawaiian Islands etched on the face. We wanted to have a talk with them about sharing and impress on them that it wasn’t a toy prior to giving it to them and presenting us with a dilemma of how to keep it hidden until we could do that, while walking around the park and waiting in line for the luau. The same shop had bags that were made at the center and one that I liked was deep enough to hide the box, so we purchased it for me to use for the remainder of the trip. The bag had a single diagonal twill tape strap and the bag was too deep to be useful for much else other than the purpose for which it was purchased. I have looked at several solutions to make it more useful and recently purchased some prequilted fabric to use to modify it. Today, I cut about 4 inches off of the bottom, made backpack type straps from the black quilted fabric and made it into a useful backpack.

When that was finished, I took the sample scarf that I wove on my Christmas gift rigid heddle loom to practice various weaving techniques, crocheted a loop and took one of the deer antler toggle button that daughter in law had made for my use and for sale and turned the scarf that wasn’t long enough as a scarf into a cowl/shawlette.

I was on a roll. I had a woven strip 8″ wide and about 19″ long that I had plans to make into a bag. I had purchased some gray subtle print fabric to use as lining and got to work making the bag. The strip was steam blocked, the lining fabric cut to size, edges pressed, and it was sewn to the woven strip. I am currently knitting I-cord for a strap from some dark gray Shetland hand spun wool and it will be sewn to the sides to close them up as soon as the I-cord is long enough.

I haven’t decided whether to add a snap closure of just let the twisted tassels on the flap hold it down.

It has been a productive day.

Projects, more project ideas

While the yarn dries, and some parchment colored Coopworth is being spun, I hope worsted weight this time, I needed a pocket project for today. While looking through my remnants of yarn, I found another small skein of the merlot colored Coopworth that I used for the last mitts, and a partially used skein of the same yarn. A project was started. The Owl hat required Aran weight yarn, the two skeins, held together produced about Aran weight, so I cast on for the hat yesterday afternoon instead of warping the loom.

I got about halfway through the owl last night and finished the owl and started on the decreases while in the PT waiting room today. First they were 30 minutes late taking him in, plus the 30ish minutes he was in the back. The owl will stand out more when the white buttons for the eyes are added.

This gave me the idea that maybe instead of random hats, I could do ones with cats, frogs, alpacas, and owls on them. Since hats and mitts are going to be the primary knit items in the shop and for the fall and winter markets, they might sell better than plain or striped ones.

Larger wraps, cowls, and scarves will be woven.

It seems that more and more people are doing soap and other body products at events, so other than my B&B contract, I may just return to making soap for family and friends that have a particular one they like or limiting myself to just a few favorites for the markets.

Productive Week

Today is a glorious break in a gray and wet week. We have had snow flurries, freezing rain, and drizzle this past week and two weeks of similar weather in the forecast. It has been calm wind wise until today, with warmer temperatures and sunshine. With the calm we had a fire scare earlier in the week when the farmer not immediately behind us, an area that is still wooded, but just beyond him in an area that has been logged, graded, and planted for pasture lit off first one, then several more large burn piles creating billowing smoke that looked too close to us that we feared was our nearer neighbor’s woods. We contacted him and after sending him photos, he left work to come check and let us know where the fires were and that they were being monitored with a track hoe.

There has been smoke down there for 6 days now from various piles, but at least we know the woods below us aren’t on fire.

Through the gray, drizzle and three waiting rooms days, I have been stitching through several smaller skeins of hand spun yarn that I had, making a hat and three pair of fingerless mitts, and finishing the Tool Box cowl from the mini skeins.

Can you tell I’m a lefty, always wearing the mitt on my right hand to take the photo? The Merlot colored mitts still need to be washed and blocked, they were finished last night. After trying on the cowl that I had made for me, I decided I’m not a cowl person, so I put a price tag on it and put it in the shop with the other items.

While perusing patterns, I found a cute hat with an owl on the front. Since there isn’t much yarn left that isn’t designated for weaving, I returned to spinning some gray/brown Coopworth last night. It would be a perfect color for the hat, but the pattern will require me to do some math as it calls for Aran weight yarn, this is likely to be DK weight when plied.

Since I’m not a Super Bowl watcher, I only know one team that is playing and have no allegiance to them, I think I will warp the loom and start a cowl or scarf with a pattern instead of plain weave and continue spinning the Coopworth so I have a pocket project to work on during waiting room visits this week. Since we try to group our errands and lunch out around hubby’s PT visits, I have a 30-45 minute waiting room session a couple times a week, so I need a new pocket project.