Good news and less good news

Tonight I am going to a celebration of a wedding so I switched my ticket to the Utah Symphony to last night and am I glad I did!  We had a guest conductor ( Mario Venago, Swiss) who began the concert with a lesser-known Sibelius (part of the Kalevalaz) and the well-known Finlandia.  It is no wonder that the latter piece caused the Finns to rise up against Tsar Alexander I!  It's very rousing stuff.

Rhapsody on a Therme of Paganini (Rachmaninoff) was next, played by Conrad Tao.  Tao is just 16 years old, something that wasn't at all evident in his poised manner and wonderful playing.  It is wonderful when the music is played and not just the notes.  When the familiar melody arrived I could almost hear the audience sigh; it was beautiful!  The only thing that revealed Tao's age was the way he left and entered the stage, almost scampering.  The stage was very full of musicians so getting on and off was not easy for him or the conductor. 

When he finished the audience leapt to its collective feet and practically cheered!  There were so many 'curtain calls'--no curtains on the stage of course--that Tao settled down to give us an encore.  He played the Russian Dance from Stravinski's Petruschka which to me sounded devilishly difficult and he did it well.

It is so nice to hear such a talented person who is so young.  I hope we will hear Mr. Tao many, many times in years to come.

Schuman's Symphony No. 4 finished out the concert and was played very well.  The details (returning motifs, etc.) were very clear.  The Rachmaninof was a hard act to follow!

Today I started weaving the white silk scarf.  There are about 700 ends in it and as I went along I noticed something that looked "off" and sure, enough there were four threads missing in a repeat.  I cut off what I had woven (I think the warp was too long so there is no harm in it) and started re-threading.  From what I had woven, I will change the sett just a little because it was pretty crowded, so it is all to the good although disappointing.

Therefore I have no weaving photos to show but I have been so enchanted by the Swiss chard in my vegetable garden, besides being nourished by it, that I took a photo of some just because of the colors.  The veins in the deep green leaves, depending on the individual plant, range from almost blue red, through a yellow red, orange, yellow to white.  It's a good thing I like Swiss chard because this seems to have been its year.  Here's a look:

The colors are so saturated and rich. Do you sometimes feel, looking at a color or a combination of colors that you would like to eat what you are seeing?  It happens to me a lot and this time I have been eating these colors quite a lot. 

 I wouldn't be at all surprised that a cloth will come out of this!

Time to dress for the party!  It is the son of a friend and his bride we are celebrating tonight and I love what I see in the two of them together.  So here's to the beginning of a new family!

Crossing things off the list....

The white silk is measured and beamed onto the loom.  Everything is ready for me to start to thread it tomorrow morning, even my wonderful Hockett Would Works stool is where it needs to be.  I really enjoy threading so I look forward to it.

Today I tackled several things that needed doing.  First I got my flu shot.  I really believe in immunization and don't like being sick nor do I like the part of illness that living alone brings with it.  Then I rented a post office box for business mail and for posting in my ad in Handwoven magazine and on my new web site.  I went to the bank to get documents from my safe deposit box to take with me to renew my driver's license.  I got that done but discovered that the social security card I kept in the box in the bank actually wasn't my card but sort of a receipt.  The original card was torn off from the receipt in 1964 and put in my wallet that was stolen about 30 years ago.  Sigh.  So I made a trip to the Social Security office to apply for a duplicate.  Fortunately, the wait there was mercifully short and because I had my current passport with me for the license as well, it went very smoothly.  Now I have a temporary driver's license which will be replaced with a real one in a couple weeks and my new social security card ought to be here within a week.  Now, that's service!  I have had my dental check up and cleaning and my eyes examined this week, too, so I am crossing things off my to do list at a good clip.  No wonder I am not weaving the silk scarf yet....

I just read in Laura Fry's blog (Weaving a Life) that she finds herself in the position of owing more than she has.  She discussed the possibilities (bank loan, credit card--another kind of loan--or raiding the family finances).  Things are slow for me, too, with more going out than coming in, but that should change in a few weeks if all goes as planned--as I hope it does!  The difference is that I have no family finances to fall back on or raid or anything else....

It's later than I realized.  Tomorrow is a busy day.  I leave here at 2:30 to go up to the Rehab and Wellness Clinic for exercise and directly from there to my web design class.  I usually don't get home until 7:30 ready to eat anything that doesn't get out of the way fast enough! 

Odds and ends day

The day began with a call to North Carolina to learn the current price of mercerized cotton (yes, it went up since I ordered it last) and then a message to the woman in Mesa, AZ who asked me to make more grill cloth.  Then I was off to see my ophthalmologist at nine for my annual check up.  I was right, my vision isn't as good as it was last year and may be caused by the cataracts that are developing.  Cataracts?  At my age!?  In short, yes.  So stronger lights and stronger reading glasses will help to make up for the deficiency until surgical correction is required.  So be it.  At least I CAN see.....

The woman I expected on Friday did not come and finally this afternoon I called to ask whether she'd be coming by.  She said she would come straight away and did.  Now there are a lot fewer cotton towels, no linen towels and she took the silk shawl I made in August, too.  It was all trade for something I owed her so I am not ahead but have discharged a debt.  That's good, too.

The cotton from NC is on its way or will be tomorrow and in the mean time I will wind the white silk warp.  I am embarrassed that I have not done that already but it has been a day of cleaning up a lot of things that have been pestering me. 

Tonight there is lasagna for dinner.  There were several vegetarians at the potluck yesterday so there is a little left for me.  It is a dietary extravagance and I admit to looking forward to it very much.

Perhaps I will start the silk warp later.  It is beautiful yarn, so smooth and lustrous.  (Lustrous, that's a yarn that is shiny in the best possible way...and never applied to a "cheap" yarn.)

Two warps figured out

I have spent the day figuring out how much yarn, how long the warp must be and what the sett (# of ends per inch) nees to be for the next two warps.

I have everything I need to work on one of them.  It will be a white silk scarf, a gift commissioned for a very elegant gentleman.  A few weeks back I went to his place of business to "scope" him out to see if I thought that what I had in mind would in fact be right for him.  I decided it will be, so now that the calculations are done I can start moving on it.

The other work is for a company in Mesa, AZ that provides parts for the restoration of antique radios.  I will be weaving grill cloth for antique Philco radios.  I have done this before but needed to calculate how much yarn I will need to order to make enough for about 100 radios (about 44 yards).  Who would have guessed there were that many being refurbished?  The order came in after the yarn company (on the east coast)  had closed for the week so I need to call them on Monday morning to start the shipment on its way.  I need to double check the price as well to be sure that the higher price will be covered by a new quote to the company.

I have also done laundry and ironing and shopping for ingredients for what I will  take to a pot luck tomorrow at 1.  I decided to make lasagna.  Fortunately I have an older recipe; these days the package for the pasta calls for commercially prepared jars of sauces and I think my home made version is better.   The house will smell very nice tomorrow but there won't be any left over....

As promised....

As promised, here is a photo of the new towels.  There are a dozen of them and no two are exactly the same; the variations are in the weft direction.

A woman I know is coming by today to select the ones she wants from this batch and those I have on hand from earlier warps.  Here's hoping that she likes a lot of them!

Heidi is shopping for Christmas gifts.  It is October now and probably not too early to think about it, particularly for handmade things. 

Recently someone asked me what is involved in weaving and when I explained that every cloth I make is put together one thread at a time, I thought he would fall over.  In every textile I make, I have handled every single inch of all the threads that make the cloth.   So, I know these towels--and all the others--very well, indeed!

A stack of finished towels

Today the towels I finished weaving yesterday and then serged and hemmed were washed and ironed dry.  The stack they make, all finished, is quite lovely, I think.  Tomorrow I will photograph them.

The rest of the day was taken up in my exercise session followed immediately (I arrived sweaty as usual) by the web design class.  Tonight only five of the thirteen of us showed up.  Perhaps the others didn't do their homework?  Too bad for them. Tonight's class was the halfway point in the course which sort of surpsises me a bit because it has gone so fast.

As usual, I left home at 2:30 and didn't get back until 7:30 ravenous and tired.  The good news is that I don't feel so out of my depth in the class and feel the homework this time is something I can do with what I know right now.  Is the learning curve levelling out a bit?  That would be a Very Good Thing.

Tomorrow I will start the new homework and clear my desk.

Tuesday and balmy

It is Tuesday and we are still having high temperatures at 90 or above.  It is very dry and the nights are cool to almost chilly (50s) so the weather is holding.  Vegetables are still growing and each day I go out to the raised beds to see what is there for dinner.  Tonight it was Swiss chard.  It is lucky I like it so much because it is growing madly.

I work at the web site-to-be as well.  I will find out on Thursday evening what my instructor thinks and probably be blown away by what the other students have done, so we will see whether I like what I have so far as much on Friday morning as I do now.

Meanwhile I am weaving towels.  I still have two or three more to do having taken time for my check up and cleaning at the dentist, exercise time (two hours), and weeding the gardens.  I may cut the lawns, front and back, tomorrow before it is too hot and then shower and get back to the loom.  There is never a lack of things to do!

I think they look cheerful!