I have been doing a variety of things lately. Some fiber-related, some not. Let’s start with the not.
A woman who lives a few blocks away has 2 pear trees in her backyard. This was a great year for the pears and she posted on a neighborhood connection that anyone who wanted could go to her yard and pick pears. I did this 2 years ago and the pears were great, so I walked over there with my basket.
I put them in a brown paper bag and waited for them to ripen. Meanwhile I bought an 8-quart basket of local peaches. Of course both were ripening at about the same time. 
I made a batch of spiced pear jam, which turned out super yummy. I also tried a new recipe – honey vanilla peach butter. It tastes fine but I wouldn’t make it again – LOTS of standing in the kitchen and stirring. After this picture I also made a batch of peach jam that didn’t gel properly, but is great for baking cobblers and such.
———————————
I live on a corner – a fact that serves me well. I have a chain link fence in my backyard – a fact that also serves me well but neither looks attractive nor offers any privacy. In the 5 years that I’ve lived here I’ve tried a few different things to improve the look and function of the fence, but all have been major fails and didn’t last more than a few days at best.
This year I had yet another idea to try. I put out an ask on my local BuyNothing group, seeking old lace curtain panels. I was quickly gifted with 3 panels. I got out my seam ripper to remove the casings and hems, then sewed casings along the sides. 7/16″ dowels in the top casing provided the rigidity I needed. A few ties of carpet warp at top and bottom of each panel, a quick zip of hand work up the seams between panels, and this is the new look.
It works and looks about as well as I envisioned, which is all I could ask for. I’ll leave it up for the next several weeks and take it down before winter. Then I’ll decide if I’ll put it back up next spring.
———————————
A friend and I have organized a towel exchange for our Guild, both as a hopefully fun activity and to promote community while we remain physically distanced. I knew I would put on a warp of towels for this exchange.
Sort of simultaneously I was taking an online class from one of our Guild’s teachers on incorporating Fibonacci or other number series into weaving. As I’d not successfully done this in the past, I knew that I wanted to do this for the towel exchange towels. I also knew that I was going to use yarn I already had — no purchases for this project.
Although I usually use 8/2 for my towels, my stash of unmercerized 8/2 cotton was getting quite low, but I had a bunch of 10/2 I could use for warp. (Note the cone on the right isn’t the accurate color – it’s leans much more toward brown than is shown. The on-loom image below is reasonably accurate for color.)
So I spent way too many hours planning a stripe sequence, eventually choosing a random Fibonacci stripe pattern. (The teacher had told us that the eye likes Fibonacci even when it’s applied randomly.) My towels have approximately equal amounts of the turquoise and the brownish-red yarn, with 3 ends of pale gray separating the stripes.
I threaded the loom in alternating point twill, knowing that there were a variety of tie up and treadlings that I’d used previously and liked. So I set off weaving.
I finished the weaving yesterday but pressing and hemming remain before I can take beauty shots or show you all of them – as usual for me, all a bit different.
———————————
Warning: If you don’t have a Macomber loom, this section may not make sense or have any interest for you.
I do love my Macomber loom. But I don’t love the tie ups. I have both the older super hook style of hook and the newer smaller hooks. Both have issues for me. The super hooks tend to either grab onto the next lamm while I’m weaving or be almost impossible to remove when I want to change the tie up. The smaller hooks tend to pop off while I’m weaving.
So when a fellow Guild member told me that she had Texsolv tie ups made for her 12H Macomber, I was all ears! She kindly showed me a photo of her loom and gave me a sample of the tie up. I exchanged emails with our local Loom Magician (that’s what he calls himself) who had made her ties to find out if he used the regular or heavy duty Texsolv cord (regular), placed my order, and set myself up.
It’s a bit of a different process to do the tie up, and at this point is a bit slower for me than my old process, but I’m betting that will change as I go forward. I’ve now used the Texsolv tie ups for 2 different 9 yard warps and LOVE IT! Not a single problem. No worries about things popping off or grabbing the neighboring lamm while I weave. YAY!
