UGH! The weather was awful today. So cold and rainy, and dreary. I managed to slip between the raindrops this morning, and check on the garden. The weeds have taken over, mutant size, covering everything. The rain is so important for the growing season, but the weeds love the rain as well. Well there is nothing else to be done but wait for the sun, and get on my knees, and start pulling!
My poor husband went into Manhattan this morning, to do his annual 5 Boro Bike Tour, with his friends. The loop, starting in lower Manhattan, and finishing up in Staten Island, taking the ferry back to the starting point, is about 42 miles. He looks forward to the tour every year. He called me from the ferry, soaked through to the bone, 
with both knees frozen in pain. But he was happy he finished and it was worth every minute on the bike. So he is warm now, both knees braced, I made him his favorite dinner, and he is watching the hockey play-offs, life is good. The photo above shows the Queensboro Bridge, and to the right is the route through the five boroughs of Manhattan, at this point he was in Brooklyn.
MEANWHILE…
The mice played!
My daughter took advantage of the dreary day and finished another placemat, so we are now tied at four each! We are at the halfway point! It was a joy to watch her effortlessly throwing two shuttles one after another, and whipping through an overshot structure at 16. No more broken threads, total control of the loom, lovely rhythm, and while she wove on the placemat warp, I sat next to her working on my other 25″ floor loom, and finished off the tencel warp left from my class last fall with Bonnie Inouye. The class was on complex structures, called “Advance”. Most who took the class were intermediate to advanced weavers, and most had 8-12 shaft looms. 
Sadly I only had eight, which was just fine, and I must say I was shocked at what I got out of an eight shaft loom. The samples were gorgeous, we explored network drafting, advancing twills, all sorts of complex stuff, and I ended up with about a yard of additional warp, which had to be cleared by Thursday when I do another workshop with Barbara Herbster on Supplemental Warp.
The specs on this might be of interest to the weavers, I am using 8/2 tencel from Webs, sleyed at 36 epi, 3 threads/dent in a 12 dent reed. I am including the draft below, the technical term would be, “An 8 shaft advancing curves threading (from Bonnie) with an advance of 3, twill tie-up, and an expanded advancing points treadling for 8 shafts.” Whew! That was a mouthful.
The black on teal tencel is pretty, and wove up fairly quickly, unlike the placemats, this is only one shuttle. The hardest part was keeping track of where I was in the draft, which I had sort of memorized, with my daughter weaving about 2 1/2 feet away from me. When she stopped, or her rhythm changed, I looked over, and lost my place! 🙂
I also managed to squeeze in some time to start sewing on the dress. It is really pretty on the form, the color placement, purely chance, is lovely, accentuating the curves of the garment. The dress really does look like the “Splash” yarns it is based on, and I can’t wait to finish it, and wear it when the weather gets warm.
In case you were wondering about the odd color combination of the blog, the background is now mauve, I am trying to change the code of the template I’m using, to get the blog to look more like my website, until I figure out how to actually build a blog using my own logo and color scheme. I found the code for the background, but can’t seem to find the code in the CSS style sheet for the header background, so I can changed it to the dark purple. So, be patient while I search…