Kathrin Weber – Daryl's Blog

I can almost exhale…

The last of the 2019 retreats is finished, and I’m home, unpacked, and looking forward to the weekend where my local guild will have its annual show and sale. I made lots of little things for the sale this year, enjoying rooting around in the attic for stuff to make stuff with. I sat in the evening making stuff, both bags were sold before I even left the Outer Banks!

Of all the retreats I do in a year, the Outerbanks in NC (OBX) is the one with the most colorful and interesting, and of course that means the most challenging of fabrics. I’m trying to think, I believe everyone in the group of 11 had handwoven fabric. That’s unusual, but not for this group! Many of the students in this retreat are supporters of, and students of Kathrin Weber, of Blazing Shuttles fame. They either purchase her warps, or have learned to dye warps themselves through her classes. The fabrics that come out of her warps are gorgeous, but again, with that comes a cutting challenge.

The space we use for this retreat, is a common room in an ocean front condo/resort, The Sea Ranch with a bar across the hall. Though it wasn’t open for much of the beginning of the week, except for breakfast, the staff stayed on to make sure we were fed well before they closed up at lunch time. The convenience is wonderful.

I brought my daughter along on this trip. She brought her magical gifts with her, for spacial relationships and organization and is absolutely the best at figuring out a complicated layout. We have the benefit of a huge carpeted floor to crawl around on, though the carpet can sometimes make you a bit dizzy! That would be my daughter Brianna, with the unicorn horn and rainbow hair, right in the middle of all the action. They even started an Alert list for her, in addition to the one for me, to help with layouts. They all made her feel really welcome.

Every morning when I woke, I’d sit up in bed and look out the balcony window and see the most glorious sunrise. I never tire of this view.

My retreats are getting more challenging in that I have a lot of repeat students (8 of the 11), and each student with few exceptions was making something different. Two of the repeaters actually came in with their own designs that we were able to create from my existing patterns, giving me lots of ideas for future variations.

And this class gets along pretty well. We of course have the thermostat wars, but the seasoned veterans know which side of the room to choose, because one end of the long classroom is 10 degrees warmer than the other. And we did try hard to keep politics out of the discussions. But when they happened, it was really interesting to get the perspective of people who actually know something (like a government employee or two) and aren’t just quoting what they see on facebook. Thanks everyone for trying to keep things respectful.

And so the silhouettes are varied, as are the students!

My favorite photo of the whole week is Lisa and Margaret, both making their garments from Blazing Shuttles warps, Lisa a new student of mine, and Margaret one of my beloved seasoned veterans.

Margaret is so seasoned, she made a second garment, which was the vest above, her first garment was this dress, a very limited narrow warp, which she framed with the leftover fabric from a baby wrap she cut up. The dress pattern is from a download, I’ve forgotten whose, maybe from fabric-store.com. The vest is one of my patterns.

Here is Margaret and Lisa again, but with Dornan on the left, who made a remarkable vest, with a handwoven Bedford Cord, stuffing each of the “tubes” for a very lofty and fabulous fabric. For some unknown reason, I always miss documenting one of the students, I don’t know why, but this is the only shot I got of Dornan’s stuffed vest, though I know she had a zipper and collar on and the perimeter trim by the end of the class.

Peggy made a beautiful tencel tunic, with 8/2 tencel from the Yarn Barn. I think the structure was an 8 shaft plaited twill from Strickler. She still had handwork on the hems to finish.

Elizabeth made a collared vest with a zipper, from the leftover fabric from her jacket from last year. A lovely subtle cotton, grey with random lavender stripes. she trimmed it with a plum stretch corduroy. The zipper and collar and perimeter trim were in by the end of class.

Cyndi and Melissa made garments from their handwoven cloth, Cyndi’s was a cotton stripe tunic, and Melissa, one of my new students, made this gorgeous colorful jacket from a Blazing Shuttles warp.

Lisa did finish her swing coat, with the shawl collar, all except the handwork of course, and I will say that Lisa gets the gold star for tenacity, she only had a brief sewing class before this, but stayed late every night, trying so hard, ripping out when things weren’t right, and the results are stunning. She is so happy and I’m so very proud.

Thursday was Halloween, and my magical daughter did not disappoint. She had hidden away in our completely packed car, a costume for the occasion, and I just had to smile and say, well of course, when she showed up as a rainbow unicorn.

Mary came in with a sketch, wanting a sleeveless vest with a belt, and we were able to make that happen using my base patterns.

Gaila, who has taken a few classes with me, brought in a really really narrow warp, but we converted one of my jacket patterns to a princess seam version and she was able to add a beautiful navy wool to the narrow panels for her sleeveless shawl collared vest. The black cap sleeves are her t-shirt.

And Victoria did not disappoint either. She has a wicked sense of humor, and she makes me laugh regularly. She had to do a Walmart run at one point, and came back with stuff to embellish the all important sheet she used for a test garment. She is generally not a fan of making anything first in something else, because, well then it takes twice as long. But we needed to get the fit right for this swing dress, and after hearing me tell student after student, “It’s a sheet!”, when they would comment that something was snug or tight, (their handwoven would give much more than a sheet), Victoria decided to commemorate, or rather memorialize the occasion with this…

We did get the fit right, and she went on to make this beautiful swing dress from handwoven linen. She even put in her very first zipper ever. She avoided a challenging Blazing Shuttles warp and just wove linen stripes thinking this would be an easy layout. Hahahahah! She didn’t expect to be matching stripes… She did an outstanding job.

And Cyndi made a second garment, actually the test for a second garment, she made the same dress in a commercial plaid. That was a match job for the record books!

And then there was hard working Beth, who sat in her corner by the door and slowly plowed through her fabric woven with Blazing Shuttles warps, and created an exquisite walking vest. She still had lots of handwork to do, but this will be really fun to wear back in Mississippi! Beth’s husband came along for the ride and ended up taking some really lovely photos, the best was of course the final photo of the group, which is below.

One of the nights the restaurant was closed, we got pizza delivered. I’m starting to really look forward to pizza night at these retreats. They gave Island Pizza night at Sievers’ some stiff competition!

And here is the OBX class of 2019, with my daughter and one of the pillows she made for the guild sale. She took advantage of some down time and made more stuff to sell! (And of course I’m so in love with two of the pillows she made I bought them before they even made it to the sale… Trying to figure out how to keep the critters from eating them…)

If you are in the area, come join us at the Jockey Hollow Guild Show and Sale, this Friday and Saturday. Click here for more information. I’ll be there all weekend plugging in numbers, I’m the group’s treasurer…

Stay tuned.

Heddle Wars…

This has been a rather tough week. Not for me. I’m fine. But in a series of really sad, and horrifying events, accidents, deaths, unwanted health diagnoses, and other calamities, none of which I have any control over, it has been rather tough to carry on as if everything in the world is fine. Sunday alone I went to two visitations at local funeral homes. None of these events are my stories to tell, but my heart is broken for my friend with a cancer diagnosis, my other friend who lost her father, and a pretty horrific event that, if you live in my area, you know about, and if you don’t, you don’t want to know about, all of which has left me distracted and in mourning. And there is my daughter. I haven’t said much about her issues, again it isn’t my story to tell, but she is struggling with her own health diagnosis. She has left her job to reevaluate her life, and is living in my basement now, safe, but lacking focus and purpose. She will be OK, of that I’m confident.

When my husband was dying, one of the only things I could think of to keep my brain from exploding with grief, was to steal away moments in my studio and calculate the most intense fabric design, one that even I had to struggle to execute but honestly it kept me sane. It is the banner fabric across my facebook page. If you read my last couple of posts, you know my goal was to fill all of my beautiful looms with colorful cloth because they have been naked for way too long. My original 45″ 8 shaft Tools of the Trade loom from the 70’s had been given to my daughter when she moved out a couple of years ago, which left me with glorious space and room for all of my textile-y things. When she moved back in, she brought the loom back and a second one almost identical which she picked up for $350. That one got shoved in the guest room. So between us we own 9 Tools of the Trade Looms, manufactured in the 70’s – 90’s. The great thing about having 9 of the same brand loom is that all the parts are interchangeable. Which gets to the meat of the story.

Because of my daughter’s health issues, and work schedule and general life style, she had slowly gotten away from the things in life that brought her joy. I know how it happens, and I suspect dear readers that this kind of situation has happened to all of you at some point in your lives, and sometimes, many times throughout your life. I just got off the phone with a coordinator for Florida Tropical Conference which is happening in about two weeks. I suspect that every person who has ever coordinated a conference has gotten so far away from the simple things that bring you joy, reading a book, designing a project, setting up a loom, knitting a scarf, whatever, that suddenly they, actually we, find ourselves rudderless drifting in a stormy ocean with nothing to ground us. I would look in my daughter’s eyes and see nothing. There were no lights on. Rudderless…

Having left her job for a bit of a sabbatical shall we say, mostly to get her health back on track and to finish school, she woke up last weekend and I reminded her, having just updated the schedule on one of the guild websites I maintain, that the guild challenge was due in April. She looked at me aghast. When she signed up last year, life looked very different. Suddenly her eyes sparked and the lights went on and she dove into her basement dwelling and came up with her laptop, weaving software and the plans she had shelved for her challenge project.

Meanwhile, I needed to dress one more loom, my 36″ 8 shaft Tools of the Trade also sat naked in my studio. It was depressing every time I entered the room. And so it began. I came up with a really complicated warp design, spent hours with my weaving software. She wound her 12 yard warp using my mill (hers is packed in the attic) while I used a small 4+ yard warping board propped on my ironing board. I was building my cloth around a 4 1/2 yard warp I had obtained in a Kathrin Weber Dye Class. I’m not sure if I dyed it or if Kathrin did as a demo, but there it sat and it was my trusty assistant who said, “When are you going to use that warp?” I pulled all kinds of things from my shelf, including some cupcake dyed skeins I also did in that class. For those who are curious, cupcake dyeing is where you wind a ball on a ball winder, and then pop it in a deli container with about an inch dye and let it absorb into the ball. Flipping the ball over and putting in a different color makes some great effects. I wound a total of 11 warps for a cloth about 32″ wide. Most of the warps were rayon, and very slippery rayon, the kind that you have to really keep under tight control, and then of course, my daughter’s cat had to be in on all the fun. I won’t bore you with cat photos, they are all on my facebook page.

She had a narrower warp, dishtowel width, so she finished before I did. Next step before sleying the reed is to find out if you have enough heddles. Those are the wire things with eyes on each of the shafts that the warp ends go through, which allows you to create patterns. This is where the story has a bizarre twist.

Sidebar: I’ve had trouble with my smaller Tools of the Trade looms, and breaking warp beams and brakes because I load too much on them and require too much torque to get the tension I like for weaving. My little 25″ looms weren’t probably designed for 12 yards of warp. I had done some alterations to the brake on one of the looms and had the bolt shear off. Some of this is because hardware from other countries is getting cheaper and thinner and not able to withstand what I need said hardware to do. But I digress. I have a number of sectional beams in addition to standard beams for my small 25″ looms, which are of course interchangeable. The sectional beams have more substance but the kind of warp I’m putting on doesn’t work well on a loom with no packing. Too much variation in the warp threads. I got the idea a number of years ago to pull the sectional pegs from one of the warp beams and use it as it if was a standard warp beam. In the photo you can see a second warp beam still with the pegs and the upper one has had the metal pegs pulled out.

It worked well for what I needed, except when the bolt for the ratchet sheared off, and I had to replace it with the original handle. It is hard to tighten a beam with 12 yards of warp and paper packed on it with that little L shaped handle. I would have much preferred a ratchet like on my large looms. Meanwhile my daughter had moved away with my large Tools of the Trade, for more than a year and I had the room renovated and bookcases installed and a lot of detritus tossed in the process.

I got the idea that if I could put the perimeter metal pegs back in, it would give me a better grip on the beam when I wanted to tighten it. So I went to find the pegs. I remember storing them in a container, a small basket I thought, and though the room had been redone, it shouldn’t have been hard to locate that container. Gone. I’ve been searching for two years for that stupid container of pegs. I don’t lose things. I’m fastidious about cleaning up after myself, putting things back in their place, and if I wasn’t, I could never do the job I do traveling around and having everything I need to pack right at my fingertips.

Fast forward to last weekend…

My daughter was removing the shafts from the large loom to count the heddles on them. She needed about 700 heddles for her project. So each shaft got pulled, and she started the count. She had developed a counter weight system for the project she had previously been working on using suspended film canisters on the front shafts, filled with whatever, pennies, I had no idea. She needed more weight on the front shaft for whatever she was doing, I didn’t much pay attention because the loom wasn’t with me for the last couple years.

She started peeling off the pink duct tape wrapped around the film canisters and cried out, “OMG”! I looked over and there, stuck to the duct tape wrapped around each of the film canisters were all of my missing sectional pegs. All of them. She had pulled them off the shelf a few years ago, needing additional weight and never happened to mention it because, well why? I wasn’t sure whether to kiss the earth in celebration for the return of something I definitely needed for this new run of scarves, or to kill her. There are no words.

So at this point, I’m beginning to count my heddles as well. I need something like 1200. It was pretty obvious that between us, we did not have enough. All of our nine Tools of the Trade Looms use the same 10 1/2″ inserted eye heddles. But all of them were warped with the exception of one of the table looms which I was keeping in reserve in case I need an emergency warp for an article I’m working on. There were extra heddles on the other looms, but they can’t be removed once the loom is warped. So I ran to the internet and knowing WEBS ships pretty quick, I ordered another 400. I hadn’t gotten notification that they had shipped, and it is now Thursday and I’m getting desperate, we were battling for who got the heddles, there were enough for one of the looms but not for both. I called them, and the order hadn’t been shipped, and wasn’t going to be shipped until the following Tuesday, so I added another 200 and spent a ridiculous amount on overnight shipping which still meant that the heddles wouldn’t arrive until Monday because unlike Amazon, UPS doesn’t deliver on weekends. We are getting so spoiled!

Meanwhile we did what any self respecting couple of desperate fiber artists would do, we stripped the poor remaining table loom of all of its heddles. Poor thing. We had enough to get us going and when the heddles came in yesterday, I carefully put the table loom back together and all is well.

So I sleyed my warp…

Then I threaded it.

Meanwhile she was all warped and starting to weave.

Then I beamed my warp. It is so luminous, shimmering and just plain pretty.

And now, my 36″ loom has a pretty four yards of warp for a fabric that will one day become a garment, but first it has to travel around, I just got an email that Peters Valley needs a faculty piece from me for the summer faculty exhibit. So I have to get cracking on the weaving…

And Brianna’s dishtowel warp which is built off a photograph my husband took at Baltimore Inner Harbor of the beautiful lights reflecting on the water in the Harbor, is on its way as well.

Stay tuned…

I did it!

This has been a long haul, I’ve been mostly on the road non-stop since August. There is one more brief venue I need to fly to in December, but my marathon is done. I still have buckets of stuff on my plate, including the guild show and sale this weekend, and though I probably won’t have any work to show, I’m the treasurer, and will need to spend the three days locked in the kitchen of the facility processing lots and lots of sales. And then the follow up.

But for now, as I drove up the Eastern Shore of Virginia into Maryland and then Delaware, over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, finally heading up the length of the NJ Turnpike, the leaves were at their peak, and the traffic minimal on a Saturday morning, and I listened to NPR Now on Sirius XM and all was well with the world. I arrived home much earlier than I thought I would, in time to get my doggies from the Kennel, stop at a Trader Joe’s for my favorite yogurt, and completely unpack and put everything away, getting ready for my heavy calendar on Sunday. I had a recorder performance in the morning followed by a rehearsal, and then theater tickets at my beloved Shakespeare Theater of NJ. My daughter and I saw Charlie’s Aunt, and if you are in the area and want a raucous time, laughing until your sides hurt, this is a welcome diversion on all things political. The perfect British farce.

That said, I’ll say it now, OBX wins. For those not in the know, OBX is an abbreviation for the Outer Banks region of North Carolina, coastal, Kill Devil Hills, near Kitty Hawk and the Wright Bros memorial and museum. This is my third year teaching at this lovely five day retreat. It is organized by Linda Ihle of Island Fiberworks, and she did a bang up job with this one, held at a beachfront resort called Sea Ranch.

We stayed in condos, I got a beach view and every morning I woke up to this…

And went to bed looking out my balcony to this…

The view is lovely, but mostly I was in the classroom, from 7:30 when I went down to breakfast to well after 10pm each night. So I didn’t spend my time sitting on my balcony listening to the surf drinking wine. Actually I spent no time at all. Sad.

The reason OBX wins is the participants, or rather their fabrics. I have never seen such a combination of handwoven fabrics, the Blazing Shuttle influence is definitely here, but not everyone used hand dyed or hand painted warps. I believe everyone but one student used handwoven fabrics. And the one who didn’t has taken this class with me before, a couple of times, and used gorgeous handwoven fabric, but this time, she was interested in fitting a pile of test garments from patterns she brought, or ready to wear she wanted to copy, to presumably use eventually on handwoven fabrics later.

The gauntlet was thrown down and the first night I arrived after a long drive from north of Baltimore, I was greeted with a lovely spread of food and of course wine! It flowed regularly and often (after happy hour of course!)

Participants spent the first couple of days with challenging layouts. This is one of the toughest parts of working with fabrics that combine hand painted warps, finding common areas for matching across the fronts and backs of a garment. I spent a number of hours the first night of the workshop with one student alone trying to find the best layout.

Because there were wonderful photographers in the group who hardly missed a shot, I didn’t take as many photos as I usually do, and so many of these came from Leigh and Natalie and some of the other students, I swiped them off of Facebook. Mea Culpa dear ladies, I hope it was OK. There were some really fun pictures of me in action, I rarely ever get into the shot!

Margaret was the participant who brought her own patterns, and she cut out a number of them, including this lovely paneled dress, after I showed her how to copy a beloved piece of ready to wear. She thought up the pocket treatment herself. She used a Guatemalan babywrap for the fabric. Then she made a purple linen bathrobe that will eventually have a belt. She modified my swing coat pattern, creating more of a duster.

Elizabeth, Dornan, and Cyndi all made Daryl Jackets with the Shawl Collar and Gaila made the same, except without sleeves.

The rest of the class dove right into my new collared vest pattern that zips up the front. Natalie led the pack with fabric she wove using Blazing Shuttle Warps and a modification of my Chaos draft, available here. She was hilarious with her camera taking all sorts of documentary selfies. She made me smile.

Linda, Peggy and Leigh also wove gorgeous versions of my vest, all with fabrics they wove.

Mary combined my jacket pattern with the collared vest pattern and made this gorgeous jacket.

And Victoria, who has also taken my class a couple of times before, experimented with working on some of her vast collection of smaller cuts of fabrics, thinking of pillows and bags, and then at the end of the class, brought out the walking vest she made two years ago, to finish it up. It is one of my favorites of all the fabrics, as a matter of fact, I got some of her scraps and am having another pair of clogs made from them. I wish I had gotten better photos, it looked really lovely on her.

Kathrin Weber came in a few hours before the end of the class, to begin the transition to her class which followed mine starting this morning actually. As I was packing she was laying out all of her dyed warps for her students to purchase. I got a great shot of us, she is wearing the collared vest I made, using fabric I wove from a class I took with her last year. Or was that the year before… Time flies when you are having fun surrounded by glorious color.

I’ll be back next year, last week in October, all of you who are booked for 2019 in other classes in the country, this one will be a hard act to follow!

If you are in the area, the Jockey Hollow Weavers Guild annual show and sale will be held at Grace Lutheran Church in Mendham NJ, Saturday and Sunday, the 10 and 11, 2018. I’ll be in the back all weekend doing the numbers!

Stay tuned!

And so it begins…

Travel season is officially here, and I’m pretty much on the road from the end of the month through until November. I have one more getaway planned, a five day watercolor class at Peters Valley, though I decided to commute instead of staying out there since I have a one day turn around before I teach a five day class there in beginning weaving, the first week in August. Final plans for that class are on the to do list along with about thirty other items added since I returned from Reno. I’m good at all this, and lists are what holds me together. As long as it is on the list for me to glance at and deal with from time to time, I don’t have to keep it in my head. There is something wonderful about the fact that a piece of paper can substitute for your brain…

I have a lot of updates to do in my files, my prospectuses, my digital files and downloads, I spent the day today updating all 17 project files on my website because as I lay awake Thursday night, with a very sick dog, actually sleeping outside with him to prevent him from getting sick in the house, I realized that all 17 project files had no attribution nor copyright information on them, 10 years from now, no one will remember where they came from nor whose draft and details they should be attributed to. There are days when I’m really not the brightest crayon in the box. I’m not the dullest either. Which is comforting…

Anyway, the great thing about digital downloads is I can correct files, and if you click on the download link again, the one you received when you purchased them, you will always get the latest version. If you’ve bought a project file from me, you might want to check to see if I’ve updated anything, especially those who bought them early on. I’m a tweaker of the first degree…

I left for Reno carrying most of my new work, since it related to the patterns I use for my classes, or I had made it to wear to events like the fashion show and the keynote address. When I went on stage after the fashion show to give out the awards, I asked how many people in the audience were wearing something that came from their hands and half the audience stood up. It was so incredible. As if on cue, and this was not prearranged, the house lights came up and I really saw the amount of handweavers out there who wore something they made. There were more than 600 people at each of the fashion shows, so that says a lot.

I’m always reluctant however to travel with new work that hasn’t been officially documented in some way, so I was glad when all my work came home with me safely and Saturday morning, after a leisurely breakfast, I ripped apart my studio to turn it into a photo session. It requires shifting looms, moving furniture and equipment, but it works well, and takes me about a hour to set everything up. I take a few photos, run over to the office down the hall, check what I have, see stupid stuff I didn’t notice when I was shooting and go back and tweak. Did I mention I am a tweaker of the first degree…

And this is the result. I realized I didn’t shoot the back of this jacket. It has a pretty yoke cut on the lengthwise grain. I’ll have to go back and shoot that next time my studio is rearranged. The jacket is a version of the Collared Vest pattern combined with the jacket pattern for the armhole, sleeves and pocket variation. The class directions for making these garments are available for free on my website, but you have to take one of my classes to get the patterns. I have not figured out a way to market them. Nor do I want to until I stop teaching. I wove the jacket from Noro Taiyo Lace knitting yarn with a Shetland warp, and cut it on the crosswise.

Then there was the Autumn Patchwork duo, the duster and the tunic, both from the same length of hand painted and handwoven cloth. There was a lot of yardage there. The tunic is from my class pattern, and the duster is a very long version of my jacket pattern with optional shawl collar. The Autumn Patchwork draft is available here.

I used my Jumpstart vest pattern to make this brown melton vest trimmed in the length of fabric I wove in the Karen Donde Bubble Cloth class I took awhile ago at my guild. It just occurred to me I forgot to shoot the crimp cloth vest I did from the Diane Totten class I took. Damn…

And I made this vest from my Collared Vest pattern, from the turned taqueté fabric I wove in a class with Kathrin Weber using her dyed warps. And I used the same pattern minus the collar to make this small piece of felt laminate I did with an old silk scarf from my late mother in law’s stash. There are no side seams.

I cut up my old handwoven gown, and ended up with this lovely top, which I wore to the keynote address, though I sat in the back and few people saw it, I was too tired to interact with anybody having taught all day and then given an hour and a half lecture as the juror of the fashion show. The lower part became this lovely bias top. I can see getting a lot of use out of both of them. The draft for the Frosted Florals fabric is here.

I found some extra fabric from a tunic I made awhile ago and made another bias top, I wore both bias tops at the conference and they were so comfortable. The pattern is a bias variation of my collared vest pattern, but I haven’t written the page yet that explains how to convert the vest to the bias top. It is on my lengthy list to draft all the bias top sizes, to save students time. The draft for the Pacific Sunset fabric is here.

I also made this tote bag from a Krokbragd sampler I did in a Tom Knisely rug workshop. This is the front and the back. You decide which is which.

Then I made this long walking vest with a shawl collar, from a fabric I had done for a potpourri grab bag exchange at my guild. Guild events and workshops are always great for taking you out of your wheel house. I hope that Convergence does that for all of the attendees. The draft for the fabric for this potpourri walking vest is here. I combined my Jumpstart vest pattern, walking vest version, added the optional shawl collar, and overlaid it with the jacket pattern for the armhole opening, and drafted facings.

And last but not least, I made six of these gradient scarves, I may offer a couple of them for sale in my web shop, but they were from my hand dyed yarns, using the Down on the Farm palette from one of my handwoven forecasts long ago. The draft for this scarf and other color variations is here.

It was a remarkably successful weekend, I’m completely exhausted, but feeling like I’m seeing the shoreline from treading water in the middle of the lake. I have an emergency article to write and get to Threads Magazine before I leave on the 27th for Peters Valley, so that’s next up, I’ll put my office assistant on the job of updating all my downloads and print covers and handouts with the correct phone number. I’m happy to report the dog is much improved, back to his old bratty lovable self. And it rained all last night, a much needed lovely rain, which made everything green again, and that’s a wonderful thing.

Stay tuned…