Thursday, June 21, 2012

cool mornings HOT days


7 am
                It is going to be scorchingly hot today but right now it is lovely. I suppose I should have gone nocturnal for these few days. Or maybe I will end up spending the middle of the day inside. I have lots of the ToDos so I guess what I will do is card now while it is lovely, then go inside to do: prepare for tonight’s fair meeting (who’s purpose is to prepare for Sunday’s meeting), work on plans for my classes, what else – well I could needle felt onto the felted purse I made ages ago. Not exactly a ToDo, but I haven’t yet touched it.
                Tonight I must drive to NoHo to the exec comm meeting. Not what I most want to do, but it must be done.
                                So what have I gotten done so far re carding? Well I actually finished the lovely light purple lichen-dyed stuff. It is light purple wool blended with light purple angora, then I quick-blended that with some gray angora and dark purple lichen-dyed wool. I will eventually spin it and ply with the light purple lichen-dyed silk. Whew. That all took a long time. There are about 17 ounces of the carded stuff. Then I spent a long time playing will all kinds of colors and I put together bags of combos to work on next. Except first next I started carding the darker purple lichen stuff which I will blend with angora. I think I will blend half with fawn angora, and half with gray. I really like them both and it will be nice to have both options. That will be fully blended. I will do as much of all that as I can today. Though I imagine it will get roastingly hot and I may not be able to stay on the porch. Yesterday, when the woman came who cleans, I actually left. I went to Friendly’s and got a sundae (how decadent) then to the library to pick up more cds since I am almost done with Time Travelor, then to the grocery store to get a few things.
                Ahhh, hummingbirds are at the feeder!
                Existential angst ramblings, a continuation of previous days: I’ve been thinking about all the things I keep wanting to do and the feeling of having not enough time (how the hell do people have TIME to do dumb stuff like watch TV???????? Or take inordinate naps and read read read dumb stuff on the computer???). Most recently I’ve been reading on line (OK, touché) about using urine in dyeing. I was thinking about how I don’t so much like using commercial (read poisonous) dyes, but that natural dyes are not that great bc they do require mordants which are not so great. So it got me thinking about whether urine can be used as a mordant. It seems like it was in some instances, but the info is kind of sketchy. Well that got me thinking about all the other things I want to try:
Making soap
Dehydrating food
Smoking food
Canning
Weaving a wool blanket
More natural dyeing
Improve my booth set up
Improve sales in any ways I can think of
And when do I have TIME?????? I guess what I need to do is prioritize. Some of those are just fun ideas, nothing wrong with that, but I need to keep that in mind. I did manage to get the loom more or less warped with the huge and much appreciated help of my friend. She came over for huge parts of both Saturday and Sunday last weekend. I knew that the only way to get that done would be to set up a date to do it. It took forever and it not in fact completely finished and I screwed up several places, but it will be ready soon for weaving. So then I well need to head to the other house to get some fabric to cut and get all ready for rag rugs. Yet another project! As if I need that! Maybe the result of this well be that I give up the idea of more rag rugs and thus get rid of all those boxes of fabric. That would be somewhat liberating. I don’t think I am ready to give up the loom because I would like to try weaving stuff I spin. That was the original intent of getting it after all. The rag rugs have been good and actually very useful practice. G was even talking about wanting a rug, maybe she would like a kind of long rag rug of her choosing.
                I bought oat meal yesterday and it is cooking on the stove, a little variation from oat bran. I also bought mouse traps and set them and all 4 had the bait eaten without being sprung! Gotta reset a little more carefully, maybe with peanut butter.
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