The signs are clearly starting to show.... summer is "done and dusted" and autumn is officially here. As of October 1st we will have been here in our new home one year. A year that flew by! We have no regrets about our move to this home and simply love it. We spent last winter looking at what needs to be done here and this summer we got busy and replaced some sealed window units, re-roofed the sheds (we had a leak), checked our perimeter drains around the house (we get a lot of rain in the winter!), we're getting leaf guard protection on the gutters (no more cleaning clogged gutters and climbing ladders) and in a couple of weeks time we're getting some rooms painted to freshen them up. We already have a list started for some jobs for next year : new kitchen sink and faucet, get one of two runs of side fencing replaced (a joint effort with the neighbours) and possibly more interior painting. There's always something that needs tweaking!
After we recently went to Vancouver and saw the grand kids and returned home, I found my feet very painful again with arthritis and it hurt to walk, let alone treadle. So I took a rest and wound warps instead and wove when I could for short periods of time. I'm waiting on seeing a surgeon about my right foot, but the left is painful now too. Getting old(er) sucks! So the studio has not been as busy as it normally is.
It seems I wasn't quite done with the last draft and tie up on the loom. I inherited a couple of 'seconds' over the years as table runners for our bedroom furniture but our night tables remained bare. This seemed to be a logical time to fix that and weave some up for our home. I had the same warp and weft yarns on hand, the draft in hand and tie up all done. They may not have been very long runners but they still had all the hemstitching! In fact, it seemed like all hemstitching interspersed with a short run of weaving. The day they were washed it was raining outside and so the rack was set up in the house to dry.
Tails were snipped, and then a hot time on the steam press and ironing board and they were ready for some pictures. There is also one longer runner that's 15.5 by 40 inches in length. The warp is 10/2 mercerized cotton (colour: shell) , sett 28 epi and this runner was woven up with 8/2 tencel (colour: taupe)
I wove two smaller cloths with the same shell mercerized cotton warp but used cream or off white 8/2 bamboo. This way they would match the existing runners in the room
Naked no longer!
close up detail of the pattern
Bruce has a couple of small little end tables in his den that needed a little something too, so I wove these small little covers for them. I find it rather ironic that I weave miles of cloth, but it took so long to do these small pieces. "The Cobbler's children have no shoes".
As you can see I reduced the pattern motif to fit the smaller table top. The LED bulbs in the lamp are a rather warm white so I did my best to reduce the yellow in the computer. Now he can put down the cold beverage while he watches his Blue Jays baseball games.
The older table runners are up high on a tall dresser and an armoire..... so the treadling error isn't on full display but do their job well. Yes, that's me at about age two or three with my mother.... a long time ago now.
I held the camera up high and snapped these.... but you can see the new runners have good company.
We're all "matchy-matchy" now!
