textiles | Tien Chiu's Blog

March 21, 2021 by Tien Chiu 5 Comments

Decluttering

The last several days have been a frenzy of nesting activity. Three days ago (Thursday) I found a gardening service to tame the overgrowth in the much-neglected back yard. They took out the fabric pots, hacked out the weeds, and left me with a clean slate:

Our back yard, after the gardening service cleared out the weeds

It’s barer than it was in the past; our passion fruit vine died for no apparent reason earlier this year (we’re still discussing where to replant a replacement), and we took out the four peach trees because we weren’t happy with the flavor of the peaches. We’re still discussing what and whether to replant in their place. There will be more greenery come summer, though. The persimmon trees and the grape vines simply haven’t leafed out yet.

At any rate, the wild undergrowth and the weeds are gone. The lemon tree has some flowers, though, so the hummingbirds and honey bees are hovering and zipping happily about. I have started a few tomato plants (“few,” in Tien terms, meaning about fifteen to twenty – that is very restrained for a Tien!) but I think I will otherwise let the garden lie fallow this year. I have been hard-pressed to keep up with the garden over the last few years, and lately it’s been coming down to a choice between gardening and other creative pursuits. Last year I did almost no weaving or (personal) blogging. This year I’m trying to declutter my life to open some space for the creative work I value, and have done way too little of in the last few years.

Decluttering has been the big theme for the last three days, in fact. Friday I went through all the kitchen cabinets and got rid of the accumulated detritus of the last few years. There is something wonderfully freeing about finally discarding that half-empty bottle of rice vinegar that your wife brought as dowry when she shacked up with you fifteen years ago and which has not been used since. Plus, what on earth were we doing with four containers of baking powder, three jars of molasses, two bottles of liquid smoke, and a partridge in the kitchen cupboards?? (I’ve never even contemplated planting a pear tree!!)

Saturday I continued my purge, rolling into the dining room, which was suffering badly from “Well, we’re not sure where to put it, so let’s put it in the dining room” syndrome. A ton of junk went into the trash, more got given away.

Jamie also helped me put together my new dye table. My dye studio is my back patio – since I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, where the weather is pretty warm year-round, it never freezes, and it rains only in the winter, infrequently, this works pretty well. But I had been dyeing on a ratty old wooden table with some six-foot boards laid across it, which was a pain to work with. One of the goals of the backyard cleanup was to get rid of the ratty old table and replace it with a stainless steel restaurant food prep table that I could use for dyeing.

Which we did. I don’t have pictures of it just yet because we didn’t quite finish it today – we got it assembled and stood upright, but I haven’t yet removed the protective plastic wrapper or set it up with the plastic bins that I’ll be using it with. But it’s gorgeous – a 30″ wide, 72″ long stainless steel table with two stainless steel shelves underneath. The bottom one is the perfect height to store two 5-gallon buckets stacked one atop the other, or larger stacks of 2-gallon or smaller buckets. The top one is great for smaller boxes holding spoons, syringes, scales, mixing cups, etc. for dyeing. I can’t wait to use it!

Tomorrow’s plan is to finish reorganizing the kitchen and dining room and scrub down everything for the dye “studio”. And then – dive in and actually use the new dye table to dye the next warps for Grace and Maryam! So looking forward to the inaugural dye job.

Stay tuned! (Lots of pictures tomorrow, I promise!)

March 18, 2021 by Tien Chiu 2 Comments

A journey of 4,400 warp threads….

…begins with a big honkin’ warping mill.

This is my three-meter circumference Glimakra warping mill, which is as-yet nameless (somehow only my looms seem to have enough personality to warrant names). In theory it’ll wind a 50-meter warp, though trying to wind 17 rounds around that warping mill seems like it would be rather fussy to me. As you can see, though, a 15-meter, 1,320-thread warp in fine threads is no problem!

I have two goals with these warps. The first is to reconfigure the arrangement of the jacquard looms. I’ve been going back and forth over how much to get into this, because explaining exactly what and how and why I’m doing what I’m doing involves quite a bit of technical discussion about how TC-2 jacquard looms work. The last few people I’ve tried to explain this to have gotten a glazed expression about 30 seconds into the discussion and discovered an urgent need to go clean their bellybutton lint after about 90 seconds, so I’m taking that as a sign that perhaps skipping that part of the discussion might be okay. 😉

Anyway, skipping the navel-scrubbing details, the first project is to reconfigure the jacquard looms, the end result of which is that I’ll eventually be able to weave easily at three different densities: 90 ends per inch, 60 ends per inch, and 30 ends per inch. This would be extremely useful to my weaving life, BUT in order to do that, I have to cut off the warps that are on both looms, swap the guts (heddles) of Grace into Maryam’s frame (still threaded), swap the guts of Maryam into Grace’s frame (still threaded), and add 880 more heddles to Grace.

Then, of course, I need to put warps onto both looms, to the tune of 4,400 threads. Whee!!

Grace is basically going to become my sampling loom. She is eventually going to have one 14.5″ wide warp threaded at 60 ends per inch, and one 29″ wide warp threaded at 30 ends per inch. I can do that because Grace is 43″ wide, with two warp beams. The idea is that I keep one side of the loom beamed and threaded at 60 ends per inch on one warp beam, and the other side of the loom beamed and threaded at 30 ends per inch on the other warp beam. The warp that is being woven goes through the reed, and the warp that is not being woven gets removed from the reed and tied off.

On a regular loom this would create all sorts of problems with the loom geometry, because regular looms are made out of wood and the uneven tension would warp the beams out of shape eventually (among many other things). However, I’ve been assured (by the manufacturer) that this isn’t an issue with the TC-2 jacquard looms, because the loom is made of heavy gauge steel and isn’t even going to notice any torsion from off-centered warps. (Those Norwegian engineers, they do not mess around!)

Most of my samples for classes are woven out of cotton, usually from 22-30 ends per inch. The advantage of weaving those samples on a jacquard loom, of course, is that I can sample many different drafts/woven patterns on the same warp, without having to rethread. Weave a simple twill? No problem! Switch out to overshot? Sure, why not? Weave an intricate, nonrepeating networked rosepath twill curvy something-or-other? Load ‘er up! I can even change the sett by leaving some threads unwoven, reducing the number of threads per inch.

More subtly, I can also weave complicated stripe patterns by threading up for double weave, one layer of Color A, one layer of Color B, and then selectively choosing which threads of Color A or Color B weave in the top layer. This means that, if I am threaded at 60 epi, I can weave whatever two-color stripe pattern I want at 30 epi on the jacquard loom without rethreading. So having a section of the jacquard loom dedicated to weaving at double-density makes a lot of sense for weaving samples.

So Grace’s setup will save me a HUGE amount of time and effort in weaving samples for my color classes. Without a jacquard loom, I’d have to rethread every time I wanted to sample a new weave structure, and rewarp every time I wanted to try a new stripe combination. That would make creating samples prohibitively expensive. Grace will let me create the samples I need in a timely and efficient manner.

Maryam, on the other hand, is going to switch out with Grace and become my loom for artistic weavings. Grace is currently threaded at 90 ends per inch, 29″ wide, and I’m swapping that configuration into Maryam.

So what, exactly, is going onto the looms?

The warp that’s going onto Grace is destined to be samples for an upcoming class about designing with color gradients. (Coming this fall!) I want to get 72 samples off that warp – there will be 3 samples across and 24 different samples along the length of the warp. I want to get a LOT of different color combinations, so rather than put on a bazillion warps, I’m splitting the warp into three bouts and painting each bout with a different sequence of colors corresponding to the color samples I want to make. I tied off each bout at carefully marked intervals so the color changes would be synchronized across all three warp bouts once the warps were on the loom. That way I can do three samples across, each with a different set of colors, using the same weft. Because the color changes are synchronized, each set of samples will start and end in the same place, color-wise, so I won’t wind up with any half-samples or overlaps.

Sounds complicated, but it’s really not that complicated.

But – ha ha! – that’s not actually what I’m doing. Because why do anything the moderately complicated way when you can do it the even more complicated way??

I mentioned earlier that, on a jacquard loom, if you set up your warp at double density, with one “layer” of warp in one color, and one “layer” of warp in another color, you can do arbitrary stripe patterns by picking which threads of which color weave into the top layer. And I’m doing a class on color gradients, so I need to weave samples that show the different kinds of color gradients you can create by alternating threads. For example, you can do a linear gradient, like this:

Or you could alternate threads to give the illusion of curvature, like this:

So what I’m ACTUALLY doing is winding six bouts of painted warps, painting them so the colors synchronize three bouts wide across the warp and two layers deep. Then I’m going to interleave them to get a lot of color combinations, and then weave samples that show different possibilities of stripe patterns combining the different color combinations.

Oh, and I’m also demonstrating the effects of different weft colors, setts, and weave structures, too, in combination with all of the above.

You can see that 72 samples, while a seemingly large number, is actually quite a small number, not nearly enough to explore all the possibilities. If I were exploring at random, I’d throw up my hands completely.

Fortunately, I’m not exploring at random. At this point I have a very good understanding of What Goes Down with color in weaving, so I can pretty well predict what happens when you do X with Y under conditions A, B, and C. So I think I can make 72 samples cover MOST of what I want to illustrate. A few samples and some finished pieces will have to be woven on the Ruth, my Baby Wolf loom. (As powerful as Grace and Maryam are, there are some things that jacquard looms don’t do well. For those things, well, Ruth to the rescue!!)

Next, there’s Maryam. Maryam is getting the “art” warp.

I haven’t really had time to plan out the art project. I’ve shelved Tourmaline Butterfly for now, basically on the grounds that it is going to take more time and effort than I can realistically expect to have available. I need to put on a warp that I can produce small projects on in spare moments – which, for me, means a project that “only” takes a month or so and maybe 40-100 hours to complete. (Moderation, after all, is best done in extreme moderation. 😉 ) I also need a warp that is attractive and interesting enough to seduce me away from working on the teaching business nonstop, which is a tall order most days. And I need a warp that is flexible enough that I can produce both more conservative pieces and caution-to-the-wind pieces on it.

So I think what I’m going to do is put a double weave warp onto the loom, two layers at 45 ends per inch, and make one layer plain black 20/2 cotton at 45 ends per inch, and the other a wild-woman warp, four strands of different yarns randomly dyed in shades of brilliant orange, red, gold, and yellow. My theory is that since it’s double weave, if I want a boring, conservative warp on which I can weave just about anything, I can use the black warp on the surface and bury the orange warp on the back. If I want to go hog-wild, I can weave the orange warp on the surface. And of course, I can do layer interchange and do really cool stuff with the black warp alternating with the orange warp in areas. Monarch butterfly? Tiger? YES PLEASE!!

Why orange-red-yellow-gold? Because (as a quick look at either my work or my wardrobe will tell you) brilliant orange is my favorite color, and if I want a warp that will lure me to work on it, bright orange tie-dye is definitely the way to go.

I liked the textured effect of the warp I put on for Bipolar Prison, which was one strand of 10/2 unmercerized cotton, two strands of 16/2 mercerized cotton, and one strand of 30/2 silk. It was randomly dyed, and because the different fibers took up the dyes differently, and the yarns were of different sizes, the resulting cloth had a wonderfully textured look to it:

The unmercerized cotton shed lint that created little fuzzy rings around each warp thread, so I won’t be using that again.

Instead, for this warp, I’ve wound one strand of 10/2 natural mercerized cotton (4200 ypp), one strand of bleached white mercerized 20/2 cotton (8400 ypp), one strand of fine 4-ply silk cord (8400 ypp), and one strand of 60/2 silk (15,000 yards per pound). Here they are:

Yarns being used for double weave warp — Left to right: 60/2 silk, 4-ply silk cord, bleached white 20/2 mercerized cotton, natural 10/2 cotton

I wound the threads in a 4×4 cross, holding the threads between my fingers, and plan to thread them in random order to give more texture to the fabric. Will that be a dreadful mistake? Only one way to find out!

Anyway, here is where the Journey of 4,400 Warp Threads currently stands:

3/4 of the warp for Maryam and Grace, neatly wound into chains

I have wound the entire warp for Grace, and half the warp for Maryam, so the current warp thread count is 3,136 (I always wind a few extras when winding painted warps, for fixing broken threads). I’m now at the point where I can start painting the warps. (The remaining warp to be wound is the layer of black warp for Maryam.) Unfortunately, the table on which I would have painted the warp has been removed since we cleared out the back yard yesterday, and the new table hasn’t been purchased/delivered yet, so warp-painting will have to wait, perhaps until early next week.

I guess I will have to settle for giving Fritz a belly rub. Here he is, practicing cat yoga while waiting:

September 26, 2020 by Tien Chiu

New studio!

The Great Studio Move is complete! I spent two weeks schlepping stuff into the 8′ x 16′ storage container, which was completely full when I finished. Then I spent a week obsessively moving, sorting, and rearranging things in the garage. I got rid of a LOT of stuff. Gave away, donated, threw out – probably about three cubic yards of stuff, or about half a small dump truck full. I eliminated two whole shelving units’ worth of stuff!

I don’t have a “before” pic (frankly, it was too much of a cluttered pigsty to show to my best friend, let along anyone else), but here’s a pic from just before the insulation installers arrived. Grace is on the left, Maryam on the right.

Here’s the studio now, completely reorganized, seen with the big garage door open:

view of studio from the front of the garage — studio, viewed from front of garage

I’m still decluttering a bit; the stuff in the foreground will be going away soon.

Here’s the studio viewed from the side door:

A view of the studio from the side door. Maryam and Grace, my two looms, are facing each other. — studio, viewed from the side door

The studio looks pretty industrial, but that’s kind of inevitable when it’s in a garage with unfinished (but insulated!) walls, and sharing space with a home gym. At least black rubber mats are covering the concrete floor! It makes it much more comfortable to walk/stand on, and protects the floor against dropped dumbbells when weightlifting.

(Someone asked how many weasels I can lift now. Alas, I can’t do squats right now because we don’t have a squat rack at home, but we do have an Olympic barbell, and I’m pleased to say that despite COVID I can still deadlift 900 weasels! (That’s 225 pounds, for you non-weaselly folks.) That means I can go around picking up guys – that is, if they aren’t too heavy and are willing to lie around on the floor in a convenient position for deadlifting. (Hey, you gotta start somewhere. 😉 ))

As you can see, I turned Maryam around so she and Grace are now facing each other. I figure that way they can chat while I’m not around. 🙂

If you’re wondering what the gray thing on the floor in front of Maryam (left-hand loom) is, it’s a Topo Mat by ergodriven. It’s the best ergonomic floor mat I’ve ever encountered, and if you’ve got a standing desk, you should run, not walk, to your keyboard and order one immediately.

The funny knobs and things are designed to give you lots of different surfaces/angles to stand on to encourage you to shift your weight about as you stand. With it, I can comfortably stand all day long (barefoot!) at my standing desk, or (in this case) weave all day long standing at Grace or Maryam. No more back problems for me!

The one downside to the Topo mats is that they are very comfortable. Very, very comfortable. So comfortable, in fact, that Someone has taken to napping on them:

Tigress sitting on my Topo ergonomic floor mat — My human thought she was clever, getting rid of the chair…Ha! Just because you don’t *have* a chair doesn’t mean I can’t still steal your chair.

Curses! Foiled again. And here I thought leaving the old chair around to sit on would keep the Queen and Mistress of the Universe satisfied. Tigress is far too clever a cat to fall for that trick, apparently. (Because half the fun is inconveniencing the human.)

Fritz, meanwhile, is not to be outdone. I was doing a photo shoot for the next Weave-Along (which launches in a week or so). I had closed the door to keep the cats out, but – like the Australians building their famous wall to keep out the rabbits – had neglected to notice that there was already a cat in the room. Fritz helpfully pointed this out to me shortly after I started shooting photos, and provided some assistance in setting up the shots. For some reason, the human was singularly unappreciative of his efforts, and he shortly joined Tigress outside the photography “studio”, but I did get a lovely photo of him in the interim:

The garden is going well. I just harvested five pounds of potatoes – about half the potatoes from this variety – and made five pints of intensely flavored Concord grape jam from our Concord grapes. I divided and replanted Egyptian walking onions and garlic. And I’ve harvested quite a few passion fruit this year (unlike the last few years when we got almost none)!

The best news for last: I cleared enough space in the garage to make way for a small treadle loom! Yes, that’s right – despite having two jacquard looms, I want a small treadle loom. There’s something enjoyable and peaceful about having a wooden loom, so a Baby Wolf is on her way to me! She’ll arrive on Monday. Pics, of course, on arrival. 🙂

Finally: I’m still clearing out space. I was trying to sell the tjaps as a single group, but that doesn’t seem to have worked, so I am now offering them individually for $50 each plus shipping (the “going rate” for good quality copper tjaps is $90 or so, and the animal tjaps I have are hard to find). Here are three photos of the groups – if you like one particular tjap and want a closer look, close-up photos of each tjap are in this Google Drive folder.

(Tjaps are copper stamps traditionally used for batik, but they can also be used with paint and lots of other things, or just collected as decorative items. They are beautiful!)

If you’re interested in one or more of them, email me at tien@tienchiu.com. If you want three or more, I’ll cut the price to $40 each – I really want to reclaim the space!

If you’re local, I also have a Bernina 830 Record sewing machine (the mechanical 830, not the electronic one) with lots of extra feet that I’m offering for $600. Pix here and here. I’ll throw in a homemade double-ended electric bobbin winder and a DeLonghi steam iron with separate boiler if you buy it. If no one local wants it I’ll consider shipping (at buyer’s expense).

I’ll conclude this post with an intriguing photo from the garden. Culinary ginger isn’t as showy as its ornamental counterparts, but I think its flowers are quite beautiful nonetheless. This photo is of the pots by the back door:

culinary ginger blossoms — (culinary) ginger flowers!

More on Monday, when the new loom arrives!

June 20, 2020 by Tien Chiu

Whew! What a month!!

I know I’ve been delinquent with the blog updates. I’ll plead that it’s been quite the month! Fortunately, in a very good way.

Janet Dawson and I decided to team up and teach a weave-along about weaving from your stash. We thought we’d get five hundred, maybe a thousand students, tops. Instead, we had over THREE THOUSAND WEAVERS sign up!! We were delighted, but also a wee bit overwhelmed. As a result, we both more or less dropped off the map for about a month.

I did get the sample warp onto the loom and weave the first set of samples for Tourmaline Butterfly. I was doing a rendition of this image:

image of butterfly wing — butterfly wing

The concept is that the cape, when the arms are spread, looks like butterfly wings, with dark green veins coming out from the body of the wearer and ending in the border of dots. The interior of the “wings” portion is intensely colored and shaded out towards the veins to give a dimensional effect.

For the folks who like technical details (if you don’t, just skip to the next paragraph): in all the samples, I used a point threading and a networked rosepath treadling in the pink areas (the tie-up is twill), and a brick-like fancy twill pattern in the green areas. It’s double weave, so the pink is one layer and the green is another layer, stitched together periodically so the fabric comes out as a single layer.

As you can see, the colors are pretty disappointing. I was hoping for some nice hue contrast and a clear, distinct pattern, but there simply wasn’t enough value (light/dark) contrast, and the chunks of color blended into each other even from a relatively short distance, muddying the bright pink into a dull brown.

I sat down and thought about it. I was facing a difficult color dilemma. Green and magenta, the two colors in the bright part of my painted warp, sit opposite each other on the color wheel. That meant that practically any color I chose as weft would blend into a dull color with one or the other of them. The only two exceptions were yellow and turquoise, both of which were strong-minded colors that would shift the colors away from the magenta and green I wanted. And yellow in particular is a super-assertive color that would probably drag attention from the painted warp (yellow is such a diva!).

Nonetheless, I thought I’d give them a shot.

Sample #2 for Tourmaline Butterfly, with yellow, turquoise/blue, and olive green wefts.

None of these were what I wanted – the blue was about the same darkness as the magenta, producing a nearly invisible pattern. The yellow produced a bright result and a clear pattern, but HOO BOY!! took over the entire piece – entirely predictably, and not at all what I wanted.

I thought about it some more and eventually decided that this section was all about magenta, and it would be okay to lose some of the oomph of the green. So I decided to try a dark, dull magenta weft. Using a darker, duller weft is a great way to bring forward the colors in a painted warp (because the eye is more attracted to light, saturated colors), and using a similar color would reinforce the magenta.

This led me to Sample #3:

In the previous samples, I had felt that there wasn’t enough of the painted warp showing due to the shading from the center to the outside of each section (it goes from showing more weft near the outside of each pink section to showing more warp on the inside). So I switched it to showing mostly warp throughout the entire section.

But on seeing it, I decided the sample looked too “flat”. So I wove sample #4, which was Just Right:

Sample #4 for Tourmaline Butterfly, with dark magenta weft and shading towards the edges of each pink section

I like this sample a lot. The darker magenta weft gives it subtle motion without significantly diluting the intensity of the pink areas, and the very subtle shading from dark outside towards lighter inside of each pink area gives it a subtle sense of three-dimensionality. I think for the final piece I will want to make the weft a bit darker, but I will have to weave more samples to be sure.

At the top of the fourth sample is another experiment with a slightly more saturated pink weft. I don’t like that one as much; it looks brighter but not as rich as the one below it. That’s interesting, considering that normally I am a bright-color magpie!

So that’s the Tourmaline Butterfly update.

Meanwhile, other things have been happening!

Jamie and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary! Here we are together, after a wonderful take-out meal from Manresa (three-star Michelin take-out – only in the Bay Area!). Hard to believe we’ve been married for an entire decade, but it’s true.

And yes, 10 years since my handwoven wedding dress really kicked off my weaving career. Hard to believe I had only been weaving 2.5 years when I started it!

And here it is in its home at The Henry Ford museum, being shown to some visitors.

A volunteer there told me that most garments are stored hung for space reasons, but my dress is stored flat in a special, custom-built archival box. I’m glad to hear that they are treating it as precious; I’d like to think it will be preserved for many generations to come.

Finally, the fruit trees Jamie planted seven years ago when we moved in are starting to bear fruit. Lots and lots of fruit. I have been making pie:

Aprium (apricot-plum cross) pie with chocolate ice cream

And, of course, the first tomatoes are ripening. An eager-beaver Sungold.

Sungold tomato - first of the season! — First tomato of the season!

Finally, since no blog post would be complete without a cat, here is Tigress, Queen of the Laundry Pile. Because laundry is not truly clean until it has been liberally bestowed with cat hair.

Whew! What a post. But there was SO much to catch you up on!

May 10, 2020 by Tien Chiu

Tourmaline Butterfly (?)

After taking in quite a few suggestions, both here and in the Color in Weaving Facebook group, I’ve settled on a possible working title: Tourmaline Butterfly. The colors in the warp remind me of one of my favorite stones, watermelon tourmaline:

watermelon tourmaline crystal — Watermelon tourmaline. Photo by Rob Lavinsky.

I was thinking about how best to use the colors. Depictions of flowers seemed too literal and too specific for the way the colors flowed. I thought about doing a waterfall theme, but wasn’t happy with the feel, especially after looking at waterfalls.

Then I was looking at drafts on Handweaving.net, and stumbled on this gorgeous draft by Bonnie Inouye:

draft by Bonnie Inouye, looks like a stained glass window — Draft from Bonnie Inouye, Handweaving.net draft #60970

I love this draft. In particular, I love the blurry lines from the advancing twill design, which suggest a design in the distance, set against the sharp bars in the center. It looks like a stained-glass window. Or like a butterfly’s wings, with the soft colors against the sharp veining that holds the wings together:

monarch butterfly — Monarch butterfly. Photo by Erin Wilson.

blue morpho butterfly — Morpho butterfly (I think). Photo by Anne Lambeck.

I’m envisioning a three-quarter or full circle cape with the body of the garment in those lovely pink-and-green tourmaline jewel colors, and with dark green “veins” branching through the garment like the veins on butterfly wings.

As the wearer opened her arms, the “wings” of the butterfly would open, revealing the pink and green.

I’m also considering making the cape so that, when the cape is draped normally, most of what you see is dark green, and you only see the pink and green portions when the arms are spread. In that case I’d be tempted to name the piece Coronavirus Chrysalis. Or maybe just the far more timeless Chrysalis.

The downside to designing the cape like that, of course, is that nobody would see the beautiful pink and green most of the time. It would make a dramatic fashion show garment, but not a very interesting one otherwise….unless, of course, I put a design on the back, where the cape would lie flat, and put the dark green covering the “wings” of the cape.

So many possibilities!

I’m now about 2/3 of the way through tying on the sample warp. The pink and green areas are tied on, now I’m working on the green warp:

This warp is going onto Maryam, and is designed to test whether the pink and green painted warp areas will stay cohesive enough to look good when woven. Also to test the concept for the overall patterning. The warp is 3.5 yards long, and 14.5 inches wide.

Because Maryam is threaded up at 60 ends per inch rather than Grace’s 90 ends per inch, I’ve doubled up the threads to get a good solid cloth. So the resulting sample will be heavier and coarser than the final cloth, but it should still tell me everything I need to know.

Next step is designing the first sample. Bonnie’s draft won’t work for my purposes, so I’ll have to create my own.

Finally, outside, things are happening.

The tomatoes are shooting upwards. I’ll have to hang the trellises this weekend:

The mulberries are ripening. I shook the tree this morning, with very tasty results:

My ginger is sending up shoots. (This is culinary ginger – the stuff you eat. I mostly grow it because the leaves smell so wonderful when you brush against them. But it’s nice having ginger on the back stoop, too! At least I’ll never absentmindedly run out. I love Chinese cooking, so that would be utter disaster.)

And, finally, the yellow irises are flowering. I wasn’t expecting them to bloom this year – I only planted them last year, and the purple irises are already done – but they appear to be, ahem, late bloomers.

(And yes, orange California poppies and roses in the background. The roses actually bloom all year round, even in December. There’s just no stopping them!)

That’s it for now!

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