Happy Monday Blog Fellows,
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| Walking Brooklyn Bridge |
It's has been a whirlwind of a weaving week here in Shelburne Falls. But, I'll share a bit about that in a moment. First, I'll finish up on the week of Gary's visit and yes, he did indeed eat the fancy pastry in Times Square.
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| W1AW Building |
After our wonderful three days in New York City we headed back to Massachusetts via the Amtrak and our parked car. I went to work Saturday and Gary drove to W1AW, the national Ham Radio station in Connecticut, which he knew was closed but wanted to see anyway and had small hopes that some hammer would be there to visit with him. All he got was a picture.
Sunday we left for the part of the trip I had planned and it all revolved around hands-on history villages. Does that sound like an elementary teacher or what? On Sunday we drove by way of
Quabbin Reservoir to Old Sturbridge Village.
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| Quabbin view |
Quabbin was created in the 1920's-1930's to provide drinking water to Boston. Which was wonderful, unless you lived or were buried in the area to be flooded. Apparently all the decision making was done in Boston, so the locals from the three towns to be affected had very little representation as they couldn't attend the meetings. Over about a 15 year period the towns were relocated along with all people (dead and alive) and the valley was indeed flooded and still provides millions of people in Mass. with drinking water. Pretty interesting and very beautiful.
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| Old Sturbridge Village farm |
Old Sturbridge Village is one of the country’s oldest and largest living
history museums, depicting early New England life from 1790-1840 with historians
in costume, antique buildings, water-powered mills, and a working farm.
osv.org. We spent about 4.5 hours there and saw most everything, but could have used more time another day to absorb more and read more.
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| Publick House Historic Inn room |
Because this was a history tour, I booked a room at The Publick House Historic Inn,
publickhouse, established in 1771. We had dinner in the pub (which has been added on but looked very realistic). We had one of the original handful of rooms. It was funny, literally, how crooked the floors were going up the stairs and down the hall to the room and in the room. It reminded us both of the Black Hills' Cosmos Mystery area,
cosmosmysteryarea.
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| Thomas Oyster House |
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| Schooner |
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| Terry in Birthday sailor suit |
On Monday we concluded our history tour at Connecticut's, Mystic Seaport,
mysticseaport . It is an 1800's seaport village with historic sea vessels, craft shops, demonstrations and a working ship restoration facility. We cruised the bay and walked and learned for about 4.5 hours. We decided that 4.5 hours must be our learning, walking, looking limit. We found our simple modern motel and then tracked down a wonderful seafood restaurant on the wharf.
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| Gary with tug boat :) |
Tuesday morning, I took Gary to Hartford Airport and got to Vavstuga at 1:00. The sheep and looms were waiting for me.
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| Barbros daldrall |
It was such a wonderful week of weaving. Tuesday we did some planning of projects for the upcoming week plus began talking about my incredible apprentice project. I assembled a new, fresh out of the box Glimakra loom and put on a project that was already beamed and ready to weave. This lovely red and white piece is called Barbro. It is an overshot in 32/2 cotton for the warp and tabby and 16/2 cotton for the pattern weft. I had a couple of setbacks and it really didn't feel like I had any rhythm until about 3/4 of the way through, but I am very happy with the finished piece and it was another wonderful learning experience. Additionally, this past week I made a cheerful plaid table cloth in 16/2 cotton with matching apron fabric, 16/2 warp with 8/2 weft. While it is simple plain weave, I really tried to work on a consistent beat, to avoid striping in the weave, and I also worked on techniques Becky shared to make color changes that are less noticeable. It was a fantastic two weeks of east coast sites and new weaving challenges. I'm eager for tomorrow, when I get to go out to the draw loom studio and begin weaving there for several days in preparation of the upcoming Drawloom Basics class. Have a great end of the month. Can you believe fall is nearly here?
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| August 26th Bridge of Flowers over the Deerfield River |
It was such a wonderful week of weaving. Tuesday we did some planning of projects for the upcoming week plus began talking about my incredible apprentice project. I assembled a new, fresh out of the box Glimakra loom and put on a project that was already beamed and ready to weave. This lovely red and white piece is called Barbro. It is an overshot in 32/2 cotton for the warp and tabby and 16/2 cotton for the pattern weft. I had a couple of setbacks and it really didn't feel like I had any rhythm until about 3/4 of the way through, but I am very happy with the finished piece and it was another wonderful learning experience. Additionally, this past week I made a cheerful plaid table cloth in 16/2 cotton with matching apron fabric, 16/2 warp with 8/2 weft. While it is simple plain weave, I really tried to work on a consistent beat, to avoid striping in the weave, and I also worked on techniques Becky shared to make color changes that are less noticeable. It was a fantastic two weeks of east coast sites and new weaving challenges. I'm eager for tomorrow, when I get to go out to the draw loom studio and begin weaving there for several days in preparation of the upcoming Drawloom Basics class. Have a great end of the month. Can you believe fall is nearly here? 
Am enjoying your recounts of wandering, weaving, wonders......keep at it, girl!
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