We got there just in time to see magnificent roiling waves, thunderous and loud, and lots of 'foambergs', which are foam (perhaps from detergent?) blobs on the beach churned up by the roiling surf.
It was very beautiful. Tried taking slo-mo footage of the foambergs, but their terribilita didn't come through in the footage. But what a fun memory.
Above is the poster for my senior concert at Bennington College in May, 1986. Friend AT drew the cartoon, and included Virginia Woolf. :-)
Earlier on Saturday I was discussing gold, yellow, and brown dyes with Bart. I had been talking about the beauty of gamboge, which of course no one here can use due to its toxicity, and how I'd like to find another dye combination that can produce that amazing golden 'kuchiba' color. Bart suggested walnut hulls; then I recalled that I still had a little of the yarn I'd spun long ago on the Carson Cooper wheel (before I sold it) and which I had dyed with walnut hulls and leaves. I found it, and showed it to Bart. I'm still delighted at the rich color.
On Carlos' suggestion yesterday morning I cooked a 'Dutch Baby' pancake. It came out perfectly delicious! One of the challenges is to heat the iron skillet in the oven, but not so much that the butter burns when it is tossed into the pan; it needs to be hot enough to melt quickly and to very slightly brown the butter to a noisette flavor just before the batter is poured into the pan. And yesterday it worked like a dream - nice nutty toasty flavor to the butter with no smell of scorch, and the pancake popped right out of the pan cleanly. Flavor was awesome! I used less sugar than the recipe called for, cutting it by about 1/3, and halved the salt. We drizzled fresh lemon juice on it and then sprinkled it with confectioner's sugar.
Here it is, in the oven, and I pulled it out, sprinkled powdered sugar on it, and put it back into the oven for a little extra browning. I still marvel at how so little batter and no leavening can produce so much more volume than I expected. And it was delicious.
I was still feeling quite under the weather through most of the day, sore throat and all, but rallied myself enough to go down and do half the threading on the new project on the loom, which is not straight threading. The threading repeat is 64, and the treadling repeat is 56. I still left the remaining half of the threading to do, but I then went back upstairs since it was very cold in the basement, and laid out the 56 dobby bars on the floor in order to peg the pattern. Most of the dobby chain was the 38 bars I used for my most recent project (the colorful cotton dish towels) but I added the remaining bars from the bunch of new dobby bars I recently purchased from AVL. Nice and clean. These last don't connect with the chain links as the older ones did; they connect with mylar strips and screws. The mylar connected neatly with the old bars with screws, and I was able to attach the new bars bringing the number up to the required 56. Since it is an 8-shaft pattern, it was quite fun and easy and quick to peg up the bars - after having done 16-shaft patterns, the 8-shaft pattern was easy to look at and read - almost like sight-reading music. I put the new dobby chain into the mechanical dobby on the AVL, joined the ends, and adjusted the depth screws until it worked. Smooth.
So now all I have to do is to finish the threading, which will take about another two hours, and then tie on and weave some samples. I'm wondering how 60/2 at 60 epi will come out on this loom v.s. on the Cranbrook with its magnificently high warp tension capability.
As always, sampling is one of the most enjoyable parts of the weaving, since it can be done with some spontaneity. "I think I'll use the red tram weft here...", one muses.
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