Meanwhile...

I had a trying few weeks, but I got over it with the help of herbal supermarket cures. I cleaned the house a little more seriously and elevated our status to "OK-clean", but that was a fortnight ago. I planted all hellebore babies just in time for a couple of days of continuous gentle rain, but I must get back to weeding bigly, all over, like two months ago, with gusto. I was nominated to post weaving pics for ten days on Facebook and that's buoyed my weaving gumption. After I got over moments of grave shaft-envy.

So I washed these, a hot pink scarf and a green/orange cowl. The cowl size is a little strange, and the fabric too thin, but there's enough to go over your head like a hoodie which I like. 

I also made calico bags but ran into a problem. I made the two on top right with the old fabric, which is thicker and 90cm wide, which I bought 10m or 20m way back. I got used to it; I fold it in half warp-wise, and cut the width required. The 45cm height was good for most pieces, with the selvedge left untreated at the top. With enough for only one more bag left, I bought the second lot, (I buy whatever the only fabric shop in town has packaged up, which is substantially cheaper than off the bolt,) much thinner, (I knew this,) but 110cm wide, (I didn't check.) Folded in half that's 55cm high, which when making bags 22cm and 25cm wide, is terribly badly balanced and difficult to use. The balance becomes OK-ish from around 30cm wide, top left. Without careful thinking, I cut the 55cm in half, and made bags 22cm high. Except... in this thinner calico, they look like reusable sandwich bags you might get in multi-packs! So we'll check out the only craft/fabric place in town this weekend to see if they have a good alternative, and if not, I'll rework them sideways. (Or if I've been working sideways all this time, ummmm... the right way up.) Anyhoo, this is in preparation for a much-delayed reopening of my online store.

I want to get back to the loom but I don't know how to reconcile the bad tension. You can see exactly where it started, about an inch back. While sampling I didn't like the tension, so before this piece I unwound/rewound roughly 150cm because that's about how long the first scarf was to be. Except when I do this, I really must unwind an extra 1m to complete the piece safely. I knew this but couldn't be bothered. I'll have a think maybe on the weekend. 

Tomorrow is election day in New Zealand but about half of expected voters, us included, have already voted. Friends are going to come over to watch the returns, which is also a sneaky way for us to eat well as they are such good cooks. But do keep your fingers crossed for our lovely Jacinda.