A Tale of Three Blogs - Second one Fiber Stuff 100 year old treadle machine

This is the second post now in my trilogy of making up for delay of blogdom!

This one is dealing with my fiber stuff.  Memorial weekend we went to visit our friends, Mel and Paula over in Wausau.   Years ago, we met Mel via the motorhome yahoo group we both belong to, and then his wife Paula had run across some weaving apparatus to bring to me and we have been bestest buds ever since!

Paula had run across another "too good to be true but it is" deal.  Someone had GIVEN her this lovely Singer Treadle sewing machine in what is known as a "Drawing Room Cabinet" !!!!

And since Paula already has a treadle machine... (and computerized quilting machine and a big huge long arm quilting machine)  she asked if I would like this one???? for FREE?????

(oh, I might add that Paula is responsible for my recent quilting addiction too-- 

she is quite the "enabler") 

We looked it over, and loaded it up in the car trunk!  It was best to haul it upright, and we protected it with our honeymoon blanket from Canada.  Here is Paula giving it a final pat goodbye and sending it on to a new (and well-appreciated) home!

This machine and cabinet are just TOO COOL!   and might I mention HEAVY????   Our son and soninlaw carried it on Memorial Day to my Loom Room.   The cabinet is absolutely beautiful!

First you open the doors to expose the treadle portion, then you push a button... 

And the sewing machine rises up out of the cabinet like an elevator!!!!! 

It is a gorgeous "Red Eye" Singer treadle machine. 

 All five drawers were chock full of old buttons, zippers, needles, attachments and such treasures! 

The serial number dates the machine as being made in 1913, the SAME YEAR as our home!   How fitting is that?  The machine is in perfect condition and sews wonderfully.  Nothing rusted, nothing broken.  What a TREAT!

I remember sitting on the treadle of my Great Grandma Today's sewing machine while my brother Butch pumped the treadle with his foot to give me a ride, and taking turns I am sure we were pestering her to keep the bobbin and spool threads out so we could treadle and not snarl the threads up.  

Words can not express my happiness in getting this machine and giving it a Forever Home in my Loom Room.   Paula, you have no idea how happy you have made me!  

I have sewn a number of my quilted hotpads on the machine this week, and it sews like a joy!

my hotpads are available in my etsy store:

http://kareninthewoods.etsy.com/

This week was a busy one in my Loom Room.  The Newcomb Studio Rug Loom needed to get warped up for a rug order.  I lined up my tubes of warp in a pattern that I enjoy weaving.  It goes great with denim for rag rugs. 

I ordered my rug warp from Chris Gustin at http://www.homesteadweaver.com/  She is kind, courteous and I love to support a small business person when I can! 

This pattern works well in either 2 or 4 harness looms.   It's a favorite and I made it up myself, but anyone is free to copy it if they wish.

The center of the rugs will be all denim colored warp threads, 

and I put three striped sections on each side of the rug 

and one more solid denim colored section on the outermost edges.  

The rugs will be 30 inches wide 

and I cranked on 40 yards, enough for probably 30 rugs or so. 

Nothing makes my heart go pitterpat faster than a nice neat evenly wound sectional warp! 

And on the sockknitting front.... fellow weaver Peggy came over for a sock machine lesson last week.  She is planning on buying a machine of her own, and wanted to be sure it was something she wanted to invest in.  I let her crank out a pair of socks on my machine and she did very very well!  (Duke supervised)  She used this lovely soft variegated yarn called "Amazing" from Lion Brand, and was so kind as to bring me 2 skeins of it for myself!   Thank you, Peggy!

Whew... I caught up two of the three blogs I planned to write tonight.  It's now almost midnight and I am heading to bed.  I will write the third blog in the morning.... I hope! 

A Tale of Three Blogs - First one RV Stuff Motorhome parking pad

Oh my myyyy how the last few weeks flew by!  And I have neglected you, sad sorry blog readers.

So tonight I will write THREE blogs!   

One on RVing Motorhome Stuff, 

One on Fiber Stuff and new things I am creating

and if I get to it tonight...

One on Family stuff  around the house and of those adorable Grandtots of ours! 

Okay, first up on deck is the motorhome stuff.  Steve recently changed the oil and noticed a broken wire on the alternator.  It was completely broken off at the tab that the wire connects on to.  At one time Steve had soldered the tab back on, but it was broken free again.  Glad he noticed it before we went anywhere and didn't have any charging to the battery system!   We had purchased an extra alternator a while back to keep on hand, just in case this very thing happened! 

OLD ONE                                                       NEW ONE 

 OLD ONE BROKEN TAB                NEW ONE WITH TWO TABS

He will take the old one now to Green Bay Rebuilders to have it repaired and refurbished.... and hang onto it for the next time we need one I guess.

Next is kinda motorhome stuff and kinda home stuff... because it deals with making a parking pad for our motorhome.

Since we parked the motorhome here when we bought the house in January, it was mid-winter.  The backyard was plowed out for the motorhome to set on the snow covered grass.  Once the snow melted, we contacted a landscape contractor to come and give us an estimate on extending our driveway back further into the yard,  leveling off the ground, and spreading a layer of gravel.  (we first got permission from the city to do so)   The guy came, gave us an estimate and said it was such a small job, could he work it in between his bigger jobs?  Sure.....   well, each time we nailed him down on a date, he didn't show up!   SIX dates came and went--- with no apologies, just giving us another date and saying he will come again.  We are SO GLAD we didn't pay him anything down.  We were finished with him.

So then I contacted another contractor.  He was nice when he stopped by and said it was such a small job, that he really didn't think it would be worth his time, but he gave me the name of another guy to contact.  Well, that guy's wife handled the call and said he would stop by and give us an estimate that afternoon.  Never heard from him, never stopped by.  I called back and he said he would have to charge me more than he thought because he would have to haul his back hoe here twice.  Once to do the scraping and leveling and then back again to spread the gravel after it was delivered by the gravel company.  He said it's not worth his time to sit here waiting for the truck to arrive.  I agreed and said for him to come anyway. He didn't.   And he didn't call back.  Heck with him!

Soooo Steve and I took the bull by the horns.  We made some phone calls and lined up our own equipment and gravel delivery.  The only problem was it had to be during the workday, Monday through Friday to rent the skidster.  He had to use up a precious day of vacation to schedule renting a cute skidster from a local tractor supply place for 8 am.  We scheduled our own gravel delivery at 10 am.  And of course the weatherman lied about the rain stopping during the night.   It had to rain ALL morning while we did this.  But we GOT ER DUN!

Here he is, driving the skidster down the street, right to our house!  The place he rented it from is only a few blocks away, so he was able to drive it here instead of trailering it to the house.  How great to live in a small town!   Here he is making the first cut into the sod to scrape it level.

Of course, it was raining... and raining some more.  It made the ground very slippery and slick.  The tires didn't have the greatest tread, so he didn't dare scoop up the excess dirt and drive across the back yard to dump it to make my flower beds.  He would have torn up the rest of the lawn and possibly got stuck.  Oh well, I would just have to do a LOT of wheelbarrowing to take that excess dirt over to where I wanted it later.   In the meantime, he just kept scooping it up and shoving it back to the end of the parking pad near the back of our property.

Once he had all the dirt and turf scraped away, we had a scant 15 minutes for a coffee break.  Here I am hanging out in the garage out of the rain.  

Then we heard the rumble of the gravel truck-- ready to deliver our parking pad gravel!  The nice driver was only able to start spreading at about the halfway point forward because of overhead power lines.  But he spread it out as best he could down the first portion of the cleared sod.   Then he had the truck do that big RUMBLE to shake loose any excess gravel.  I swear it vibrated the entire neighborhood!  Our poor neighbors to the right in this photo were blocked in for a bit.  The driveway is ours but we allow them access to get to her garage and parking spot by her back door.  She doesn't drive, but her family comes and goes throughout the day.

From this point, now it was fun fun fun for Steveio!   Though it was still raining, he was inside the overhang roof of the skidster.  I was on the outside with a shovel, rake and can of spray paint to mark where the edges of the gravel drive should go.    I swear I could hear him going "VRROOMMMM VRROOOOMMMMM"  as he played with his Big Boy Sandbox Toy!  

Back and forth he went, moving the gravel ahead and leveling the hills and dales into a nice flat parking pad.  Oh yes, did I happen to mention, it was STILL raining???  See the raindrops in the mudpuddles?

By noon, our parking pad was all rolled out nicely and flat and level!   I hosed all the mud off the skidster, while Steve went in to change clothes and dry off.   We had to get it back by 12 noon as our agreement was for renting it for four hours.   See that big pile of dirt at the end???  That is going to get hauled a wheel barrow full at a time to my flower beds to the far right of the back yard.  Steve had cut down two big trees during the winter and ground out the stumps in the spring.  We wanted to cover that area with flower beds so that is where the dirt is going to go. More on that in the next blog.....

Once Steve returned the skidster, he went in to work for half of the day.  At least we were only losing a half day of vacation time instead of a full one.  By 4 pm the sun was out, the rain had stopped so we decided to drive back and forth and back and forth with the car on the parking pad.   Packing it down nicely, we figured it was firm enough to drive the motorhome onto it.  And it WAS!   Went on smooth and flat and didn't sink in the new gravel at all.  Guess we did a good job!


Soooo this is what we started with... the BEFORE with bumpy grass, unlevel, and not very nice to have grass growing under the motorhome that needed mowing.   And here is the AFTER.....

Then I started hauling the dirt... whew!   It was wet and heavy and needed to get moved before the pile got too firm and hard.  Plus I have a whole pile of bushes and plants waiting to get in the ground.  So here is what I did yesterday..... got about halfway done.

Today I finished hauling the rest of the dirt and got my plants in. 

I will take some pics in the morning and post them in the next blog. 

Stay tuned for A Tale of Three Blogs -- Second one Fiber Stuff 

10th Annual Jason Collingwood Workshop at Vavning Studio - Day Three (finale)

Sunday came and went SO FAST!

I wandered around the classroom area while everyone was up at the lecture portion and snapped pics of each workshopper's loom sample.  This may be boring for the non-weavers reading my blog today... but for the weaver's this is "eye candy" to look at all the variations!

Please ignore any of the loose threads on the surface, as they are needle woven into the sample as we go along... and some get them all done right away by needle weaving them in downwards at the fell line, and others wait till they have woven a few inches more and needle weave them upwards.

Non-weavers, please scroll down to read the rest of the blog???

It is amazing that all of these weave designs are created on only 2 harnesses with plain weave (tabby) structure.  The variations are almost endless.  Four basic patterns are horizontal stripes, crossways stripes, aligned dots and staggered dots.  But it's all in "how" you combine and put together those four patterns that allows you to make such interesting rug samples!

  (you can right click on each photo for a close up in another window) 

and here is mine:

As the morning went on, Jason was wrapping up the final instructions to the rest of the weavers... while I was busy flitting in and out of the kitchen.  (doing my Kitchen Wench duties)

I simmered up a big ole pot of homemade veggie soup... it smelled great!   I made it without any meats or meat broth base to allow the vegetarians in the group to enjoy the soup too.  We accompanied it with an array of deli cold cuts, breads and other "go withs" to make sandwiches.

If you would like to read a story about how I got this big blue soup pot...

 go to this blog post and scroll down towards the end to read about it... 

it's an "awwwww" love story! 

http://kareninthewoods-kareninthewoods.blogspot.com/2013/02/all-worlds-stage-and-so-is-our.html

As the class time wound down, the looms were hauled out and stashed in cars and vans.  Everyone helped grab tables and chairs to set up for our luncheon....

we went from THIS:

to THIS:   

After everyone had their lunch... that sweet Norma (wife of workshopper Jim)  brought a birthday dessert of a pistachio pudding cake as a surprise to Steve and Jim .. who both celebrated birthday's recently.  Well, then we found out Jason is having a birthday coming up too, but he didn't want us to sing to him.  LOL

Afterwards, Norma gave a demonstration on how she cuts up blue jeans for making rugs. 

All that is left after she is done with a pair of jeans is only enough for a biker chick's G string! 

We did a little "show n tell" of items we made.. not necssarily just weaving rugs.  I showed my towels and my socks too.   Karen York, a fellow weaver and friend of Juanita's, and me too, came for the luncheon (and get some socks) ... she brought the newest jacket she had woven with lovely colors in mohair.  Juanita had helped her plan the jacket.  Karen does such fine work!  She even modeled it for us and did the "cat walk"  hahahaha  Karen, you are rocking that denim mini-skirt quite well too!

Karen helped me clean up the kitchen afterwards as folks hugged and goodbye'd and went on their way.  Soon it was time for Steve and I to hit the road.  We stalled a bit and gabbed with just Juanita and Norm before we left the studio.  Boy oh boy are we ever glad we did!  Because as soon as we pulled out onto the highway to head north on I-90 there was a horrible accident that had just happened!  Perhaps if we had left a bit earlier and not visited with the Hofstroms, we might have been in the middle of it!  

It was a travel trailer totally mushed upside down on it's roof~!   The tow vehicle was upright and okay.  We can only assume something happened to the trailer either the hitch came loose, or high winds, or a person cutting them off, or too fast for towing safely or whatever.  But I saw a crushed doggie crate between the floor and ceiling surfaces of the trailer.. which were now compressed together!   We drove past slowly... and just hoping their happy doggy was up in their truck with them and not being towed back in the trailer in it's crate where it would have been crushed to death?


As we drove along, we were getting some pretty funny looks from people passing us on the interstate... especially children???  Boring riding in the back seats of their parent's cars ... we were giving them something funny to notice in our Tracker, being towed behind our motorhome.

Seems we had a "barely new driver" in our Tracker???  Hmmmmm 

This is one of the bears Norma bought at the auction and sent home for our grandtots

The winds had kicked up from the south and were gusting as we drove northeast... but we were getting a pretty good tail wind on the way home. Helps with the mileage too, ya know.

There were bad storms to the south and west of us... and some tornado warnings too.  I kept close watch on the weathermaps on Wunderground as we drove along in our motorhome.  High winds and a big rectangular shaped box zooming down the road are not a good combination.  We rode ahead of the storm all the way home....  and made it home without any bad weather. Not even a drop of rain. Actually the storms passed over and around Chilton, so once we got home it was pleasant.. but muggy warm and in the mid 80's outside.

Imagine our pleasant surprise of going into our new-to-us home, which had been closed up all weekend... to find the inside temperature was a comfortable cool 67 degrees!   With the garage blocking the hot sun to the west, our home seems to stay naturally cool, even on hot days?   What luck!  Being our first spring/summer in this home, we may find we don't have to run the central air as often as we thought.  This is our first home with central air, so that is another added budget expense we hadn't had before.

I had a nice big box waiting for me in the front porch. YAY!  It's my new warp yarn order from Chris Gustin at http://www.homesteadweaver.com   Time to warp up in one of my favorite patterns...

I have some denim rugs to get done for a customer. The pattern really compliments the denim fabric. She also included some big cones of sock yarns that I am anxious to try out too!  So it was fun opening up a box of good weaving stuff.  It's like Christmas!

Steve started cracking the whip and we unloaded the fridge and food and clothes from the motorhome.  We left in the loom and supplies until tonight when we have more time to unload.  As it was so hot and muggy, we didn't want to be outside any more than we had to.

About 8 p.m. a front came through, the winds changed to cool breezes from the east, off Lake Michigan. We put on our shoes, and took a walk up to Dairy Queen for a sundae.  Our lilacs are just starting to open here, and we were enjoyed the scents and smells of new blossoms all the way there and back.

Today I am heading up to the greenhouse to get some flowers to start planting in my beds and the clay urn pots I prepared on the front steps. I hope the danger of frost has passed... in Wisconsin, you never know!

We are not going camping this upcoming Memorial weekend.  Instead we are staying home and invited the kids and grandkids to come over.  Seems the Memorial Day parade goes right past our house!   This is the first time we lived in a home where the parades go by, so we are going to be the lucky ones with lawnchairs on our front lawn which is a bit raised from the sidewalk... and we can watch the parade go by, grill out in the backyard, and watch the grandtots enjoy the holiday weekend!