...and so is my blog, believe it or not.

I know I haven't posted in a long time (ok, maybe it was a really long time), I've been really busy. All these things that I've been wanting to do and never been able to for one reason or another, all the sudden this year a bunch of those things are suddenly where I can do them... things like a vegetable garden, and weaving!!

You'll only get pictures of the garden if I can keep the deer out of it (you can laugh at my naivety now...)

The first hand-woven goods are in the washing machine as I speak type. They're simple cotton dishcloths and I made them for my mom for mothers day, you don't have to keep them a secret though, she knows. It's kinda hard to hide a 2.5' wide x 2.5' deep x 3' high table loom on the kitchen table in a small house and come up with a believable excuse for all the crashing and banging that results from the use of it, so I decided before I ever started that I would just tell her up front.

Here's the finished product before washing (which comes before hemming or even cutting apart), since I wove it all on the same warp it was about 3.5 or 4 yards of fabric, and I needed some help photographing it all;

I worked with sage green and off-white warp (the vertical strings tied on the loom, for those of you who don't weave) and different combinations of off-white, navy blue and the sage...

I've been extremely blessed to live so near to such knowledgeable women who are so eager to share that knowledge with me. And that's not where the blessings end either - One of the woman who has been teaching me is willing to let me borrow a floor loom until I find the one I want.

This same woman who heads up the Spinning & Weaving guild orders in large lots of mill end cotton from the east coast for the ladies of the guild to purchase from her for amazing prices (e.g. a cone of 8/2 weight 100% cotton for $4 a pound!).

And finally, one of my weaving teachers is left-handed (like me!). How cool is that?

The levers on my Grandma's table loom are positioned on the lower right-hand side (this is unusual for a loom, none of the women in the guild have seen one like that), this concerned both my mom and the woman teaching me (which is partly why she's offered to let me borrow a floor loom) and they were at least partially right in their concerns, I had to recruit my right-handed sister to help me finish the last towel since I was getting a sharp pain in my upper right arm. The pain was the least of their worries about me using a right handed loom, but I didn't really want to keep going and prove them completely right...

Well I need to go check on the towels now! I think they might be ready to iron and hem!!