String Notes

The Paracas Textile is online!

This is one of my favorite textiles ever, and is both beautiful and enormously complex. The needle-looped borders… oh my!

Not bad for something that’s closing in on two millenia old.

Go look for yourself!

My girls are a year old today, I believe. According to a random internet site, that makes them 18 in people years; they grow up so fast!

That’s the day we got them, a bit over eight weeks old. They’ve grown a bit! We got them assorted toys to celebrate: quiet, non-absorbent toys.

They have indeed grown, as you can plainly see, and I can plainly feel when they climb on me. They are snuggly, wonderful, playful girls, and I’m so pleased to have them. Even if they leave sopping wet toys in my bed.

Miss Norathar demonstrates alternate uses for one of the toys.

Miss Cawti supervises.

They still don’t get along very well with Trygvi, but coexist nicely with a closed door between them. They’ll look at and sniff at each other through a door braced open an inch or two, at least until the dog does something overly aggressive. It’s totally the dog’s fault, you know. Always.

Here’s to many more years with my sweeties!

Spring has been mighty slow in arriving, even if we’ve missed the last couple of big snowstorms. Even the sunny days have been cold, and my snowdrops have stubbornly kept their buds closed. Until today: sunny, warm, glorious. Even the snowdrops agreed.

I spent the afternoon raking up the neglected autumn leaves, mostly so that my squill could get to the light. I found a few other signs of spring.

I’m choosing to ignore the forecast for cold and snow, except insofar as I decided not to plant peas today.

The cardinals and robins are carrying on in the mornings, fascinating the felines.

It’s not so warm that sunbeams aren’t properly appreciated, though.

I’d like to show you the weaving I’ve spent the afternoon messing with but I can’t. Sorry.

So many nifty things on the internet this week:

• Sixteenth-century rocket cats. Why does this seem like a really awful idea?
• An article I hadn’t seen on the golden spider silk, with a lovely photo of the embroidery (previous links here and here).
• Hunting wild honey in Nepal. Neither fiber-arts related nor medieval, but stunning nonetheless. Actually, it could well be medieval.
• A Kickstarter to publish three sixteenth-century tailor’s books runs through April 3. It has already funded, but here’s your chance to get copies.

I have a whole list of things I want to work on, but that’s all it is, is a list. No actual working-on, except on my mindless shawl knitting. That’s okay, and I’m not going to fuss about it. (Much; you know me, there’s bound to be some fussing about lack of productivity, no matter how good the excuse.)

But other people are doing wonderful things, and they’d like you to know about them. Via various mailing lists, here are two excellent fiber arts videos. (Note: the embedded versions aren’t showing up in the preview; if they don’t show up in the final post they’re the same YouTube videos as are linked directly in the text.)

I really like the loom in this band-weaving video . I may need to make one of those.

And here’s a video from Linda Hendrickson on her ply-split basket book. If you’d like to learn ply-splitting, I’ll be teaching it at the Pennsylvania Fiber Arts Fest in September. I’ll also be teaching introductory tablet weaving again. It should be fun!

One of the things on that list of projects is to make some larger baskets for show-pieces for the class. I’m not sure exactly what the class will cover yet, but it may include making miniature baskets. Fun stuff.

Anyone want to have a fiber arts day, when you come over and help motivate me to do stuff? Like make the cords for the ply-split baskets, or warp up the tablet weaving project I’ve been researching?

Here, I got you this mouse.

And this snow storm.

I hope you like them.

I woke up this morning terribly excited to be able to walk the poor neglected boxer. Then I looked at the weather: 0F. Back into bed I went. An hour later, when I asked Trygvi whether he wanted to go outside and pee on things, he just looked at me from the comfort of the couch. “Mom, are you kidding? I was out in the middle of the night. It was cold. Mom, you know I don’t have any fur.” Spoiled boy that he is, I let him get away with it.

This kind of weather requires hand-knits! These are the long-delayed 9 to 5 socks, tweaked to be symmetrical rather than identical in the twist direction, in yarn I dyed. They sat around for months with all but the toe grafting completed, then I misplaced them. But they’re wonderful none-the-less!

And then there’s this brilliant piece of knitting.

It is a knitted and felted alpaca hat from the farmer’s market near my mother, made by the woman who raises the alpacas I believe. Is that not amazing? I had trouble taking a selfie with both the antennae and the dangly tassels, so I went with the antennae. Of course. I admit I was skeptical when I opened the box, but it’s absolutely wonderful.

Changing gears entirely, or as close as you can get within fiber arts, go look at this embroidered dress on Midori Snyder’s blog: a hand-embroidered version of the 1526 “Adam and Eve” by Lucas Cranach. I can’t even imagine.

I’m pretty sure that I’ve mentioned here before that the Metropolitan Museum of Art has made its back publications catalog freely available online.

Now the J. Paul Getty Museum has done the same thing.

So many nifty things to read about!

You can read the full tale to date at my other blog, where I’ll be chronicling my latest adventure, but the short version is that no matter how healthy I am or how fine I feel, I’ve been diagnosed with metastatic colon cancer.

Yikes.

I won’t be mentioning it much here, but intend to write a fair bit at the other site. There’s no percentage in silence and secrecy.