Weaving a scarf on an old teaching loom

My interest (or obsession) in a new craft is often blocked by a lack of funds to buy or build the equipment I need to explore it, but I never let that stop me. My current obsession is weaving. I love the feel of hand woven material and it is such a useful skill. However....looms range from expensive to 'you've got to be kidding me!' so I have as usual sourced some make-it-yourself websites and such. I came across the clip below and decided I love the design so much I have to make one (with a few modifications of course).

The basics of loom design come down to having something to hold the warp taut (the warp is the threads that run up and down the loom) and a system for lifting warp threads in a specific order to pass the weft through (the weft are the threads which run from side to side). After that the designs are all refinements.

In the mean time.....I have an old and broken teaching loom. I have warped it up with recycled fingering weight yarn that I bought from a Lifeline shop, and decided to try my hand at making a scarf (classic beginners project). To add a degree of interest, and because I have no idea what I'm doing, I decided to make the scarf using a Brooks Bouquet stitch pattern (See the clip below).

My pattern is 19 picks (rows) of tabby weave (plain weaving) and one row of Brooks Bouquet stitch and repeat.

I plan to finish the ends using a hem stitch and have a plain (yellow) but elegant (hopefully) scarf to wear to work next winter.

This is my progress so far;

So far, it's been a lot of fun and I can't wait to build my loom. I am saving up for the materials.

Local insects and animals - Feathertail glider

This afternoon, on the way home from work, I was contacted by a local school. They had a tiny little Feathertail glider in a box; apparently she  (it's a girl) had glided down into assembly this morning. When I got home (a half hour bus ride and a 1 km walk later) I opened the box to see what I had. She is a juvenile female (weighing in at just 7 g) and seemed fairly active and bright to me. I put a shallow dish of water in the box and some gum flowers from the trees outside, snapped some quick photos, weighed her and had a look to see what gender she was. Then I popped her back in the box and left her in peace while I rang WIRES. 

The Feathertail glider is the smallest gliding mammal in the world, with an average weight of 12g. They feed on pollen, nectar, insects and seeds. In this area they are fairly common, often being found drowned in dogs water bowls or bought in by cats. 

I think this one was probably heat effected as it was a burning hot day. Heat stress kills a lot of native animals, especially those who live in urban areas (like in the school buildings). This little girl will be handed over to a wildlife carer and hopefully will be released back into her home territory before too long.

Blurry, but I was trying to prevent an escape.

Look at that feathery tail. The curling indicates distress, and who can blame her; a big predator has her.

If you have Feathertail gliders in your area you can put out SHALLOW water containers, plant flowering native shrubs and (most importantly) bring in the dog and cat at night.

Oh, and thank you to the little girl who held the box so carefully for me all the way home (you know who you are).

Local insects and animals - White-winged chough

We frequently have some noisy visitors to the animal pens; white-winged choughs. These funny little birds are often mistaken for crows by people who have never seen them before. They are mostly black with a white spot on their wings which is only visible when flying. They eat insects and seeds; which is why they love our place.
They forage for food on the ground, but always leave a lookout in a tree to watch for predators (which includes me in their eyes). The group we have here is relatively small; only eleven members this year, but they are often seen in flocks of 20 or more. They are social birds and spend long hours feeding and caring for the juveniles in the flock.
I often find a few choughs in a chook pen, eating happily with the chooks. They seem to help keep the fly population down too and watching them chase a stinging fly over the yard provides many laughs.

These two were eating grain this morning when I went to feed the chooks.

A blurry close up

I love having birds visit the humpy.
Have you seen choughs at your place?

Happy Beltane to all

Once again it is the season of love...
Beltane marks the beginning of summer on our calendar (maybe not yours though) and brings with it a sense of joy and fun. This is the time for the ewes to begin cycling (coming into season) in earnest and they will cycle more and more regularly now until the autumn equinox (Mabon) when I will let Stag the ram out with the girls to make more lambs. Beltane also begins the storm season, with afternoon storms sweeping over regularly, bringing fertility to the land.

This year we had planned to go dance the Maypole (should we call it a November pole in the southern hemisphere?) but I was unfortunately incapacitated by a migraine yesterday. Instead we will do some fertile, life affirming acts here at home today and have a Beltane feast of our own;

I have seedlings to go into the garden; at this time of year we show faith that the coming season will be a good one by blessing crops. To nurture plants through the long summer takes commitment and patience and we begin the process now. Long ago the Celts blessed the fields at Beltane after the planting at Ostara by making love on the ground, but I think I will stick with spilling a little blessed wine.

The Hugelkulture beds have some space for seedlings.

The lambs need a drench; Beltane is primarily a fertility sabbat, but it also is a time of protection, especially for domestic stock. It is the time of year when babies are becoming juveniles in the flock and require a lot of care and protection. Traditionally, the stock are driven between two bonfires at this time to ensure their health for the coming year, I will be drenching the lambs with the same state of mind and intent.

I found a great frame loom plan I could make; fertility is not always about having babies, it is also about letting your creativity flow. I will research my new loom and make notes of what I need to build it as a Beltane gift to myself.

That is my Beltane...how was yours?

What we do to reduce our carbon footprint

We all want to reduce our carbon footprint...right?
Well when you live like we do here in our little humpy, the usual advice doesn't always apply.
There are thousands of 'Reduce your carbon footprint' sites on the internet, mostly giving the same advice. Have a look at just a few;
Australian Museum
COTAP
Green Wiki
Mashable

In general the advice seems to be;
Reuse and Recycle what you can (already doing that)
Eat less red meat (I think once a week qualifies as less)
Drink tap water rather than bottled water (check)
Buy less and buy to last (That's us all over)
Use less heating and cooling (no air conditioners here)
Use less electricity (ours is solar so it doesn't apply)
Wash in cold water (There's a hot water option?)
Don't fly as much (We can't reduce this; we don't fly)
Don't drive as much and use public transport (I don't drive and go everywhere on the school bus)
Shop locally, especially fresh foods (Yep)
Grow some vegetables at home (Yep)


What do we do to reduce our carbon footprint?

We use solar power only, no grid electricity. We do use a generator once a week though.

We collect all our own water via a roof and tank system, we use very little fuel to pump the water up to a header tank to supply the house via gravity feed.

We don't buy anything we don't need and all our groceries come from the local Co- Op.

We have a vegetable garden, which could be better but I'm working on it.

I don't drive, I go everywhere on the local school buses or car pool. My partner does have a car for work though.

We sort our rubbish carefully and reuse everything we can and recycle everything we can. Making eco bricks with soft drink bottles and plastic rubbish has been a big step forward in this area. So has our use of old tyres for construction materials.

Of this list there are one or two things we could do better;

My partner has a four wheel drive for work, it uses a LOT of fuel in the course of his working week; we do need to invest in a more fuel efficient vehicle so he can go about the countryside saving carbon (he installs solar electricity systems) AND producing less carbon. I wish there was a work horse type vehicle available in an electric option with a range greater than 200 km.

At the moment we use gas for refrigeration, I would like to change this to an electric fridge (and I dream of a freezer) but that will require double the solar panels we have now, a new set of batteries and maybe a new inverter (the thing that changes 12 Volt power to 240 Volt power).

We run our generator on petrol; it is used once a week for four hours to charge the batteries (just an extra boost) while I do the washing as the washing machine uses too much power to run on solar (although a bigger inverter would fix that problem). To get away from this fuel use we would need to either upgrade our inverter or build/buy a hand operated washing machine. I am swayed towards building a hand operated machine myself, but like all hand operated things it needs more time to do things that way. Maybe when I am finished studying....

What do you do to reduce your carbon footprint?
What else can we do to reduce ours? Ideas welcome.

A new yarn swift - home made

What is a yarn swift?
Well...you know when you are watching a movie in the evening and decide to ball up some yarn for a new project you are just dying to knit? The inevitable problem is to get someone (partner, visitor, small child, family dog) to hold the skein while you ball up the yarn. Nobody wants to do it so you end up trying to ball from a skein hung over two chair legs or over your own feet (which is a bit like yoga) leading to knots and snarls (knots in the yarn, snarls on your face). A yarn swift is a mechanical helper who will hold the yarn steady for you whenever you like while you make cute little balls of knitting materials.

I guess my mostly absent partner got very tired of being met at the door by arm loads of skeins because he made me a swift.

First we did a bit of internet research to find the right design;

Then the building began...

He built pretty much to the instructions in the clip (the difference between us... I can't follow instructions).

The base is a piece of spare ply

Finding the centre to drill the hole

Drilling the hole

The bolt thingy in the base for the arms to swing around.

A spacer so the arms aren't too close to the base.

Sawing the arms to the right length

The arms are notched so they sit level with each other

See

Drilling the hole right through the middle

A bit of copper pipe in the middle holds it all together

Yes...it spins

The finished unit. Thanks Hon

Local insects and animals - St Andrews Cross spider

A lot of people seem to be frightened by spiders, I don't know why. Maybe it's the way they move or the fact that a small (really small) proportion of them are poisonous? These don't seem like good reasons; after all a small (really small) proportion of people are murderous, and we still keep talking to them...
On my recent trip to my mother's garden I managed to snap a picture of a really pretty spider, so I thought I would try to identify it.

X marks the spot

After a little bit of internet searching I discovered that this is a St Andrews Cross spider (as you probably guessed from the post title). I also discovered some amazing facts about Australian spiders (as is the way with internet searches);

• Spiders have eyes like ours; not segmented or faceted like an insects.
• The funnel web and red back are the only really venomous species in Australia, the bites of other spiders can be irritating but not dangerous (unless you are operating heavy machinery, but that's another story).
• Mating is very dangerous for some male spiders; females may not even wait to mate before eating him.
• There are some killer knit and crochet patterns out there for spiders and spider webs (I got distracted, OK?)

As for the St Andrews Cross spider specifically;

• They are a species of orb spider; known for their beautiful web spinning.
• There are at least three sub species of St Andrews Cross; Argiope keyserlingi and Argiope picta and Argiope mangal (based on our geographical location, the one above is a Argiope keyserlingi).
• They make that beautiful cross that they sit on from a special UV reflective web which they use to attract insects to their web.
•  The spider gets it's name from the shape of the cross it makes in it's web. In short; St Andrew was a Christian priest in Turkey or Greece who convinced a Roman commander's wife to give up sex, the commander had him crucified for it (Freud would be right onto that one) but he requested that he be tied to a saltire (an X rather than a +) as he was not worthy of being crucified in the same way as his Christ.

They are certainly beautiful little spiders. They are not venomous, they catch insects for a living and they build art in the garden, what's not to like?