Warps and Machines

It rained last night! We sure needed that. After a few days of hot weather (even for us), it's good to see that we might only be in the lower 90s today!! The gardens will be happy. My petunias in the window box, on the other hand, have been decimated by the squirrels. It's always a game to see how long they last before the squirrels discover them. The plants can disappear in a day. I'm still trying to find what plant has flowers that they don't like.

Last Tuesday we had a mini dye day at the center. Some people wove, the rest of us played with dye!! I had wound a warp of bamboo. Wound it in 3 sections but painted them all shades of blue and green. That's something that is out of my comfort range colorwise. I'm more of a red and orange person. I think there were 4 different blues and as many greens that I painted on there. I like how it turned out.

 There are 3 skeins for the wefts. I planned 3 vests again for this warp. The left over bits of weft will go into warps for scarves, but that's for later this fall when I have time to warp the pup.  Each vest will have a similar look but the colors will be so different. I'm excited about weaving them. The weft in the foreground  was leftover dye that Christy had. The colors are wonderful! Too bad I don't have time til the end of August to weave this warp....

This is a really hectic time of year at our place. So the one thing we didn't need was trouble with the washing machine. A few weeks ago we noticed that it would make a banging noise when it spun. Not a big deal, just louder at times than normal. However, then when it spun it would get increasingly louder, the inner tub banging against the outside of the machine until it quit and this is what the machine showed:

Not what you want to see. So, ok, it's unbalanced........but it's a medium sized load and it's all around the tub like it should be. So you turn it back on and it starts again. It gets really bad when it's at the spin cycle. When it quits there, it goes back to the beginning of the spin cycle, 12 minutes. You never end the whole thing. So I've been taking out wetter than it should be clothes and let the dryer do the hard work.
We called where we got the machine and asked about repairs. The good news is that we had bought the extended warranty. The better news is that the 5 years doesn't end til end of August!!! A guy did come Saturday to fix it. I had to miss the fun at LouAnn's because of that. He came, worked on the machine and said it was fine now and left. The bad news is that the first load I put in after he left did the same thing.....I called the repair number and got a guy who said he'd pass the word on and someone would call within 12 hours. Sure. I waited. No call. So here I am babysitting the washing machine and hoping that I'll get a few loads done. Well, at least the load that's in there now because I've had to re start it twice and it goes back to the beginning of the rinse cycle each time. Guess I'll have to turn it to drain and spin and hope enough water goes out to get the things into the dryer.
I'll give them a couple of hours and then start calling again.....
Just what I needed right now. This is the busiest time of year at our place with alot going on. I didn't need this distraction. I won't get alot of weaving done this week, but I'll do as much as I can.

Pierre has arrived from France. He's our friend that comes each summer to help us with our convention next week. I'll post more next Monday about that.
Hope you stay cool and productive this week!
Carol