This and that

First, the cool news: Syne Mitchell interviewed me, Claudia, and Alison (my two partners in Weavolution) a few weeks ago, and the interview is now up in the latest Weavecast!  Syne did a fantastic job of editing the interview, so if you want to hear all about Weavolution, go to the latest episode and listen to it.  Way cool!

The poppies turned out to be a washout; the flowers had nearly all faded by the time we  arrived on Saturday morning.  That’s wildflowers for you: ephemeral!  But we did see some beautiful slopes outside the Poppy Reserve that were literally orange with poppies (and gold with the tiny goldflowers), so I don’t feel entirely cheated.

I also got to see a Mojave Green rattlesnake up close and personal! while we were out hiking, so I’m pretty excited about that.  I only got to see the tail end as the front end was buried in some brush, but it was still really nifty to see the sagebrush-green body with bleached markings, and the very distinctive rattle.  I was going to take a photo of it, but decided that would probably be unwise, so after watching it for awhile (from a respectful distance) I went on.

(The Mojave Green rattlesnake, incidentally, is one of the three rattlesnakes that are actually capable of killing a healthy adult human.  The two others are the Eastern and Western Diamondback rattlesnakes, which are just bloody darn huge, and so produce a lot of venom.  The Mojave Green is small, relatively speaking, but is unique (to my knowledge) among rattlesnakes in that it produces a neurotoxic venom, attacking the nervous system rather than the flesh, and hence can kill an adult human.  So while I was really excited about seeing it, I was just as happy not to be seeing the business end.  The tail was quite enough.)

I did, however, get one good shot of a patch of late poppies:

Not as impressive as a shot of an entire field of them, but still, there’s something about California poppies that just makes one happy, isn’t there?  They’re so beautiful, so cheerful, so ephemeral.  A gift from nature.

And, finally, on the way home I finished padstitching the collar:

If you look at the larger view, you can see the tiny stitches.  They go perpendicular  to the roll line in the section below the roll line (the basted line where the collar curves), and parallel to the roll line above the roll line.  These stitches hold the collar stand (the part that sticks up) straight up and holds the fabric in a permanent soft crease so the collar will fall naturally around the neck, later.  (You’ll notice that, even though I’ve flattened it out somewhat for the photo, the stitches are holding a soft fold at the roll line.)

This is all pretty time-consuming, so I’m getting a pretty good understanding of why people went to fusible interfacing once they had the opportunity to do so.   Still, I’m enjoying the process.

Next on my to-do list:

• Read up on the coat assembly process, apply interfacing where needed, and start basting together the pieces for a final fitting.  Read up on how to manage the facing and the lining.
• Dye a few more sample colors for the putative wedding dress, in preparation for CNCH in two weeks.
• Start thinking about what to create for the Complex Weavers Fine Threads study group exchange – mine is due in early May, oy vey!  I am thinking I will use some of the CNCH samples for this but haven’t really decided yet.