President's Day

I remember when both presidents got their own holiday! I wonder how many years ago they changed that? I seem to remember getting both holidays at some point in my working career. Have to check on that and report back.

Update on President's Day from the vastness of gobbelty gook on the internet. Washington's Birthday used to be celebrated on his birthday Feb.22nd. Lincoln's Birthday (which not all states observed) was celebrated on the 12th of Feb. In the early 70's, the Uniform Holiday act was passed putting all FEDERAL holidays on Monday. For a time Lincoln's birthday was still celebrated on the actual day, then, finally in the 80's the two were combined to President's Day. How sad, even our holidays have become homogeneous.

I can manage to come up with other blog worthy stuff though! The towels are off the loom and awaiting hemming.

I got 7 from the warp, all 27" long. I hope they will stay a generous length after washing. Some have 8/2 unmercerized weft, others linen and still others, 5/2 mercerized cotton. When they are all ready to go, I'll get another pic up of them.

The new warp for Hannah is going to be a hemp warp.

I've used this before to good effect, sort of like inexpensive linen. It gets just a wee bit softer in the finishing. This is All Hemp 3 fingering weight and runs $7.00 for 165 yards and for me is readily available at Web-sters. And speaking of the LYS full of treasure, my trip to town yielded some new Habu yarn.

This company always puts out such interesting products. They now have copper mixed with either silk or wool. I spent about 40 minutes just playing with the selections. I didn't bring home any of the SS or copper yarns, but the variegated textured yarn is a 1/14 spiral slub of wool and poly, the two cones of solid colors are 2/48 fine merino. I can see using theses to dress some weaving up beautifully.

While it has been snowy and cold outside, I've been snug in my sewing space making a summer top. While it says it's a beginner pattern, I did a few things to it I felt needed to be done. The change from a keyhole to sweetheart neckline meant a whole new neck interfacing had to be fashioned. I also interfaced the button and buttonhole band. The pattern doesn't have you do this and I think it really should, especially with the light fabrics recommended with this pattern. I know the shot cotton I used is quite light in weight.

All the tucks where top stitched to give them a nice flat appearance. I was so happy for Rhonda the dress form. The neck gaped quite a bit at the shoulder seams and I was able to identify it and adjust before completing the blouse and finding out when it would have been a bear to fix. Like after the neck facings were on! Whew, good save because this fine material doesn't like the seam ripper much. The pattern itself is very distinct, but I will use it again on a limited basis. I love the back button detail and was able to keep this roomy enough to slip over my head and leave the buttons, well buttoned!

In other news, Gene was able to fix our big expensive Samsung flat screen (which is only 4 years old) for a grand total of $9.00 in new power source capacitors. This is a known problem to this TV by Samsung ( we didn't know when we bought it of course) but the fix was easy, assuming you know your way around that sort of thing. Gene does. To celebrate we both got sucked into the twin guilty pleasures of watching Titanic and Dirty Dancing. As if those two weren't enough, the new Roberta Flack ASPCA commercials sent me into tears, EVERY time.

Parting shot: Look Deep into My Eyes...