Heathrow to Pittsburg

It has been a long day. I left Ruth's house at 0730 for Terminal 5,Heathrow, left Terminal 5 at 0955, ate pasta with pesto for lunch (the option was chicken), slept as much as I could, arrived New York at midday which was five o'clock UK time. Caught a plane to Pittsburg at 1500 hours and am now in a hotel in the centre of Pittsburg. I am trying to decide whether it will be a terrible mistake to lie down because I am supposed to have dinner with everyone at 0730. I think I had better try staying vertical.

View out of bus window going into Pittsburg

 

View out of my bedroom window.

There are 22 people on this tour of whom six were on the flight out of Heathrow, 3 joined us at New York and more were waiting for us at Pittsburg Airport. But not all.

The country side near Pittsburg is very hilly and forested. Very few houses and not much farmed land. This excess of land is obvious at Pittsburg airport. I counted seven planes and it is built for 20 to 30. The distances are vast which means a lot of walking. There is even an underground which was empty. In fact the whole place was empty. It is as though no one has come to their party.

 

 

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Sweet Thames Finished

So here is the finished Sweet Thames Run Softly  and below shows the endpapers

And I am not submitting it. The silk cover has worked well and feels great in the hand. I have completed the binding carefully but the killer is the text on the cover. I used the original text for cover and spine and scanned them into Photoshop. Then got rid of everything except the text and added the Castlemorton trees. The high resolution image was sent off to have a Thermofax made. What I did not realise is that much of the lettering has very narrow lines - and the resolution on the Thermofax is just not up to such narrow lines. Look at the upper photo.

I had the Thermofax made months ago and, if I had run off a trial then, I would have changed the lettering completely but, no, I had to leave it to the last minute. Well I have learnt a lot and it is better bound than most books I do.

Here is the brown lace scarf, washed pressed, fringe trimmed and it is so soft!

And now I am off, away from the hurly-burly of my studio and meeting deadlines that I stupidly accepted in the distant past. Tomorrow, London, Saturday Pittsburgh, Sunday Falling Waters and after that days full of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings. I do wonder if everyone else on the trip will be an architect. I will take lots of photos and share them with you.

Hampshire Handspun

After the experience of the brown handspun lace scarf, I felt that something soothing would be a good idea. When I talked on acid dyeing to Hampshire Guild two weeks back, I did a dyeing session the day before and took a series of photos. The dyed warp that resulted looked as though it might fit the bill. And it did. I started at 8 in the evening and had woven about 6 inches by bedtime. I had threaded up in 4 shaft twill but sections were reversed and sections were threaded as broken twill. I was weaving as a 2 and 2 twill which did not show up the dyeing enough. After 10 minutes reading a thriller in bed, I got up, unpicked the whole lot and rewove using a 3 and 1 twill.

This has turned into a complicated liftplan with reversals in the lifting and then a change from 1 and 3 to 3 and 1 twill! It does mean the scarf is much the same on both sides. You can see the warp alone at the top of the photo. It definitely needs toning down. But it is pleasure to weave and quite restful.

I have incorporated the series of photos into a section of my website ( Click Here) along with an explanatory text for anyone who is interested.

And now it is back to bookbinding and I am disinclined to start. I only have one shot at this and my mind is buzzing. Do it this way! Remember to do that! I shall be practising everything beforehand. The first thing to do is to do a complete run-through with the spare piece of fabric.

Brown Lace Scarf

In amongst all the fussing about binding Sweet Thames, I have been steadily weaving on the Voyager. This morning I sewed the seam at the end and cut it off. A bit of tidying up was required and doing the fringes. It looked like a textured brown handspun scarf. Then I washed it several times by hand and hung it up. And that's when I discovered the pattern! It stands out really well if there is light coming through it.

So it really is huck lace with flowers!! I think the pattern came from Handwoven originally but I have changed it a lot. I have tracked the pattern down to Pattie Graver and I am sure it appeared in Handwoven at some point.

Despite the pattern showing up, I think this was all a mistake. The pattern shows up much better with the same non-fuzzy yarn used in both warp and weft.

At the same time, I have been continuing the binding. I am waiting for the glue to dry on the covers and then I will make a complete mockup of the cover.  I might go and warp up the Voyager again.

Sweet Thames is out to get me

I am still working on binding Sweet Thames. The bits I expected to be troublesome have not been but the easy bits have been my downfall. The top and bottom edges were very discoloured. Liverpool City Council saw fit to paint the top edge then stamp their name on it but I sanded that all off which left the top and bottom edges lovely and clean and flat while the fore-edge was very uneven and grubby. This morning, I clamped up the text block and very gently set about sanding the fore-edge down (which was curved inwards as it should be). I used a piece of dowel rod with fine sand paper wrapped round it and I was expecting trouble. Instead of which I have a nice clean even fore-edge. I then tipped on the endpapers, having had a bit of an exercise in mathematics to decide where to cut the endpaper. All okay.

While that was drying, I created a graphic in Photoshop using a scanned engraving from the book and a text saying I had rebound it in May 2014.  Printed off two and applied them to the book. Now this is not my habit but the City of Liverpool had put nasty purple stamps on the title page and the last page of text. The title page was particularly bad as the library had stamped CANCELLED across the first stamp in bold red letters. I printed out the labels, cut them to size and applied them. Fine. When I inspected the labels ten minutes later, the back page was okay but the red dye of CANCELLED had run and I have a pink stain on my label!!!!!! I am hoping as it dries a bit more, it will fade. I could paste another label on but that might come through too. I feel like giving up but have decided to go on. I may not submit the final book. In another 2 or 3 hours when everything is quite dry, I will finish off the spine.

I then investigated the silk fabric for the cover and found I had done more than I remembered. Since silk fabric frays, I had already backed it with fusible lining. I had also taken a piece of Perspex, masked off the size of fabric needed, selected and cut out the piece of fabric for final use. There is enough fabric for a second cover but it changes colour part way down. That does not matter for a practise piece, so it has been backed with bank paper and  is drying now. It will not be ready till tomorrow morning when I will print the title on to it using a Thermofax screen I had specially made.I will try stamping on some trees and ferns. If this all works, I will do the real fabric piece tomorrow. It will be usable on Thursday and I will finish the book then.

In between times (there is a lot of waiting around waiting for glue to dry in bookbinding), I have cut up all my silk samples, 35 of them, and put them onto Page 2 of the text.

I am sure I have other important things to do but my mind is totally concentrated on Sweet Thames and what the next thing to go wrong will be.

A Bad Day

This was a bad day on all fronts. I had arranged to go to Bournemouth with Anne and family but cried off as I have a lot to get through before next Saturday. (I hear it poured with rain on the South Coast so I lost nothing there)

First thing this morning there was an email reminding me that samples need to be in by Mid-June for the CW Fine Threads group. I have woven the fabric for the samples but I had forgotten about sending them off a cause des computer illnesses. In the afternoon I created the text to go with the samples, and had to create the graphics as well. Then printed off 35 copies. Fortunately I told the printer to print off the second page first (that's where the sample will go). When I started  on Page 1, it told me in no uncertain terms that that was it until I got some more ink. And I hope to get this off by Friday? Well I have ordered the ink. Tomorrow I will cut up the samples and stick them on Page 2 with archival sellotape. I had to take some new photos and do  a scan as well. So here are the results.

Here is the triangles fabric. Sage green silk 90/2 warp, 30/2 Gold silk weft

And the geometric fabric. Copper silk 30/2 weft. The other side looks really nice too.

In the meantime on the bookbinding front, the Carol book is parcelled up and will be posted tomorrow. But Sweet Thames is in serious trouble. I had practised pasting the Japanese gold printed paper to pastel paper. But the actual sheet is much bigger. I put the tissue down on the pasted backing (having waited till the paste was tacky) and it looked great. Two minutes later, it was wrinkled. Five minutes and it was badly wrinkled and has stayed that way until it was dry. So I have two problems. What do I use on Sweet Thames and what am I going to do with three sheets of this beautiful paper if I cannot stick it to anything?

So I inspected the paper stash and found a really nice 1930s paper which will do very well.

 Sweet Thames was published in 1941 so it fits stylistically. Tomorrow looks like being more of the same. I shall be quite glad when I leave for Pittsburg on Friday. At least it will be restful.

Birmingham's Rag Market

Birmingham Rag Market is very old though it has been rebuilt in recent years. It is slap in the middle of the Bullring Shopping Center which is slightly incongruous. There is an outdoor section which is shared with Fruit and Veg stalls and stalls selling freezer paper etc by the mile. Inside the building, there are rows of stalls selling everything needed for sewing, tape, thread, ribbon, buttons, all in a huge assortment. And there are the fabric stalls. Cotton at £1 per metre with the most expensive at £8 per metre. That was Liberty's Tana lawn and I bought some for a shirt. Silk chiffon in rainbow colours at £2 a metre and on and on. Ruth was quite overcome. We inspected everything despite the heavy rain, had a cup of tea and returned to buy what we wanted. Ruth has bought masses of cotton including a lovely border print. I bought cotton and three different colours of lining for three projects. After that, we took the train home, had lunch and Ruth started on her shirt which was the whole point of her visit. She started by trying on the printed pattern pinned together. That with thorough measurement, let her alter the pattern  and make a toile including a sleeve. By this morning the real fabric was cut out and now the body is finished and she is about to do the buttonholes.  Meantime I looked through all my cupboards and discovered a large number of unstarted projects. What have I been doing this year? I finished the donsu and the African trees and made a cotton shirt and that's it. I am hoping to finish the brown handspun before next Friday. I have finished rebinding the Book of Carols.

Outside

Inside. I reused the title and spine from the original cover. Not sure that was not a mistake because the old cover is quite faded.

Weaving and Bookbinding

It is raining today, not heavily but steadily and the gutters are all gurgling away. I have spent the day working alternately on weaving and bookbinding.

I am getting faster on the Voyager but, even using spray starch, I have to check the shed each pass but I am approaching the end. The photo does not show up the pattern but it does exist and I can see it from certain angles and lighting angles.

This is what it should look like. I am soldiering on wondering what will happen when I wash it.

As to the bookbinding. Late last night I got enthusiastic and set about creating endpapers for the Sweet Thames book. It contains a lot of engravings and I took two of them and turned them into this.

This is as far as I got. The idea was to repeat this across the paper. Firstly, when printed, the motifs are too small and secondly, A4 paper does not quite fit the book - by about 5 mm so that was all wasted effort. I then turned the stash over and found this.

This was bought in Kyoto and is Japanese tissue paper printed in gold with two cranes and a pond scene. I have four sheets like this so have enough in case of accidents. I do not want to see the cover behind it and will put some red brown pastel paper behind. Last night I pasted a 4 inch square of the tissue brown (without the gold!) on a similar  square of pastel paper and examined it carefully when it was dry. I need to be very carefully when folding it in half as it might crinkle up.

I did decide to complete the Carol book first and have just about finished. Text block resewn, tapes sewn on, scrim and paper added to spine, book covers cut and covered. It is currently in the press. This evening, I will assemble the text block into the cover and tomorrow I will paste on the title and spine from the old copy which is currently wrapped up in a damp teatowel waiting to be pulled apart.

Tomorrow first thing, I am meeting my daughter, Ruth, at New Street Station, Birmingham and we are going to the Rag Market. It will fun even if it rains.

Chelsea Flower Show

Yesterday, the grandfather clock was carefully dismantled, loaded into the car and driven to Ruth's house. After a quick lunch, we set out for Chelsea Flower Show, meeting Rosie Price at Sloan Street Tube Station.

Meet Mabel and her son, Horace, who have taken up residence in my garden. They came from the first stall we saw inside the show ground and it was difficult to get them back to Egham because Mabel weighs a lot. There was a lot of sculpture around.

A blue glass agapanthus - large.

These dark red lilies really are this colour.

A lovely display of vegetables. The cream roots to the front left are horseradish. I collected lots of catalogues -  coffee time reading for a few days. I found a supplier of auriculas and must order some. They said they bult their own auricular theatres and I could do quite well by buying an old bookcase. I shall keep an idea on freecycle. We were all tired at 8 o'clock and went home.

Today I have driven home, unpacked and started tidying up in the studio. I have already found a missing page for a book I want to bind. I msut go and see what else I can find.

Back to Bookbinding

I have a book of Carols which I have been asked to sort out. Diagnosis
- covers are in book cloth, very worn, board has come through at all corners
- text block sewing still reasonable
- several pages torn and one page has come completely adrift
- paper very brittle

Yesterday, I stripped it down. The covers will have to be completely replaced but I can rescue the titles and paste these on to the new covers. I do not think I have a midblue book cloth, just baby blue and dark blue. I stripped off the scrim and backing from the spine (there were no tapes). Today I separated out the section which has the torn out page, unpicked the sewing in that section and repaired the two separated sheets with bank paper. Then repaired the other torn pages. When the glue is firmly dry, I will sew this section into the other two bits of textbook, then sew on tapes

At the same time, I inspected the book I want to bind for the Society of Bookbinders. I have removed the cover. It was the property of Liverpool Council and they have stamped the book in all sorts of places, including on the top edge of the book in purple on dark green. So I spent a lot of time sanding down the top and bottom edges to get back to the cream colour of the text block. I need to get on with this binding and will be devoting lots of my time over the next ten days to it. I intend to use 4CDW in silk for the cover but need to carry out a series of experiments first. That is a job for Thursday.

I have woven for two hours on the brown handspun. And planted the last lot of seeds. I need to plant out some lettuce but it is raining hard. No hope tomorrow - I am off to see the Chelsea Flower Show! And I am taking back to Ruth her grandfather clock which was staying with me while she was in Malaysia. Her theory was the climate would not be good for it.

Sample dyeing at Winchester

I did a demo of space dyeing at Hampshire Guild on Saturday but did not steam them. As soon as I arrived home, I set the steamer going and on Sunday they were rinsed and dried.

The warp was three identical warps in wool and silk (50:5)0, size 12/3 nm so substantial. I plaited the three warps together tightly and painted violet, dark blue and scarlet on the damp warp. It is a bit in your face. I will have to tone it down by using a non-white weft. I do have a lot of the same yarn in baby blue so I will try that but gut feeling says that will be too pale and I might have to dye the weft.

This was a spur-of-the-moment sample. I took along a ball of handspun, beige in colour - dyed with natural dyes. This was used to demo how to inject dye into a ball. This was done during the talk but, at the hands-on demo at the end, I showed them how to do it for real. Rather nice and the yarn feels lovely. So this yarn will be used to create warp stripes along with some beige yarn for the rest the warp. 

I will put the series of photos about space dyeing on my website and will give notice here when it is done.

My current weaving on the Voyager is not going well. This has a  handspun warp in various shades of brown. Originally I was going to use the same yarn for weft but decided instead to use a brown silk noil which looks fine. There are two things wrong. First the threaded pattern is huck lace and this is a mistake with using various shades of brown. Secondly and much more important, the warp yarn is horribly sticky. I am using spray starch which does improve things but I am still checking each shed and half the time, clearing the shed before inserting the shuttle so this makes weaving SLLOOOOWW.  I get a complete pattern, five inches done in an hour. I was tempted to cut the whole lot off but decided no, I just will keep plodding on. I really would like to see it after washing.

This has cheered me up. This is the result of a whole morning spent dealing with seeds and seedlings. The lettuce and pak choi in the foreground will be planted out in the garden tomorrow. Behind are potted up marigolds and Zinnias and other things and behind that with long straight leaves are all the irises which have been potted up today. Behind them are all my auriculas which have also been potted up. Tomorrow I have the vegs to plant out and more seeds to put into pots. Nothing like this lot though. It will only take an hour.

A Nice Day Out

Yesterday I gave a talk to Hampshire Guild and, since it meets in Winchester and does not start until lunchtime, I left home early and went to Hilliers Gardens. Michael was a great fan of Hilliers when they ran their own nursery. They issued a catalogue (not a photo in sight) but he knew that, if you wrote to them, they might have that special plant which did not appear in the catalogue. The gardens now belong to Hampshire County Council and they are making a good job of upkeep. Lots of people there and the cafe is good. I recommend a visit.

This is the Centenary Border, just starting to be colourful. It must be magnificent in July/August. They had a big planting of Paeonies but the tree peonies were over and the herbaceous ones were just showing colour. I would say they were a week ahead of Malvern.

There were a number of sculptures for sale dotted round the garden, mostly bronzes and rather good. However I was taken with the one above. Called 'Cocoon', it is about two foot across. No other sculpture was suspended from a tree!

The talk went off without calamity. They asked loads of questions and were very interested. I was dubious about the actual demo because how do you demo to 40 odd people? Well they had the solution. Drag the table into the middle of the room and rearrange the chairs so they formed a wide oval. And everyone could see. I hope I have encouraged them to rush home and try acid dyeing for themselves. To tell the truth, it was all rather enjoyable. They are a very friendly bunch.

Home Again

We flew home to Stansted on Wednesday and I drove to Ruth's house, stayed the night and was on the road home by 0630 on Thursday. Lots of washing and tidying up but mostly dealing with a talk on Acid dyeing that I am giving to Hants Guild on Saturday. I had the Powerpoint presentation ready but was undecided about the demos. This bothered me so much that I consulted with my sister, Dorothy, in Dundee. What was bothering me most is that I was told there could be 40 or more people there and how can you demonstrate to so many people? The final arrangement is that I take a series of photos of the procedure and include these in the talk, then do a hands-on at the end of the talk. So I had to wind a warp last night and at 0800 hours, I was in the garage dyeing and photoing. It is all done and written up.

Final result. The wool is Hampshire spun by Lesley Dunn and the warp was chained tightly. Now I have to wind a warp ready for the demo tomorrow.

In between I inspected the garden. I have missed a single peony on my new tree peony. But all the other peonies are still out. The vegetables are coming along nicely and the radishes and spring onions are ready for eating.

A pink trillium!

And my bougainvillea on the patio. This has spent the winter in Ruth's conservatory and came home yesterday. She and Robin are quite smitten with it so I have bought them one.

I have answered lots of emails but, if you have not had an answer, I will be doing the rest on Sunday.

Second Day in Santiago

Today we had a conducted tour of Santiago finishing up in the market which was great.

Meat and cheeses.

Fish

And veg and veg seedlings.

This was followed by a tapas lunch which took place in two bars, one for fish and one for meat and cheeses. Everything was delicious. Later in the day, Ruth and I returned to the second bar because it was a sort of deli and bought lots of things to take home. After lunch we followed the Spanish custom and had a siesta. Well all the shops are shut between 2 and 5.15pm. At four we went round to the Cathedral and joined a tour of the Cathedral roofs. We had seen people waving at us from the balustrade and assumed that was it. Not a bit of it. We walked on the roofs.

Not that easy, in places a bit frightening. But the views were good.

After that we went to the Cathedral Museum. We were able to walk past crumbling carvings and pillars with ease! We headed for the library which had glass fronted bookcases on all four walls, 18th century I guess. On top were ornamental urns with coloured flowers in them. Very attractive. There was also a display of some of their earliest manuscripts, with illuminated letters.

There were some textiles, mostly 14th century and later. There was a piece of linen embroidered with tigers and giraffes from the 11th century and some fragments of silk damask of the same age. No photos allowed of course. So we inspected the tapestries. Some from cartoons by Rubens, Teniers and Goya. Goya is not improved by being turned into tapestries, you can keep Rubens and the Teniers was very jolly with tapestries of partying at inns. After that we went shopping. Do you realise that,apart from the occasional euro spent on tea, no money was spent at all since we started the Camino. So we bought some books, some preserves, sardines in tins, chocolate and some very nice jewellery to make up for lost shopping therapy.

And just to round things off

this is my Compostela which says I have walked the Camino Compostela.

 

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Santiago

This morning we were up at six o'clock and packing. On the bus at eight and on our way for the last stretch. There was a steep hill upwards and then after a view of Santiago, a steady downhill into the city. We arrived outside the cathedral after ten and pottered around viewing the sights until eleven when we went into the cathedral for high mass at midday. A magnificent cathedral and very large.

All of us just before entering the cathedral.

Inside the cathedral

 

The two photos above show the great censer swinging with the men operating it. All rather startling because the censer is suspended from the Central tower and is swung until it reaches the horizontal. All rather dangerous looking. The high mass was rather odd to my Protestant way of thinking. First a nun appeared 15 minutes before midday and coached the assembled throngs in singing. She had a beautiful voice herself and was dealing with a mixed nation congregation and did it beautifully. Then four priests appeared and the service started but the nun still ran the singing. The organ is quite something. Then at the very end we had the censer ceremony.

I would guess there were more than a thousand people present. Our hotel is an ancient building by the north door of the cathedral.

The afternoon was spent sleeping, - the shops are all shut anyway. We went out later and looked around. Ended up in a fabric shop!! Ruth bought two lengths of silk and I bought one of cotton.

So what now. Well, I am glad I came. I do not think my character has changed/improved. But it is a bit late in life for that. So I was not expecting a change. Walking through the countryside day after day does remove one from normal life. I think if you walked the whole length of the Camino Santiago which is 800 km in Spain, you would change in character.

 

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Selceda to Lavacolla

I did 10 miles today. It was a lovely day walking through forest although it was hilly. But my left hip decided to be painful. However we saw several things of interest.

Sign in a cafe. Most cafés are forbearing about pilgrims taking their shoes and socks. This one is the only one which does not allow it inside the cafe. Can you imagine a cafe in England in the countryside letting you take you shoes and socks off as soon as you arrive?

This is us at the monument overlooking Santiago.

And this is what we were looking at. The towers of the Cathedral of Santiago. We are staying at a pazo which is a fortified ancient house. This one has a chapel, a water mill and a man who

will fetch beer or tea or anything else.

Our bedroom. We are all washed and clean and going off to our final dinner tonight. Tomorrow is our last day. We only have 7.5 km to walk and we must be in Santiago in time for noon for Mass.

Have I thought great thoughts? No but I have thought some little ones.

1) the plans for the Grand Canyon were too ambitious. Written off

2) I always fancied walking the Appalachian Trail. After talking to someone who has done it, written off

3) Walking Hadrian's Wall. Is doable. Plans are being made for 2015.

4) ditch some responsibilities. Not saying which because it will upset some people. Not Kennet Valley Guild.

5) spend less time galloping round the world and more time in the garden.

6) deliver grandfather clock to Ruth and Robin (next week!)

7) get rid of Monstrous Victorian bureau which belongs to my grandson Tom. It will never go in a modern house so I am to sell it for him.

8) get rid of a lot of unused China hanging round the house

That will do for now. No very spiritual but the house will end up cleansed!! Even if I am not. I suppose the biggest surprise/disappointment was that there were so few of the12th century churches and chapels open. I had imagined there would be lots of them but there were only three in108km.

 

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Palas de Rei to Melide

Today was a short day, 12 miles, and we had a surprise at the end. But to start at the beginning.

We started out very near a chapel and visited it. It may have been 12th century but the windows had been replaced in modern times. There were six of these windows and we could identify the topics quite easily, fish (above), ears of corn, an apple tree, a saint and two which we failed on. After a bit of walking we came across of bulbs in flower - wild flowers. The whole field was fenced off as were other areas where they were flowering. But we did come across a stray.

Each flower is more than an inch across and the whole plant is two to three foot high. Ornithogalums?

Another ancient chapel. Santa Maria de Leboreiro

A Roman bridge

A cistus! Flower about two inches across and lots of them. When we had crossed another larger Roman bridge, we were in Melide and were taken to a restaurant which specialises in octopus. All I can say if that I have never liked octopus and I have not changed my mind. The chorizo sausage and chips were to die for so some of us were happy. The octopus was the surprise. By the way, we finished 1530.

After eating in Melide, we were driven to our current stopping point. This is the view from our window. We are here for two days, so Ruth and I had a session of stuffing dirty clothes into plastic bags for the hotel to launder tomorrow.

Today was a good day. It is true that a lot of effort goes into putting one foot in front of another but you see other people on the Camino and wonder why they ever started. Because most people do the same stretch on the same day, you keep running into the same groups. Two groups in particular. One is three girls maybe 20 years old but one is in a wheelchair and the other two takes turns to push her, both carrying heavy rucksacks , a real labour of love. And a Dutch family Dad pushing cycle loaded down, and carrying large rucksack, Mum with equally large rucksack and two small girls about six and eight! I have been told of a man with a donkey. And there are cyclists though they must have a separate Camino because the rough bits would be impossible unless you carried the bike.

 

 

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