mercredi 31 août 2022

Pied flycatcher


Had a job trying to identify this bird. Asked a few naturalist friends and used the inaturalist app "seek". It is a juvenile pied flycatcher. Never seen the adult pied flycatcher which is black and white as the name suggests. Hopefully we ll see one next year. Only a couple of years ago I saw my first spotted flycatcher here.


 

mercredi 24 août 2022

Pic Seron(11), boucle classique

A hot day on Pic Seron, up by the west ridge then return via Etang d'Aubé and the col de Cerda, with Jasper his friend Stellan, susie and I. A swim in the lake cooled us down, but didn't stop sun burn all round!

In the evening finally some rain!

 








lundi 22 août 2022

Etang Garbet

                 
Some rain at last, hopefully more next week then things might start to grow again!

Jasper is here for a holiday before he starts his higher education access course. After a walk here in Aleu to break in his new boots, yesterday we set off to the Etang Garbet from Coumebière - our first walk in a very, very long time. A late start as we had to take the sheep for walk first but we eventually hit the trail at 11.00.

Much cooler weather at last and the clouds hid the tops for the most of the day. At the lake we had a leisurely lunch and watched a golden eagle high above us, below the crags of Pic Caumale just on the edge of the clouds.






A fly fisherman caught a small trout whilst we watched but he put it back.


The only option for a different way back was to follow the normal route down past Garbettou. We passed a large group (difficult on the narrow bouldery path) and eventually reached the road from Aulus. The 250m climb on the road through 8 hairpins back to the car was further than I remembered and a bit of slog.

mercredi 17 août 2022

Still no rain

We've been promised rain for the last few days but all that materialises are cloudy skies. The sheep are escaping less now there is as little food outside the fields as their is within. Things are getting pretty desperate. If there's no rain tomorrow then we'll have to wait until September if the forecasts are correct and another heatwave is due at the end of August. Maybe this is the new norm' now we have fucked our planet over good and proper!

A juvenile cuckoo....very shy hence the cropped long distance shot (pixelly)

Much better shot of a young red squirrel which will complete a triglyph of wildlife photos (weasel and black woodpecker) in our bathroom

mercredi 10 août 2022

Bobbin rack



When sectional warping each "section" of the warp (typically 1-2 inches wide) has to be wound onto back beam in one go. Eventually as many sections are wound as are required by the width of the fabric to be woven. Typically, as my fabrics are in 8/2 cotton with supplemental threads in 16/2 cotton, my warps tend to be around 24-26 epi (ends or threads per inch). That means to wind a 2 inch section I would need 48-52 bobbins of warp threads!

A bobbin rack is therefore required to keep all those threads organised - especially as they may be different colours and/or thicknesses and in a specific order.  Fortunately, I was given a bag of 52 turned bobbins that a neighbour found in his attic. So yesterday I set to work building a rack out of mostly offcuts from other projects and some threaded 6mm stud (bizarrely a quarter of the price of plain steel rod of the same diameter).


under construction

finished!

 

lundi 8 août 2022

Drought continues

The drought continues (apparently the worst in France for 211 years). The last few days the temperatures have dropped a little but remain in the 30's in the afternoon. The sheep, constantly trying to find green vegetation are escaping two or three times a day and now we no longer bother putting the electric fence on because they ignore it and in the dry conditions it is very difficult to get a good earth connection on the fence charger. As three years ago (the last time we had a drought), we 've taken to taking the sheep on 2-3 hour walks morning and evening so they can graze the verges etc and find what they need. Tiring as the morning walk often starts at 5.30am! For the moment, walks in the hills for us are on hold. There are forecasts of three days of storms in a weeks time, but the rain always seems to be "next week" but never arrives. It looks like a 'mast year' so hopefully the sheep will be able to make up for the poor grass with acorns in the autumn.

Somehow apples, melons, courgettes, squashes and butternuts are managing to keep producing but with a hosepipe ban strictly in force and limited supplies of stored rainwater the rest of the garden is desertified. We have no kiwi fruit, very few raspberries and the potato harvest was poor. 

With Architecture work still to complete, starting the new weaving project is on hold. This gives me time to research "sectional warping" a method of getting the warp threads on the back beam of the loom suited to long warps or warps with complex colour changes, which I hope will better suit my weaves. Further equipment is needed that I am gradually, buying or building -  a tension box, a bobbin rack, a sectional beam and a thread measurer.


Typical sectional warping set up