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.
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!
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
At last the loom has also arrived and is now assembled. Very compact and well engineered - looking forward to weaving on it once the yarn arrives.
Hopefully the new loom will arrive soon - it's currently stuck in Lyons going through customs checks.
The next project will be curtains for the two living room windows. I designed a couple of different fabrics, one a variation of "Summer and Winter" weave called "Dukagang" inspired by Janet Philips fabric "Icicles"
The other a Bateman weave called "Bateman Blend" inspired by the fabric on the cover of the book "Weaving Bateman blend" by Margaret Franklin. To design the latter I had only a picture of the fabric to work from plus a little knowledge of Bateman blend threadings, which was an interesting exercise.
Next I decided to see if it was possible to weave either of the fabrics as a double cloth on my loom. This is a method by which two layers of fabric are woven at the same time, joined on one side so that the resulting fabric is double the width. The answer was yes! However after working out the new drafts, I realised I would need more treadles (pedals) than I had available.
After more work to see if I could create a skeleton tie-up - one where more than one treadle is depressed at the same time to limit the total number of treadles (not an easy task to do on a countermarch loom!), I concluded that it wasn't possible to reduce the number of treadles to 14.
So 'double cloth' is out and I'll need a sewn join down the middle of each curtain, so I've opted for the Bateman blend design. I'll change the draft to allow for a pattern match at the seam...and I'll have to weave a colossal 12m of fabric! It's a complicated warp to wind with many colour changes and 2 different weights of cotton....Something my weaves inevitably have! I think sectional warping is going to be something to explore next - a method by which the warp can be wound straight onto a modified loom back beam in sections, rather than having to chain 700 threads each 12m long in the correct order and then attempt to wind them onto beam without tangles!
