Weaving and Rain Barrel

"I" of GAIN had mentioned that she wanted to use her loom last month, then forgot to use it. I was reminded of her desire when I got an email newsletter from Berroco Knits on Rigid Heddle Weaving. So I got her set up and she wove some cloth yesterday.

I bought the loom at HEED's last Buy-Sell-Trade, brand new from a gal who just never got around to having her kids use it. My kid has used it. It is pretty easy to do once you take the time to set up. I had seen a home made loom in a kids weaving book. (I love the library, by the way.) It looked very cool, but took up a lot of space for something we would not use every day. I couldn't toss the loom in a wooden trunk like all my knitting stuff. This small loom is a good intro to weaving in my opinion, and tells me that a larger loom would probably do well in our house. Not a large standing loom, though. If our current loom is a preemie, then we might be OK with a toddler.

Weaving does not require the memorization and manual dexterity that knitting does. It does take concentration and a long attention span. And an adult if questions arise. She wanted to make a piece of fabric that was wider than her last project (a belt). Her finished product was wider, but shorter than intended -- I was gone when she ran out of yarn on the shuttle. No one knew how to help her, even though everything you need to know is in the book that came with the loom. So the work was cut about 6" shorter than planned. But the fringe (some of that leftover 6") is really nice.

I am putting a photograph of my two rain barrels here. I talk about them enough that I thought they deserved some blog time,' which is my analogous term for 'press time.' They are connected and I love it. I fixed the leak on the barrel seen on the right. I'm waiting for the next rain (maybe this weekend?) to see how it holds.

You can see the sandstone in the foreground that "N" and I moved and re-placed. Haven't decided if the stones will stay this way. "N" just started working with leather. He was introduced to the craft at camp. While I went to buy more grit for our rock tumbler at the local hobby store, I found a leatherworking kit on the next shelf down. The best part was that every item in the store was 30%. The worst part was that the business owner is retiring, so the store will be gone.

Off to work on my third entry for the 100 Species Challenge.

Rain barrel, part 4

It's really not leaking much at all! So the urgency is gone. The repair still needs to be made, but not like I thought. Yay!

Rain barrel, part 3

The second rain barrel's got a leaky connection and I can't fix it in a satisfactory way until it's empty. After a couple minutes tightening the pipe clamp some more, I spent ten minutes yesterday on my hands and knees searching for the teflon tape (successfully). The leak is fairly slow now, but since it is raining, more pressure will work against the leak as the barrel fills. We'll see how much is left when morning comes. And thanks, Dad, for the concrete blocks that I used to set the barrel on. They work great.

Now to place those sandstone remnants around the barrel....

Rain plans

2008 plans for the rain barrel:

add a hose to direct the overflow

link a second barrel

find a clip to keep the end of the hose above the water line

Rain barrel, part 2

It works!!! We still need to assemble our second rain barrel. We did not use the equations to estimate the amount rainfall that we could harvest from the family room roof, so we were very interested last week to have our first rain fall with the barrel. We had moderate to heavy rain, a total of 4" fall, filling the barrel in 1.5 hours. We had the hose open (not saving water) during the storm as we hadn't put the overflow hose in yet. Today, we had light to moderate rain and it took most of the day to fill. And it still smells like Coca-Cola.