Family Tartan ~ New Project

Vacations are a wonderful thing….great to see the world, but also great to be home and to celebrate what you have!  Our month in the Cook Islands and New Zealand was exciting, but man, am I glad to be home and back at the loom!

While away I had plenty of time to think about what I wanted to put on the loom and what stash I wanted to bust… I made my mind up to weave our family tartan using the yarn I purchased made by Lochcarron Mills in 2007.  I know, about time......

 The Lynch family tartan is one of the original seven Irish tartans that were registered in the early 1900's and the colours are blue, scarlet and green.  I chose to weave this tartan using the Ancient colour palette; the only disappointing thing is that the ancient scarlet is quite rusty orange looking ~ not a fav, but authentic and against the soft blue and soft green it's surprisingly lovely.

It actually took me three sessions to make this warp ~ 1018 threads….yikes.  Although this is a 2/2 twill I had to extend it over all 12 shafts because of the number of heddles necessary.  After pulling the warp I noticed that I don’t seem to have as much blue yarn left over as I expected.  So an emergency yarn call to Susan down island who ordered this same yarn for our Canadian Master Weaver Tests ~ but she didn't have any of the colour I need….so if anyone out there has 2/16 worsted wool in ancient blue purchased from the Yarn Source in Ontario that you want to sell, email me please!

I’ve probably mentioned that I love, love, love to cook on this blog on more than one occasion.  Two years ago when we bought our house I put in this lovely appliance package and I’ve been bitching about it ever since.  I’m a really, really short gal, so the over the range microwave just didn’t work for me and frankly the fan just did not do the job.  The ceramic stove top is very pretty, but it cycles the heat and it made me crazy….Well, crazier anyway!

So we pulled them both out and sold them on Craigslist ~ I must have priced it too low because they went in hours!  I knew pretty much right away that I wanted a much stronger fan, so forward thinking gal that I am, yeah right!  I picked up a few tiles when I saw them last year just hoping that I'd get a chance to use them.

Ngaire and I tiled the bare patches of wall and added these great stainless steel button tiles for an accent.  Michael cut the tiles to fit and he made short work of installing the new fan without a scratch! Ahhh, team work!

For a full week we were without a range or microwave and this little hot plate worked really hard for us. My favourite recipe was this one from Martha Stewart, One-Pan Pasta, absolutely fool proof!

My new duel fuel cooker arrived last Thursday and the plumber came in on Good Friday morning to hook it up ~ I’m totally stoked!  No clock ~ no timer ~ no warming drawer ~ instant heat ~ priceless!