Neither Snow, Nor Sleet, Nor Freezing Rain

I'm home with a Sudoku & flashlight - while Jim's off at a neighbor's rigging things up so they can turn on their furnace with our generator.

I hear some one walking across our porch.

OMG! It's Fed Ex.....unbelievable. There wasn't mail service today, but Fed Ex delivered packages. Pretty amazing!

Go Big or Go Home!

We decided to get more gas for the generator, since the power company is saying this outage will go on for days for some customers.


We made it out of our neighborhood OK, but in the 2 mile drive along a numbered route to a highway, we passed several downed trees, and had to squeak under a couple of downed or loose and sagging powerlines. All to get to the nearest shopping area where there was no power and no gas.


I got a little freaked out by it and decided one of us should stay at the house. And it should be me - with the pup of course!

So Jim dropped me off, and uneventfully found a gas station that had power.


The nearest shopping malls are the only place around with power, so they are packed like it's the day before Christmas.

Ice Ice Baby

Trees are coated. Power lines are coated. Branches are down. Power is out.

PSNH, our local utility, says 250,000 of their 500,000 customers are without power - the most customers ever without power here.

In 1998, the last bad ice storm in NH, there were 55,000 customers without power. That was a bad storm (although we had power - and storms never seem as bad when you have power.)



We're OK so far. Only a few branches down - and the top of one poplar tree - in our back yard. Plus we turned on the generator for a bit this morning to get the house up to the high 60's since it was dipping down to 50 or so in here.
Now it's a race between the ice on the trees melting, and the wind that is predicted to start gusting later today. It's 34 here, and finally sunny, so I'm rooting for the ice to melt!!

From Vision to Reality

First the vision. I found a listing online for a used Toika loom, and after contacting the owner, learned that it looked like the Toika Liisa. (And now I think it is a Toika Liisa). So I checked out the Toika website and saw a new version of the loom.

http://www.toikausa.com/looms/liisa.html

That's the vision.

Reality intrudes a bit. This loom has already had a long weaving career. This loom was made in Finland sometime in 1974 or later, shipped to Alaska, moved to Providence, Rhode Island, where it was in a production weaver's studio until the early 1990's. Then it moved to Saunderstown, Rhode Island, where it lived in the home of a weaver. And this week it moved to New Hampshire. It doesn't quite look like a brand new loom because it has been in use for many years.

The loom's owner sent me two pictures, so I could see the loom put together in her house.



It was a disconcerting and somewhat intimidating feeling to pay for the loom, then dismantle it and bring it home. One minute it's a loom. Less than an hour later it's a pile of pieces and parts that we're loading into the car.

Today the loom is unloaded and is in two groups of pieces. The frame and beater and other varnished Finnish birch parts are in the basement awaiting some TLC. (We're researching how to clean and care for that wood.)




Pieces with cloth attachments, like the cloth and warp beams, and parts with Texsolv attached, like the jacks, lamms, and shafts, are in the studio awaiting cleaning and re-assembly.


There might be some rusty, dirty reeds and a raddle hanging out in the garage. And a stack of warp sticks cleaned and leaning in the corner of the studio. But I won't bore you with those photos. (For completeness - for some future Toika purchaser - I will note that there are two side sections like the piece my dog is walking past in that picture in the basement, but only one is visible in that shot).

So the vision is a beautiful countermarch loom. The reality is some piles of sticks and string. Hopefully, with some help, I'll be able to get the reality to come somewhere close to the vision!

My Eyes were Bigger than My Stomach

Isn't that the saying when you enthusiastically decide to eat a large meal, but find that you can't eat the whole thing?

I almost had the loom/car equivalent happen yesterday - 2.5 hours from home I purchased a previously owned loom, dismantled it, and when it was time to fit it in the car, it looked pretty dicey for a time.

The loom is a Toika Liisa countermarch loom with a 59" weaving width. We thought it dismantled into a pile of sticks and string - but the two sides of the loom are pegged and glued at the factory for sturdiness. This is good, except it means that the sides are harder to fit into the car.

The Toika booklet that came with the loom says the loom fits into a standard (1970's vintage) station wagon, with 2 pieces strapped to the roof. Well, we conveniently didn't notice the "strapped to the roof" section until we were fully committed to bringing the loom home.

Here's the loom assembled in the previous owner's home. The dimensions are approximately 59" deep, 71" wide and 60" tall.









This side section (shown in my basement) was the culprit - which had us contemplating removing the rear door of my car, renting a truck, giving up on the loom.....

Here are the exact stats on the side section - so some future lucky Toika purchaser won't face the same car stress that I did! The side section measures 60" total height, 37" tall in the two vertical end pieces, 50" wide and 2" thick. That bottom 37 x 50" section was hard to fit into the car.

After a little finagling (or a lot), it made it! Luckily the bench dismantles too.

So we headed home with the loom safely stowed and cushioned in the back of the car.



Let the countermarch weaving adventures begin!!

Countermarch Craziness

Something odd is afoot.....

I've never had the urge to blog before.

Yesterday I purchased a well-used Toika countermarch loom and the dearth of information that would have helped me get the loom dismantled and into my car for the 2.5 hour drive home, lead me to decide to start a blog.

Not sure which is more unlike me - suddenly buying this loom that might be too complicated for me. Or deciding to start a blog.

Odd indeed.

I'm sure I'll write about non-weaving things in this blog as well - since I always have a lot to say about almost any subject!

My Kind of Birding

First, let me say what type of birding I don't like.....that would be the get up early, tramp about looking for vaguely recognizable tiny birds that I have trouble seeing, and it only gets worse if there's cold, wind, snow or mud involved.

I guess what I like is easy views of big obvious birds in nice weather. A fair-weather birder am I!

We heard via the NH Birds email list, that there was a Snowy Owl hanging around in Rye, NH. So we figured out on a map where birders were reporting the bird, and drove over. We literally saw a birder with binoculars before we even got to the beach road, and looked up. There was our Snowy Owl, perched on a roof surveying the scene.



We noticed that the bird remained calm when people were in vehicles, but people outside cars sometimes spooked it. I took that as a sign that I could hang out in the car with my binoculars, newspaper and knitting. (Did I mention that I'm an easily distracted birder?)





A school bus unloading caused it to launch itself from the roof.



As the sun set, before 4 pm since it's December in NH, the owl seemed to be watching an open patch of ground rather intently.




Fun afternoon! Thanks Jim, for the great pictures!!!

(I was inspired by my loom purchase to start this blog, but I have a few adventures from before the loom that I want to post also. Hopefully that's not cheating!!)