Almost time to leave Maine

I've been making progress on the to-do list, in part due to the lawn mowing today being called on account of rain. Good practice for Stavanger, where Thommas promises lots of rain, with the added attraction of it not simply raining "down" but "in all directions". Good thing my mother always assured me "Bonni, you're not sugar, you won't melt". Mom had a hundred of those.

My plan for my 2 cats is to have a couple of friends stop by and make sure things are going smoothly, and to avoid having to ask anyone to clean a litter box, I now have 5 fresh litter boxes standing by (aluminum lasagna pans pre-filled and bagged so no one gets any ideas about unauthorized usage) that can be swapped out until I'm back. I'm pretty pleased with myself for coming up with that one.

I've also finally gotten around to contacting my dad's father's side of the family, turns out there are lots of them in and around Stavanger.  This is the spinning wheel that came over on the boat from Norway to American with my great-grandfather Torvald (Tom) Halverson in 1857, when he was 4. So presumably he was not himself spinning on the voyage, but you never know. We Halversons/Halvorsons/Halversens* are a crafty lot. The wheel itself has a barely decipherable 1849 painted on it, the patina is so dark it's hard to tell what else is there, but there are initials. That orange on the bobbin was spun by me, it's still a working wheel. Thanks to my dad's cousin Irene in South Dakota for entrusting it to me.

For reference, this is my most recent double cloth coverlet. It's a fairly traditional pattern, based on a coverlet I found in an antiques shop. The reason they're called double cloth is that there are literally 2 layers, in this case navy and red or white. Notice that besides the navy, there are either white blocks or red blocks. When the navy and red or navy and white change from the top layer to the bottom, it makes the pattern. On the reverse, the area that looks pinkish is where the red weft (crosswise) weaves with a white warp (lengthwise) or white weft weaves with red warp. The solid navy is always on the face, except tiny blocks in the patterns themselves. Okay, you non-weavers may unglaze your eyes now, what's important is that once I'd figured out the weave pattern, drafted it, keyed it into my weaving program, Fiberworks PC, wound a warp with alternating navy and white or red, dressed the loom, keeping each color in the correct heddle, the weave itself was loom controlled. I just picked up alternating navy and white or red shuttles, treadled and wove. Simple, huh? There are, by the way, 66 threads per layer per inch in this puppy. And it's 1:12 scale, 1"=1'. So about 1100 threads were put on the loom, in the right order. Days. Much neck pain, literally and figuratively.

Why this is important is that Norwegian double cloth coverlets have much more ornate repeating patterns, and they're woven on quite simple looms. Which means the weaver is doing all the work after the loom is dressed. No just stepping on the treadle to raise the proper warp threads, throw the shuttle. Nope. Before throwing the shuttle each time, the correct warp threads must be chosen specifically by the weaver, who slides a wooden sword under the ones she wants, across the width of the coverlet, then she can throw the shuttle. Beat, then pick up the next row. PLUS, the looms are rarely wide enough for a blanket width, even when beds were narrower, so it was woven in two lengths that were stitched together with a center seam. So besides picking up the correct warp threads, care must be taken that the motif length is the same on both panels, or those lions and roosters she wove are not going to match up. These date to the Middle Ages. Yikes!

I'm headed to the International Guild of Miniature Artisans (IGMA) Show in Teaneck, NJ. It starts tomorrow at 6pm with a gala preview. Since this is the group that gave me the Fellow Study Award, it's a great launch pad for my Norwegian adventure. I'll be posting some pictures from the show, both for my friends who can't make it to the show and those who have no idea what a miniature show looks like. Now, back to that list...
*More on the family name later. For the record, I was born a Halversen.