A small Navajo loom

As you have probably figured out, I am fascinated by weaving. I must have picked this up from my father, who made looms and wove at a like age. Anyhow, I owe this one to a Science Fiction novel! I picked up a book by R. M. Meluch and loved it. Space Opera, true, but sometimes that's just the ticket. One of the items on RM's home page is titled "Navajo loom." Munch. Got the bug. And so I set out to find out about Navajo (sometimes spelled Navaho, and that's the way I would spell it, but modernity triumphs) is a primitive loom. It is used to weave gigantic rugs, worth a great many dollars, pounds, or euros. A rug is beyond my capabilites, I reasoned, but not a place mat. So I set out to build a Navajo place mat loom. The first requirement is a very sturdy frame:
Since I am not doing rugs, the thing is about waist-high. I had a scrap 2x4 which I sawed in half, that set the maximum height of the loom. Besides that, you need a whole bunch of sticks -- easy to come by -- and a warping frame. The warp, on any loom, is the set of long threads that will be crossed by the weft threads. At this point I was following directions from a book by Rachel Brown, which you can also Google. An excellent book, highly recommended if you want to do this kind of weaving. I didn't have the whole book, but a photocopied excerpt (thanks to my daughter and her contacts) so really I didn't know what I was doing. But this is the way we learn. My waping frame looked like this:
I will call this warping frame 0.0. There is a a warp on it, it is strung up as a figure 8 around the horizontal bars. There are two sticks in the middle tied together which keep the figure 8 from disappearing. This is called preserving the lease in weaverspeak. At the bottom of the figure I am sewing the bottom stick to the bottom selvedge, The bottom selvedge (probably a corruption of self-edge) is a twisted bunch of strings around the warp edges. Rachel Brown tells you how to do it. Among the many things I did not know was that this selvedge is critical. It acts a warp spacing device. For those of us not used to primitive looms, where you have some gadget to do the spacing (like a reed on a modern loom) you will be in trouble if you don't get it right.

Having sewn both top and bottom selvedges to the corresponding sticks, you can now string up your loom:
I omitted to tell you that you must string up the heddle stick for your loom. This is the bottom stick in the middle of the loom. A series of string loops winds about every other thread. This allows you to make a shed, i.e, pull every other string ahead of the others; in weaving you alternate sheds. You can see the heddle stick better here:
You can also see the tensioning arrangement, simply a piece of cord (parachute cord, in fact) wound around the top of the frame! The thing is crying out for modifications, but they will have to wait. I want to see how it works!
I have made every mistake in the book, plus some brand-new ones I invented myself, but there is weaving and there is a design. Bad, cockeyed, whatever, but iy's a design, by gum. One of the beauties of the Navajo loom is that you don't have to weave a row at a time . You can work on an area and then fill in the remainder. It's a lot like painting. I'm approaching the top and the threads are crowding together. Getting harder to weave. Rachel Brown warned me, so I am not surprised. At the end, I was using a darning needle and a lot of sweat.
And she is finished. A real Navaho weaver would be in hysterics by thi point, but you won't learn anything until you try, and if you don't make mistakes you won't learn anything either.

Most of my problems can be traced back to improper warping. Obviously warp frame 0.0 was inadequate. It kept coming apart, twisting, and misbehaving. Time for a major upgrade. Behold warp frame 1.0 (new release):
I finshed this shortly after noon. Much sturdier. Couldn't resist, cast on a warp.
Note the two sticks preserving the lease. Will it bomb? Will it be a rave? No idea. Stay tuned.

Spoons grow on trees

Spoon carving is a fascinating art. I was introduced to it by Drew Langsner's book "Country Crafts;" it is also covered in some of his later books. Basically, you start with a tree and make the piece of tree into a spoon. It is, or can be, a totally indoor craft, and therefore possible when the temperature is (as today) -24C. This picture illustrates the process:
At left, a piece of a (largish) birch branch that I rescued from the all-consuming firewood heap. The next step is to split this in half, and chop out the outline of the spoon with a hatchet. It is also possible to saw the thing out. For scoop-type spoons (third from the left) I prefer the hatchet. For really curvy things we use the turning saw:
This is a homemade frame with a 6mm bandsaw blade. I buy bandsaw blades at yard sales for just such purposes. The blade can be set to any angle. In fact it is a hand-powered bandsaw. One way or another you rough out the spoon, and then proceed to carve. Partially carved spoons are next in the picture. The tools of the trade are shown on the right of the top picture. At the far right, the invaluable and indispensable Swedish Sloyd Knife. "Sloyd" (written, as I understand it, slojd in Swedish) means "craft" in that language. The one shown is a Erik Frost 6cm model. Then there is a gouge and another Frost tool, a hook knife. These are used for hollowing out the bowls. Sometimes the gouge works better, most of the time I use the hook knife. On the upper right corner of the red cloth, there is a scraper made out of a piece of old sawblade. This is used to smooth out the finished spoon. In the spoon-carving fraternity, "sandpaper" is a dirty word. Yes, it does smooth things. But it obscures the grain, and makes things look machine-made. The spoons are carved green; the final smoothing and details are added when the wood is dry. You must dry out the wood very slowly. Old-timers used sawdust; modern technology -- a zip-lock bag -- is much easier. Turn the bag out daily and let it dry. If it dries too fast it will crack, and your work is wasted.

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of pages on the 'net on spoon carving. One could do worse than start here. Or google something like "wooden spoon carving."

Drew Langser's website (linked above) has a section on bowl carving
which is spoon carving on a much larger scale. If you're interested, all of his books are relevant. Except the chairmaking books, of course; but they are most interesting.

Voila, tableaux!

Having made all those miniature carving tools, the time had come to do something with them, besides carving ducks. I wonder if I can do a human figure? Hmmm. I was inspired by a style that in Venezuela is called "Selva Negra.", i.e. Black Forest, after the German Schwartzwald. This is rustic carving, not fine art. Fine art is all very well, but it is neither my interest nor my ability. So was born Woodsman. Picture will follow. When you come right down to it, carving a human figure is not unlike carving a duck. Start with a block of wood and cut away anything that doesn't look like a duck, or a human as the case may be. Woodsman sat on my table for many days -- I was quite proud of it, rustic though it may be -- and eventually I though he needed a companion. Out with the wood scraps I collect; sketch, saw, chip --- and so we have Axeman, in keeping with the forest motif. Then I began to think of a tableau. When I was in French class in High School, we dreaded the command "au tableau", which meant that we had to step up to the blackboard and perform. But I subsequently learned that tableau has other meanings, such as "an arrangement". Here is the woodsman tableau, before I put it on the wall:
Woodsman, with a stick in hand (actually a barbecue skewer) is behind at right. He is 85mm tall, that sets the scale for this tableau. Axeman is behind, somewhat washed out by the flash on the camera. His axe was made in the same way my carving tools were, from a chainsaw recoil starter spring. The two sawyers were very difficult to carve; they are not symmetrical, so you can't just saw them out and start carving. Their saw is another piece of chainsaw spring. It has teeth filed in it, and it actually cuts, but slowly because setting the teeth would be a monumental task.

Having done this one, the next thing that practically made itself was the Darth Spader tableau:Left to right, Obi-Farm Kenobi, Ham Solo, the Darthall tractor, and Darth himself. They are two-dimensional, of course. After all, they are cartoon characters. You haven't met Ham Solo, I believe. He is, of course, a pig. Other pigs in this (developing) deama are Leia Organic and Luke Stywalker. Three little pigs...

The tractor deserves a post all by itself. It is one of my favorite creatures.

I am now working on the crafts tableau. There will be a weaver, a blacksmith, and a carpenter at least. But that's a whole nother post.

Flashback: Garden 2009

Winter is here. There are 30cm (or a foot in gringo units) of snow on the ground, and more on the way. This is, after all, Alaska. So it might be fun to flash back to last year's garden. It reminds you that summer will come again. All part of living. If you like green all year round, move to the tropics. I grew up there, and I find it boring. Anyway, this is garden 1.3. Here it is, early summer ought-nine:
Note the radishes at my feet. As big as a potato. They should have been pulled earlier, but I'm not used to the idea of 30-day radishes. Also note the pretty purple-pink flowers in the background. That's fireweed. The leaves make a useful addition to salads. I was amazed to find that this grows in Finland, and I assume Norway and Sweden as well. Here are some turnips. The knife gives an idea of scale:
Not bad. Couldn't enter them in the state fair, but good eating! And we have cauliflower, broccoli, and another turnip. The secret of cauliflower is to tie up the outer leaves. This blanches the head, and keeps it solid. Who knew? My first attempts all went to seed.
Eventually late August comes; time to dig potatoes. My volunteer crew at work; my daughter and her friend:
And the final payoff:
This shot is posed! And composed. But the veggies are real. I'm dining off of them now. There is no comparison between store-bought and home-grown veggies. Different species. As Darth Spader might say, "my plans for agricultural domination are progressing."

An indoor bench

I own five stationary power tools. A baby drill press, a wet grinder, a Taig minilathe, a jigsaw and a bandsaw. The bandsaw lives in the shop, and is unusable during the winter; the other three live inside the house. The jigsaw sits on the kitchen table. Until recently, they sat on Workmates -- the greatest UK invention since the steam engine. But that meant that when I had to use the Workmates, the tools had to go on the floor. Besides, the lathe bench blocked my refrigerator door. So it's time to build a new bench. By careful measurement, I contrived to guild a bench that would just hold all-but-the-jigsaw. It is also an exercise in drawbored mortise-and-tenon joints. I have made many mortise-tenon joints, but always tight fits, secured with glue. Not until I read Peter Folansbee's blog did I realize how these joints really work. They are made for a loose fit. The hole in the tenon is offset towards the shoulder of the mortise. You drive a peg through it, and it pulls the tenon into the mortise. It is bomb-proof. Peter's blog (and website) have some pictures of the process, and see John Alexander's green woodworking website.

Anyway, off we went. I should have taken more pictures. Here's the bench under construction:Observe the Workmate, holding a piece of wood so I can cut the tenon. I don't show the floor, but it looks like chaos. All the wood is scrap, found lying around. I wanted a top made out of 2x6 but couldn't find them in the snow. Maybe next spring... so I used plywood to make the top. The result is
Cost USD 0.00. Now let's put some power tools in their place:
Much nicer. And I have two freed-up workmates, sitting on the porch ready for action. And I can now open the refrigerator door all the way! Long live drawbored joints. It is much easier to make a loose joint than a tight one.

Antlers away!

About this time of year, male moose start shedding their horns, which they only sport during mating season. There are two big bulls in my neighborhood. I have named them Ricky and Racky. Racky has, of course, the larger rack. They are pals; they go about together. Unexpected behavior to me, but then, I am no moose expert. So I was out skiing a few days ago, and behold (and also lo!) what should I see by my feet but an antler, freshly dropped:
Couldn't tell, of course, whether it was Ricky or Racky. But it's big. The tape is pulled out to 95cm (about 34") -- a large rack indeed. I searched all over for ithe other one but couldn't find it. Amazing: in the snow, almost anything looks like a moose antler, but is usually a rotten log. Camouflage at work.

We had a moose convention in the yard today. I was out in the wilds, skiing, but my son recorded the jamboree. But that is another post.

New Logo

The Chalupy Acres blog now sports a new logo, designed by my son, who is a graphic artist and musician. It is, of course, Darth Spader, Vader's little-known agricultural cousin. Observe his elegant Darthhartt overalls. (For those who are unfamiliar with the reference, Carhartt is a high-quality purveyor of work clothes, a byword in Alaska and elsewhere. I practically live in Carhartt's products.)

Darth Spader is, of course, a horticultural genius. One of Darth's creations is the Salad Trooper:
There is, of course, all kinds of symbology in this image (also by my son) . For two summers, I have grown radishes the size of a large potato. Give ol' spud a fright, they will. Hence, the head of the Salad trooper: a giant radish. This is all a part of Darth Spader's plans for agricultural domination, which will be revealed as we blog along.