Note: The Wedge Weave course I made for the Tapestry Discovery Box is available as a stand-alone course through Gist yarn. It comes with yarn for the project and is $20 off through 8/6 HERE. This is the only way this content is available unless you purchased it when the Tapestry Discovery Box first opened, so if you’ve been wanting this course, this is your chance at a discount. Gist’s sale ends August 6th. All Array tapestry yarn is also on sale plus my Curves and Intro class kits.
In July I took a road trip.
To Indiana.
It wasn’t really planned but an opportunity came up for my wife and we decided to drive. I admit that I wasn’t looking forward to the part of the drive between the last of the Colorado Rockies and our friend’s swimming pool,* but it turned out to be just fine! Nebraska and Iowa are surprisingly beautiful and I had some fun with my little loom along the way.
I took a deep medium-shallow dive into wedge weave last year when I taught the Wedge Weave Tapestry Discovery Box.** The corn fields of Iowa inspired me to do some wedge weaving. I did two tapestries, one from each side of the color wheel. In both of these tapestries I used the technique where you keep the colors continuing from row to row but in the green one I varied the width of each row which makes the zig zags change length. This will mean that the edge scallops will not be even though.
Here is the first one I did on my Handywoman Shop loom. 8 epi, 3 strands of Gist Array, 12/6 cotton seine twine warp. There is also some dyed silk ribbon from Mirrix in the top part of the weaving if you look carefully.
Weaving my way across the midwest
Wedge weaving and wind turbines
First wedge weave finished somewhere in Illinois
The second weaving was all green in tribute to the corn fields that are starting to produce very excellent corn in Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska. I have not yet finished this one.
Weaving midwestern corn
I also did a lot of finishing work when I wasn’t driving and I’ve got an update on that on my Patreon page.
Here is your bonus dog story
I almost flew home 3 days into this trip. This was the first time we left our two mini-dachshunds, Beau and Sal, with a dog sitter. The woman we left them with has raised and trained dachshunds and she runs a full kennel for large dogs. She takes small dogs in her house and she was excited about the challenge of these two. She knows about dogs who have had some trauma (Beau) and they enjoyed their introductory visit.
I got a call mid-morning from the sitter who told me through a series of unfortunate events, Beau had gotten loose, gotten scared, and run off. All day she and her staff and family hunted in the heat for that little dog with no luck. I sent out a lost dog alert through the microchip company and posted on a local Facebook group.
He didn’t turn up quickly so we changed course and headed for Indianapolis where I was able to get a flight home the next morning. Just as I was climbing into bed, a woman who saw my post on FB called me and said they had found Beau under their car, enticed him out with water, and he was happily hanging out.
Beau hanging out under the neighbor’s car
I had visions of him running and running and getting eaten by a mountain lion or getting hit on the highway. Nope. He was perhaps probably a tenth of a mile away from the sitter’s house and likely about to trot back to find up what Sal had been up to all day. Except for some cholla cactus spines in his belly and a good layer of filth, he was fine. Here he is in the sitter’s car after she picked him up. I think he looks a bit proud of himself.
Beau after being enticed from under the car
Here he is the next morning after sleep and a bath. He looks pretty happy, doesn’t he? He and Sal had an uneventful vacation thereafter and I was able to get my plane ticket refunded.*** In fact Beau got so many good treats at the sitter’s house that he turned his nose up at his kibble when he got home.
Beau the day after his big adventure
I am grateful to the people who found him and the dog sitter and her staff and family who spent all day out in the heat looking for Beau. If you live in Montezuma Cty, CO and need a kennel or dog sitter for your dog, I would highly recommend this place. The events that led to his escaping were truly unexpected (and have never happened to her before) and he was frightened by a stranger who was trying to be helpful but wasn’t because she didn’t know the history of this dog. She ignored the sitter’s instructions and Beau panicked and ran.
All’s well that ends well. Often these stories don’t end well, so I feel lucky to get this little guy back. He is doing so much better in general—interacting well with adults and as long as he isn’t expected to be “nice” for too long, making great progress with this social skills! He also hiked 6 miles yesterday on those little legs, so maybe the big day of adventure helped build up his endurance.
*Turns out our friend’s outdoor swimming pool was as hot as my hot tub, so given the 95 degree, 95% humidity weather, no swimming was done.
**A “medium-shallow dive” because there are some people doing amazing and intricate things with this technique and my course teaches the basics of how to make it work.
***Thank you United for having a full refund policy if you initiate within 24 hours of purchase.