Too much basil

I harvested the basil while I could and found that I had way too much of it... I made a double batch of pesto but ran out of pine nuts and olive oil, so augmented with pistachios and regular oil. I added in yeast instead of cheese to make it vegan. I don't think the subs helped but I won't use that recipe again, it's not quite pesto... but is a wonderful sandwich spread. I was left with a lot of basil, so next up was basil salt. I found another recipe with a 1-1 ratio of basil to salt; I made it without the dried garlic; I made two batches and have been giving it away! It's been great on veggies and especially on tomatoes.

As for the rugs, I was happily weaving away with more weft and finished a section only to look at it and realize it's too much weft. I'm debating whether to take it out or not.  

Meanwhile, I need to get one of the two looms cleared off to weave for my ikat class, so I've been working on my Diversified Plain Weave sample piece with half drop dots on it... I switched to using leftover bobbins of random 8/2 cotton as weft to see what different colors look like. My favorite so far is some hand-dyed pastels; it has a pleasing painterly look to it. Looks like I need 6-8 inches of weaving in a new structure to be comfortable with it; when I'm comfortable the beat is more even, the selvedges are better, it's more fun. I'll try to complete this and wet finish it before my study group meeting next week.

I have a tencel warp ready and tied to go in the dyepot for the shifted ikat class, I just need to do the dyeing.

Band in progress

Last weekend, I taught a mini-"class" in how to do a continuous warp for card weaving on an inkle loom; a few folks ended up sick, and few had other commitments, and there was one no-show... and A., my co-instructor had car trouble and ended up showing up just as we were starting to weave, but we did it.  I am not a natural teacher and I am not sure I enjoy the process; because of the class size this was a lot more like showing a couple of friends than teaching a class, and a couple of folks went home warped and ready to weave. I wove off the rest of my demo warp today.

Just a note on the colors for the band. The dark color is equal amounts of a dark loden green and a dark brown together... the white is a white and natural. I cannot see the difference in the band; maybe the whites, if you look very closely? I came up with this a few bands ago because I was lazy. By using two seperate cones, I didn't need to wind off a cone of another color. I think it enhances the look of the band, making it look more dimensional. The key is to use colors that are the same value,  and I think similar in color, although I've never tried it with dissimilar colors with the same value.

I also finished the cowl I was knitting; I never wet finished the yarn so am expecting it to draw in a bit with finishing, but that would be fine... I've got plenty of room to drape it attractively!

There's been some plying on the wheel, too...