About 12 weeks ago I posted on Facebook about what life chez iowaweaver would look like during the coming quarantine. I commented that at least we wouldn’t be bored because we have all the movies, all the books and all the yarn. DH and I are of an age where we really don’t want to be exposed unnecessarily to the Covid, and he has health concerns that mean we have to be strict. We have desperately missed our daughter and her family, who only live 30 minutes away, but it might as well be 30 hours. It’s a good thing we get along so well 😉 .

So, yeah, lots of television, lots of movies, lots of knitting, and lots of weaving. We have gotten really good at online grocery orders, and even managed to score some toilet paper a couple of weeks back. I made a point of making vegan dinners at least once a week, and with leftovers, we were eating vegan even more often.

Check it out: meringues made with aquafaba (the magic liquid found in cans of chickpeas). They were quite tasty.

And this is my no-knead french bread of which I am inordinately proud:

Louisville has a fabulous restaurant scene and we have several great places right in our neighborhood. So takeout once a week has been quite a treat. We only had one clunker in all this time, and that one is definitely off the list forever.

So bored I am not.

I’ve kept the weaving going pretty steadily. I managed a batch (soon to be two) of Turned Taqueté dishtowels:

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I wove four scarves on the 16 harness Ashford. This is the first warp. The threading was a straight draw, just changing the liftplan. On the left, we have an undulating twill, and on the right we have tumbling boxes.

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The second warp was threading to a point twill. On the left, scallop shells or fish scales or fans (or whatever). On the right, we have another undulating twill. I used the liftplan for the first scarf above, and got an entirely different look.

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I closed my Etsy shop fairly early in the quarantine. I decided multiple trips to the post office each week was not in my best interest. The shop (with the above items among many others) is now open again with some different rules. I will be mailing once a week at most, and since Etsy is touting home pickup by the postal service, I will give that a try.

My last blog post (eons ago) ended with my starting to read A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel. Our libraries are still closed, so we are relying on books on hand, our trusty book store (Carmichael’s), and Kindle. I cruised through the Mantel, and went on to finish several more: Uniform Justice by Donna Leon, Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik, As the Crow Flies by Craig Johnson, The Cat Who Smelled a Rat by Lilian Jackson Braun, The Magician’s Assistant by Ann Patchett (stunning!), Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (about a global pandemic!), About Face by Donna Leon, I Am Half-Sick of Shadows by Alan Bradley, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, The Wife by Meg Wolitzer (in progress), and S is for Silence by Sue Grafton (in progress). Whew! And I am not an especially fast reader.

Currently working on another Circles draft with a slightly differnt look. Stay tuned!