Happy New Year!

It's been a long time. I have not been updating my blog for far too long so I will put a collection of pictures and stories all into one big blog update in not any particular order.

First, It was pretty enough yesterday to take a few pictures of the front of our TO house. The plants we chose for the front desert area have gotten a lot of water this past fall. I had not really been paying attention to how fast they are growing.

Here they are before on the left and now on the right. The pictures are all of one year apart. Clearly the plant choices were really good.

Next, We chose the retirement home! Having wanted for a long time to end up living at the ocean has finally become possible. House prices have dropped and we have taken advantage of the drop to buy a condominium in the ocean area. We got our keys at the end of December. Now we need to worry about furniture and details here and there in the house.

Finally, this year I started developing patterned scarves. I produced a set just in time for the holiday period. Here are pictures of some of the scarves I have produced. I am working on producing better color choices and better pattern groupings for these scarves. I will keep this development up to date.

I am also working on the "seeing red" project for Designing Weavers. I will have to tell you more about it in the next blog update!

Have a Great New Year!! Welcome to 2011!

Pictureing us!

Here we are as viewed from space!!!

350 event

350 is a new topic of issue. I read the webpage and started looking for more information about Earth 350. It appears that the best atmosphere balance with Carbon Dioxide balance is 350 parts per million (ppm) in the atmosphere. We are currently at 388 ppm. It is part of the reason why our world is heating up. We need to work hard to encourage everyone to produce less carbon dioxide. That means burn fewer carbon. Fewer fires, less use of gas, etc.

One of the things being done, is creating events where people can get together and spread the word. Today, I went out to LA and got together with a bunch of other people who created a large picture of an eagle that was visible from space. As soon as the picture comes back and is available, I will add it to this page. In the meanwhile, I have attached a couple of the pictures that I took during the event.

This first picture was taken during the initial start of the project. These people are laying out solar warming frames that were placed on the ground. The frames have two sides a black side and a white side. The white side will be easily seen from space and provides the frame. The black side was warmed by being visible to the sun. That warmed up the surface so that it was warm for people to lie on these frames and keep them from blowing away by the wind.

This next picture shows us all lying down on the ground. You can tell that we are a large group of people lying down over a huge

area. Obviously they would have loved to have had a couple of thousand people there to better fill in the space. As was, we had 150 to 200 people. Given the heavy rain that we had the day before, I am glad that we had the number of people that did show.

Finally, here is a picture of my wife lying on the ground. As usual, by seeing her sitting out there with all the people trying to create the picture, I was definitely "seeing red"

Also, what do you do with a collection of people who have been lying on the ground for an hour? Well, we started doing Yoga!

Paper Art!

One of the best things about visiting San Francisco and Berkeley in particular is the exposure to new and interesting art.

When walking through the art program area in UC Berkeley art area I spotted these interesting pieces.

I found all these interesting art pieces provide different appearances. They were all made out of paper pieces. I guess you can call these recycle-able art.

I like these pieces. Each one has a very different appearance than anything else i have seen.

In addition to the paper work, we interviewed the Egyptian research museum on campus at UC Berkeley.

The work there is also very interesting.

I talked with a person there who was putting together a facial mask from an egyptian mask. It had been originally put together with fiber material. The ancient linen material was falling apart and being put together with materials that will hold it together. I had a really nice chat with the worker there.

Traveling and Learning

I can't believe it, but today we found an old wooden covered bridge. The bridge is still in use. We drove over it and ate at the diner we found on the other side of the bridge. We had a great breakfast there! Then we went to a another small town over near the place we are staying.

At the small town called Millerton we found a person blowing glass. It's called Gilmar glass. We watched them blow glass and talked to them about the process. They were making glass pumpkins while they were blowing the glass.

We ordered a pumpkin and got to choose our color and watch the whole process. This picture is the glassblower working on our glass pumpkin.

We also found a place selling knitting

materials. She had some beautiful bamboo material. She was also having a sale! I bought so much of her bamboo material that she sold the bamboo at 50% off!!! What a deal!

We found a place with really great tea for sale. We will have to come back tomorrow with our son so he can pick his favorite.

We ate lunch at the diner in Millerton.

It clearly has been a fun vacation getting ready for the wedding tomorrow. We are certainly getting ready for the event tomorrow!

The Tallis for the Lonia and Eitan wedding!

It's time to get ready for the wedding!!

Watch for this tallis. Eitan will be wearing it when he is married.

I am so honored that they are willing to accept my work on this beautiful tallis and the chuppah under which they will be married. It was very quite an exciting process. I'll have more pictures once the wedding done!

It has been too long.

I have been to busy with SHINDIG and getting ready for the start of school. Regardless, Here I am blogging again. Right now I have two major things in process.

First, I started working on a new jacket.

As you can see, it is still in work, but I have gotten to work on a Chuppah that is soon needed. The arms will have look like the one on the left. The clip or pin will be on the upper right. I wove the red lines to give it an interesting appearance. Also, the material is a blend of rayon and wool so it is warm, but it also has a shiny synthetic so the jacket gives a great appearance. I also have to finish the neck. I decided that the current appearance will be a little bit more coarse that I want it to be. I also have decided that it needs to be lined. So... Lining is just as soon as I have time.

The other project that

is taking my time is the chuppah on which I am working. I have started weaving the chuppah. It is wide enough that I have decided to double weave it. The pictures added here only show half of the final appearance. It is going to be like an orange sum at the center and the darker red/orange color fading into the appearance all the way around.and above and below. I took these pictures as I started weaving. I have also added pictures of the detailed areas so that the pattern is more visible.

The pattern will give the appearance have a thickness to make the material warm if used on a bed or as a throw that keeps one warm in the winter. As I have been weaving, I have decided that it will also need an added edge for strength and color. I will have to weave the edge separately once I have completed the chuppah. I have decided that that should be woven after the banner that I am working on.

More pictures will be coming once I have made more completion.