Well, you knew (didn’t you?) that I’d have to find those two Connecticut houses that are older than the house at Bushnell Farm….
The oldest house (and it’s magnificent!) is the Henry Whitfield House in Guilford. That’s just down the road a bit so I am looking forward to a visit! According to Wikipedia, it is not only the oldest house in Connecticut, built in 1639 right near the town green in what would shortly become Guildford, it is also the oldest stone house in New England. This house was opened to the public as a museum in 1899.
Maybe my dear friend, who loves old houses and lives in a 1795 house on the river about an hour north of here, will join me for the visit. Well, I’ve done a bit more ‘googling’ to find the 2nd oldest house, and instead of getting an answer I’ve just become confused. If this sort of thing interests you, take a look at this. So, who knows…. there are several houses on that list even older than the Henry Whitfield house, and more than two that are older than the Bushnell house.
Back to weaving! Here are a couple of photos of my linen warp in progress. This is one section of warp (2″ width) wound on my AVL warping wheel. I had no idea how much this section would look like the Bahamian flag!
Ask me if I’m a bit nervous about these bright colors! (yes!) But…. I forge ahead. Hopefully the black linen weft will tone it down a bit. Here, I’m winding on section 4 out of 9 sections that will make up my 18″ wide fabric.
Right now my studio is about as messy as it’s ever been, so I was careful to exclude as much of the mess as possible when I took these. Normally I make a huge mess when I start a project…..all kinds of materials are out for consideration, lots of things get tossed about. But by the time I get down to work I need everything back in its place so I can work in visual peace. Whew, boy! Not this time! I’m feeling such time pressure to get going on this that I’m just trying to wear virtual blinders while I’m here. I’ll get to straigtening things up as soon as I can!
The sections are all different since the number of threads per inch does not match the number of threads for a repeat of the huck pattern. I had to be more careful than usual with my counting to make sure that each stripe has 45 threads in it no matter how it fits into the 2″ warp sections. Now I’m ready to start threading!
