Cleaning out the garage, Mt. Hamilton, fiber artists

Went up Mt. Hamilton this morning, and visited Sandra Rude in her lovely home on Mt. Hamilton.  She showed me (and I slavered over) her 24-shaft AVL loom, and the interleaved networked twills she uses to design her beautiful shawls.  I wished I’d had more time with her, but I had to keep going up the mountain.  I made it up the mountain for about 2 hours total before the shoulder muscle I pulled last week started bothering me; it wound up being a three-hour ride, total.  I wish I could have done more since it may have been my last chance at a long ride for the next four weeks!  Next weekend I have to work, the weekend after that I may have to work as well, and after that I’m off to China!

Anyway, I did at least get a three-hour ride in, and felt pretty strong for most of that time.  I guess I’ll just have to work extra-hard when I pick back up in October/November.

Then I got home, and B. and I cleaned out the garage.  A huge task, especially considering the giant boxes and bags of yarn I had been accumulating.  We sorted through everything, and I bagged up everything that I didn’t think I was going to use, and put it in a pile for donation to SCRAP. There was an astonishing amount of stuff for donation, as I was pretty ruthless – some of it valuable (2 yards of upholstery silk that looked great in the Web photo, but was a hideous color when it arrived – that will teach me to buy fabric online without swatches!) and some of it not (bags full of fabric scraps).  It wound up being two full kitchen-size trash bags worth of stuff, and the remaining stash fits into the shelves.

I have mixed feelings about disposing of this much stash.  On the one hand, it’s terribly wasteful to accumulate this much stuff that you’re not going to use.  On the other hand, it’s wonderful to be able to donate it to someone who WILL use it – thank goodness for SCRAP!  And, there’s no benefit to keeping stuff around because “I might use it someday”.  So I’m glad it’s going out of the house.  I think I will reinvoke my New Year’s resolution, not to buy any more yarn.  Heaven knows I’ve got enough right now.

I have now wound on 200 of the 464 ends I need for the warp on my placemats, and hope to get the loom threaded this week.  More than that I can’t really hope for – it’s probably going to be another crazy week at work, so not much time for weaving.