Frustrations

Things are going frustratingly on all of my projects at the moment:

• The sleeves are too short on the cocoon jacket, a byproduct of my loom being so narrow. I was fiddling with it last night and haven’t found a good solution – after much fussing I am seriously contemplating using a different pattern altogether. The fabric is gorgeous, though, and I’m certain that whatever pattern I wind up using, it will wind up beautiful. I still have plenty of warp left so I can afford to experiment with patterns a bit – can always weave more black yardage to get additional fabric. I’m going to do some more experiments today in hopes of a better outcome.
• I dyed the silk warp for my shawls last night. I had serious problems with uneven dye takeup, so I rearranged the skeins and tossed in some more dye. This worked to get a reasonably even color, but now the yarn is too dark for what I had in mind. I’m not sure what to do about it; part of me wants to go ahead anyway, part of me wants to save this skein for other things and dye another 700g a brighter orange for the shawls. I’m contemplating it. It’s not a bad color, just too dark (IMO) to blend well with the colors I wanted (which are mostly really dark ones). I can think of plenty of things to do with it, I’m just stuck on wanting those network twill shawls.
• Speaking of network twills, I discovered (via Bonnie Inouye, who very kindly pointed it out to me) that there are serious flaws in some of my network twill designs. I’m getting a two-hour tutoring session with her (yay!) later this week to go through network twills and get a better understanding of the underlying theory, so I can adapt at will. But meanwhile, it’s kind of frustrating.
• Finally, and I hope this turns to good news, the company that is contemplating making me an offer is going to let me know today what the decision is. I hope it’s a “yes”, and that we can work out the salary issues, but meanwhile, I have all that nervous energy to burn. *sigh*

So all in all, yesterday was a frustrating day. Hopefully I can fix some of that today.