Creative frustration; finished goldenrod shawl

Well, between my Woven Pixel study group, my two training rides, and another trip to Goodwill with B., I have gotten absolutely NOTHING creative accomplished this weekend.  I’m extremely frustrated, but this is a perpetual and unfortunately insoluble problem for me: in order to do well at the cycling events I want to do, I have to spend a LOT of time on the bike between now and June, and that’s just the way it is.  If it weren’t for the opportunity to make and wear all these fabulous costumes, I doubt I’d do AIDS Lifecycle again.  It takes several months a year out of my creative life, which is very frustrating – but it is such fun, and the costume design is the sort of thing I live for, so I keep doing it.  And I’ve raised over $16,000 for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation to date, which speaks for itself.

I have, however, finished weaving the goldenrod shawl (on Friday).  I’m not really happy with it – because of some tension problems and tangles back behind the lease sticks, there are a lot of skips in one particular section.  They’re not terribly visible because they’re in the area with less contrast, but I know they’re there.  It remains to be seen how it looks after washing.  At least I’m not embarrassed by it, even if I’m not terribly satisfied.  Once I finish hemstitching it, I’ll cut it off the loom, twist the fringe, wet-finish it, and take photos.  It may take a week or more for me to get it up on my site.

I’m debating what to do with the remaining warp.  I want to weave it with a garnet weft, but because there’s tangling behind the lease sticks, I think my problems with loose threads are going to perpetuate.  I could take out the lease sticks, but then of course I have the same problem I had before (lots of skips).  I hate to waste the warp, because it’s beautiful, but I also don’t want to weave another two yards with these awful tension problems.  So I’m debating what to do.

One thing is sure, though: I will not get anything done on Monday or Tuesday evenings, because I have more work to do for Balsam Hill.

Someday, I will get back to doing creative things…

The one bright spot is that I think I have managed to score about 5 lbs of 1/14 Nm cashmere for another $6!  I was browsing through the yarn section of today’s Goodwill and came up with 3 cones of yarn labeled somewhat confusingly – it is either colored “natural cashmere” or is color “natural” and fiber content “cashmere”.  I did burn-test it, and it’s definitely some kind of very soft, very fine animal hairs with a short staple and not much crimp.  I think it might actually be cashmere, in which case I got a very good deal indeed.  Whether it’s cashmere or fine wool, it’s a very nice yarn and I’m happy to have gotten it for $1.20/lb.  Now if I just had the time to use it!