Packed and ready

Tomorrow morning I’m flying out to Maryland to spend Xmas with my family.  On the 29th I’ll fly from Maryland to Chicago to spend New Year’s with Mike’s family.

Needless to say, such an occasion requires projects to bring along.  Lots of them.  🙂  So, since I have been unable to locate my funky hat from last year, I’m bringing along some gorgeous blue-purple-magenta-cream handspun mohair yarn and some cornflower blue wool yarn to knit a new funky hat, also complete with pom-pom.  (Because it’s just not a hat without a pom-pom, you know?)  I’m also bringing two half-complete sock projects, and two additional balls of yarn.  Not that I think I’m going to get anywhere near completing those, but what the heck.

On top of that, I just got three books  on wedding ceremonies (two books on wedding readings and one on ceremony traditions) and am planning to page through them, at least until the saccharine overwhelms me.  Judging from a glance through the anthology, that will probably be about two pages.  I am capable of being quite sentimental, but generally only in my own words; somehow other people’s love notes seem to flatten like a tube of toothpaste when stripped from their context and sliced into sound bytes.   (I wonder why???)  But, I will persevere nonetheless.

I have now woven just shy of three yards of wedding-coat material, and expect to cross the three-yard mark before I leave.  Together with my 2.5-yard sample, that’s 5.5 yards out of 27.5, so I’m at the 20% mark.  Not too shabby since I’ve only been weaving for 15 days, but at this rate it’ll be another two months or so before I finish up the warp.  If the HGA thing comes through, I’ll need to finish it in a month – and I’ll be gone for ten days of that, visiting family.  It’s going to be tough.

Here’s how I plan to approach it:

1. I don’t have to weave all 27.5 yards.  I deliberately left myself PLENTY of room for error; the coat pattern only calls for 7 yards of fabric = 14 yards of finished fabric at a 21″ finished width.
2. So, as soon as I cross the 14-yard mark (really the 16-yard mark since I have 12.5% shrinkage), I can cut off, wet-finish, and we can start sewing the coat.  The remaining warp can be woven up only if I botch something.
3. This still leaves the double-happiness ribbon to be woven, but I think we can apply it after sewing the coat.  As sewing the coat will likely not take a whole lot of time, there shouldn’t be too much “wasted” time between one and the other.
4. As the double-happiness ribbon is a fairly narrow fabric, it should warp up pretty quickly, allowing me to finish it in time.  I only have to weave four yards!  And it is an embellishment, so can be applied after the main body of the coat is complete.

It will still be tight, but with this plan I think I can do it.  But that’s only if HGA says yes.  If not, I’ll continue weaving, but at a more leisurely pace.