Things are slowly starting to integrate at work – which is to say that I’m still learning lots, but I’m not quite as totally overwhelmed with new stuff. I have one of my projects semi-organized, which will give me time next week to focus on the other two. Things progress.
Creatively speaking, I have advanced the sample warp past the “bad” section and into the correctly-dyed section. I will start weaving as soon as the weft yarn is dry. (I was having a devil of a time unraveling the knitted blank – the yarn kept catching and breaking at the end of each row – until I thought of wetting down the blank to lubricate the yarn. It then unraveled relatively smoothly, but of course the yarn was soaking wet, so it’s skeined and hanging to dry now.) I’m hoping to get this panel woven tomorrow, so I can clear the loom for the T-shirt project.
I have also been scouring Handweaving.net for drafts. Normally I’d design my own, but since work has all my mental circuits busy, I’m going to take some of those designs and modify them, rather than starting from scratch. I have found twenty or thirty drafts that seem promising, and am meditating on/modifying some of them now. (A lot of them are hin un weider drafts, and thus unsuitable for weaving as a non-tied weave without modifications.) I have decided to use point twill threading, mostly to take advantage of the larger repeat.
No pretty pictures (yet!), but hopefully some tomorrow.
Meanwhile, I have decided that although I now work too far away to come home for lunch, all is not lost. I’m going to use my lunch hour to catch up on my reading. I recently bought a big pile of books and as a result my “to read” stack has gotten embarrassingly large – I think there are fifteen books, five magazines, three sets of study group samples, and a partridge in a pear tree, all neatly stacked (except the partridge) on the dining-room table. I almost never read anything at home, because there are so many interesting distractions. Here is the perfect opportunity to catch up on the stack. I am going to put my “to read” pile in the back seat of my car, so I have a mini-library available at lunchtime, and do my best to chew through the pile.
Other than that, not much of interest got done today. Mostly I did a lot of “infrastructure work”, cleaning the studio, clearing out two giant piles of clutter in the bedroom, and doing mundane things like laundry and cooking stew. (This particular stew recipe, however, is most wonderful – you stew a couple pounds of beef (cut into big chunks) with some onions, a bay leaf, and water to cover, until the beef is tender. Then add one giant can of tomato sauce, some chopped-up carrots, potatoes, and cabbage, and – this is the stroke of genius – one or two big “fingers” of ginger, sliced thinly. Simmer until the vegetables are tender and the soup is spicy. Season to taste. You do have to pick the slices of ginger out as you’re eating, but it’s worth it – this is one of my favorite soups. My mom taught me how to make it when I was thirteen or fourteen – I liked it so much that I asked her to teach it to me as soon as I learned to cook.)
Hopefully I will have more progress, with pretty pictures, for everyone tomorrow. I am very grateful that this is a three-day weekend (Monday is Independence Day in the U.S.) – I badly needed a break, and this should give me a breather, and enough time to “get creative” again.
