Software engineers speak of “memory leaks”, where a program doesn’t release computer memory properly. One minute it’s working fine and a few minutes later, your system has turned to molasses.
Well, I’ve examined the last two weeks and have concluded that I’m suffering from time leaks. Something is simply sucking up time and not releasing it, resulting in fewer hours in the day! Obviously I will need to do some debugging. 🙂
Anyway, despite my time leaks, I’m making slow progress on a few fronts. First, I’m back to exercising (which may be one of my time problems), taking a forty minute brisk walk five days a week and then doing strength exercises. Second, I’ve sorted out the problems I was having with Chapter 4 of the book blog, so I can actually make progress on that now. And third, the warps for Phoenix Rising are almost fully wound, meaning I can paint them tomorrow morning and start threading over the weekend. It’s only twelve inches wide but at 80 ends per inch, that’s still nearly a thousand threads. So it will take awhile. Hoping to finish next week, before flying to Maryland for the memorial service. It will be exciting to be weaving again!
Speaking of the book blog, do hop on over and check out today’s post: it’s all about learning to see. In particular, it takes Tuesday’s post (an exercise in exploring objects) and puts it into practice, on an object you wouldn’t expect to be interesting at all. Inspiration from a tape dispenser? But, on closer examination, there are many interesting aspects to the shape, texture, color, etc. of the tape dispenser. This post shows how to “see” like an artist. (Or like me, anyway!) I think it’s actually pretty neat, and demonstrates that inspiration really does lurk around every corner.
I am pretty excited about Phoenix Rising right now. The Pikes Peak Weavers Guild in Colorado has just announced a new juried show for next year – Firestorm! It’s supposed to commemorate the 2012 wildfires, which were quite serious, and Phoenix Rising would be perfect for that show! I don’t know if I’ll have an entire garment to show, but I’m thinking I could use the “extra” yardage on this warp to do a Phoenix scarf – with a solid orange-red background and a painted pattern warp that starts at orange- red and changes to molten gold. The effect should be a flight of golden phoenixes rising out of an inferno. Thematically perfect – not just fire but also the rebirth afterwards.
That’s it for now. Tomorrow or Friday, I hope to post pictures of actual, concrete progress on Phoenix Rising!
