Babe the Blue Musk Ox

Yesterday I got back to weaving – working gingerly, a few minutes at a time, stopping at any hint of soreness. But I am weaving!

Here is what I wove yesterday:

Being too lazy to wind new wefts, I used the sea-turtle wefts, so the musk oxen are blue against a very pale aqua background. I’m calling the result “Babe the Blue Musk Ox,” after Paul Bunyan’s legendary ox, Babe (who was also blue).

I’m quite pleased with the musk ox design. I need to make a few changes, like darkening the musk ox’s face so both face and eyes show more clearly, but it is clearly a musk ox and really captures the sense of shaggy fur. The next step is to weave it in a more plausible color, which I plan to do today. I am also thinking of dyeing some brushed silk/mohair yarn brown for use as pattern weft – I think the furriness of the mohair would contribute some interesting shagginess. But that will have to wait until I can get Mike to help with the heavy lifting. Both the dyepots and the skeiner are too heavy for me to lift (safely) right now – per the doctor’s orders, I’m staying away from heavy lifting for the next five weeks.

I am considering weaving a similar angora goat design, using the aforementioned silk/kid mohair yarn. That would be fun, too, and I have enough yarn for an extra scarf.

In book-land, I now have feedback from both editors – and it’s very encouraging! Both had valuable thoughts on the structure, and the editor who did the detailed edits said the writing overall was very “clean” – very few line edits needed. Today I will fix the line edits, and tomorrow I will talk to the second editor about her suggestions for structure. Then I will dive back into the book. Some chapters require serious restructuring, but I’m confident I can do that in the next week or two, at which point it will be ready to go out to the artists so they can review their quotes. Very pleased at my progress so far.

On the sea turtles, I finished many more samples on Tuesday, and yesterday got started on the fringe. I’ve beaded about five inches of fringe, which means I’m about a quarter of the way through. I’m beading the fringe as a separate piece and will attach it to the scarf when I’m done. Will probably finish in the next few days.

And I am now 3/4 of the way through the book on Adobe Illustrator, and feeling much more confident in my use of the tool. It is much more powerful than I had thought. I had been thinking of it as the digital equivalent of a pencil, where you draw lines that you can then edit. But it can do much, much, more. More than that I can’t explain (at least, not without a lot more description), but it’s an amazing tool for the digital artist. I’m very pleased to be learning it, and will probably use it soon to mock up some more design ideas. I need to practice to solidify my knowledge of the tool.

Physically, I’m doing well. I’m still being very careful about anything involving abdominal muscle, and I can’t fit into jeans yet, but I have pretty good energy. And mentally speaking, I’m close to 100%. However, I’m also still sleeping 10-12 hours a day, which suggests that there is still a lot of healing going on inside. It’s okay – I have three more weeks away from work, plenty of time to recover fully. And I’m doing extremely well for just one week post-surgery. I’m pleased with my progress.

Fritz and Tigress are on vacation for this post, but I promise their antics will return in the next one! They are being as entertaining and mischievous as ever, I just haven’t had a chance to download my photos yet. But I have some wonderful footage of Fritz galloping down the length of the house, after a laser pointer – you wouldn’t believe a cat could move so fast! And a great video of Tigress playing “fetch”. Next time!