Letter writing 101…

I finally heard from my son, who is at Boot Camp in Fort Jackson, SC.  He called us from a pay phone late Tuesday night, and I can’t tell you how good it was to hear his voice.  He was full of grand adventures, and sounds like he is really growing up, and is benefiting in a positive way, from the whole experience.  He was disappointed that he hadn’t gotten any mail, and asked if we had gotten his letter with his address in it?  Sadly we hadn’t, though he claimed it had been mailed two weeks ago.  He said he had sent seven letters to us and his friends, but none of us have received them.  I had to think for a minute, did he even know how to address a letter?  I’m sure I taught him…   Maybe he was in 5th grade?  I know that sounds really odd, but think about it, does this generation know how to communicate in any way other than email and text?

So, armed with his address at Fort Jackson, I sat down yesterday and wrote an old fashioned letter.  With the date on top, followed by Dear Eric.  As I wrote, I thought about how lost the art of real letter writing has become.  I sent him a newsy two sided note, on flowery stationery, which has been in my drawer for about 12 years.  It is sort of sad, to think that the art of letter writing is dying, but in this day and age, it is the only way to stay in touch with a recruit in boot camp.  I wrote him another letter today.  It made me feel good to stick the letter in an envelope, put on a stamp, and leave it for the postman (woman in this case…)

I did an overview of my lengthy to do list, and now that the guild website is functioning well enough, I thought I’d take a breather and survey the next group of deadlines, while I work steadily on the yardage.

Speaking of the yardage.  I am about half way through.  I’ve had to rig up a contraption on the back of the loom, to take out the slack in the springy cotton lace yarn, which is working moderately well.  And I’m sort of embarrassed, I discovered a threading error about three yards into the yardage, nothing critical, but something that I can’t believe I didn’t notice for three yards, and now I can’t see anything but…  That’s sort of the way it goes.  It was an easy fix, I just used wire cutters to clip the heddle and move it to the correct shaft.  No threads needed to be cut and spliced…

The Small Looms Group of the South Jersey Guild of Spinners and Handweavers,  asked me to do a workshop in May on Inkle Loom Pick-up, which I agreed to do, as a half day workshop, since the idea is they would all come with warped looms.  After numerous discussions with the committee members, I realized they wanted more than just pick-up work, that the consensus was for an advanced workshop, including supplemental work, which I sort of made up and talked about in a past blog post, and I started to think of how I could have them set up their loom ahead of time with one warp that would allow all kinds of advanced techniques through the four hour class.

So I came up with a warp, that I think is pretty interesting, and they can work on whichever section they need to, encompassing three different techniques.  For really perceptual advanced weavers, they can do all three simultaneously!  🙂

The warp section on the left, will allow a 1/1 name draft, which I haven’t started yet, and the center section will allow a supplemental warp, shown here with the red X’s.  The section on the right, with little seeds, is a standard seven thread pick up.  Here it is shown with a pick up design. It is actually a challenging warp, and I can see turning the inkle loom one day class that I teach, into a two day.  My daughter has gotten really proficient at weaving the alphabet on the inkle loom, here is the dog collar she is weaving for her new dog Bjorn. (Norwegian for Bear).

Some of the things on my to do list are boring and nothing I’d want to blog about.  Like doing the bookkeeping for 2009, getting everything ready for the accountant.  They are so boring I don’t even want to do them.  I took my 12 year old Honda wagon to motor vehicles yesterday to get it inspected.  I wanted to cross that item off my to do list.  Sadly the car failed because one of the tires was worn unevenly.  I’m proud though of my little Honda car, that after twelve years, it can still pass inspection, it was the tires that caused the problem.  So I add to my to do list, buy two new tires.

One of the items on the list was to make a dress from the plaid fabric I started to blog about a month or so ago.  The fabric has been sitting in a pile on my cutting table since then.  In addition to the handwoven Irish wool plaid, I wanted to make this simple princess lined dress from a silk gown I’d made a number of years ago that I had no use for anymore.  I wanted something shorter and more fun.  The silk was a paprika color, and if I really liked the fit and style of the dress, once I remade the paprika silk, I’d go ahead and cut it from the plaid.

So I took the dress apart at the back seam, removed the zipper, and laid it out across the table, in addition to the length of yardage left from the original dress.  Truth is, I need a sewing project to work on.  I love the loom, and I love the fabric I’m weaving, but I really am most happy when I have a sewing project as well.  If you are a sewer sewist who has been reading this blog, I’m sure you are quite done with all my weaving escapades, so this one’s for you!  Stay tuned…