As The World Turns…

So my week went something like this…

Go to Hardware store to buy new flapper to repair toilet that won’t flush.  (I didn’t know that water entering the toilet with no lid on the back gushes like a geyser…)

Repair toilet and clean up water sprayed all over the bathroom.

Pull dead leaf debris from the icy cold spillways of the pond that caused all the water to pump out, in the rain in my pajamas (don’t ask…)

Refill pond.

Clear pump that got clogged from refilling pond so the waterfall works.

Dear Kevin (who has been out of the country 187 days this year, he counted),

It is time to come home…  Your wife and kids miss you and your mail has reached the top of the back of the Windsor Chair. There is no more room.

Love, Daryl

In other news, I continued to plod along, happily sitting in my sandbox studio, like a little kid, surrounded by yarn, by color and by looms that actually have cloth on them.  Some are still naked, but we are working on that.

Each morning I get up, and rinse the yarn from the day before, and wind new skeins to dye.  I pick a new color and process the yarns and put the new pot of yarn on the heating pad to “cook”.

Each morning I’m surprised by the results, it is like opening a present to see what’s inside, and occasionally I’m really surprised like I was yesterday morning when I hung up the “Wisteria” batch.  Each of the eight skeins was a different color.  Go figure.  Such is the world of dyeing with chemicals, not being a chemist, and not having any interest in chemistry other than the basic dye directions and advice from well meaning friends, I get what I get.  This isn’t exactly a problem since I’m not trying to match anything, and having eight different colors come out of the same dyepot gives me even more to chose from as I plan my scarf warps.

This morning as I write, I’m soaking yesterday’s dyepot in the final Synthrapol rinse.  Who knew that Sun Yellow was really orange in disguise?

I have a couple  scarves woven on the latest batch for the Santa Fe Gallery, and I hope with my son gone to drills for the weekend and my daughter at school I won’t get too distracted by whatever flies by my line of vision, and actually get a couple more woven.  I’d like to have the run off by the time my husband returns from Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.  With Thanksgiving lurking, it won’t be much of a productive week, and that’s OK.  There is a scheduled trip to Rhode Island for a college visit with my daughter, and the coming of age ceremony of removing her wisdom teeth on Wednesday, but I digress.

The big loom with the gorgeous warp, finally called loudly enough for me to sit down and actually sample.  I’m really starting to feel my 55 years, and I realize I’m in horrible shape, it was a struggle to lift those 45″ wide solid rock maple shafts, but by the end of the yardage, I know I’ll be much stronger in my back muscles and the shafts should lift almost effortlessly.  (We won’t talk about sitting under the loom re-tying the treadles…)

I’ve woven off the test yardage, sampling anything in the studio that wasn’t nailed down and would be appropriate for a weft.  I sampled more than usual, there were lots of choices, and once again, after cutting the test yardage into three sections, keeping one intact, gently washing one in the sink, and throwing the other one in the washer and dryer with the regular laundry, I’m shocked at what I thought would be great, and ended up selecting something I barely thought to try.

In the end I selected a cone of Zephyr, I tried the copper color, that’s the one in the sample, and I loved the way it washed, fulling nicely and creating a stable warp face fabric, with hints of the weft color peaking out.  The problem was the yard for the sample came from a section of the warp that didn’t have a lot of the purple/fuchsia areas.  I was afraid the Zephyr Jaggerspun wool/silk was too orangy for the whole yardage, so I rooted around more and came up with a cone of russet Zephyr that looks a lot better.  Problem is I probably don’t have enough.  My calculations show I’ll be about 200 yards short, but I’ll worry about that at the end of seven and a half yards of fabric.

This past weekend I spent with my guild at the annual Jockey Hollow Show and Sale.  I got there at 6:30am on Saturday with my son, who volunteered himself to do whatever needed to be done, and he ended up staying until after 3pm.

Let me take a minute to say publicly how much I appreciated his ability to see what had to be done and to do it without complaint, and to diffuse opinion and personality conflicts and make everyone feel heard.  It is a special talent and I have to say, as his mom, I’d never seen that side of him before, when I mentioned it later he said, “Gee mom, what do you think they teach you in the military?  Conflict resolution…”  I was pretty proud of him and will really miss him at next year’s sale if he is deployed somewhere far away.

Anyway, I brought a number of my pieces, some of my older coats, I can’t travel with many of them anymore, and they have gone past their usefulness as exhibit/teaching tools, coats take up too much space in the limited weight suitcases.  I brought a few scarves I’ve had lying around, and I priced everything at what I thought was fair.  We’ve had numerous discussions on pricing in our guild, struggling with the comments from last year about cheap handmade gifts and a church bazaar atmosphere, trying to encourage visitors to the fair to appreciate the time and effort that go into each   handmade work.  I brought much of my work along to illustrate the range of price points, if my $150 scarf is beautiful, but too pricey, it makes the scarves for $80-$100 from other guild members look like bargains, hopefully increasing their sales.

The numbers aren’t in yet, they won’t be for awhile, but my plan sort of backfired a bit, I ended up selling $1200 worth of my own work, much to my great surprise, including a coat for more than $500 and that $150 scarf.  Go figure…

So what could I do?  Spending two whole days surrounded by beautiful work, knowing there would be a nice check coming in shortly, I turned around some of that earnings and bought stuff.  I added to my handwoven dishtowel collection (still haven’t woven one myself) by buying two lovely ones, and I picked up a pair of hand knit socks.  Yes, I know I actually knit socks, but when I spend hours and hours of work and $18 for the yarn, it makes sense to me to buy a pair for $40 every once in awhile.  The knitter of the socks swears she just buys cheap yarn from Michaels, but I swear, they wear the best.  I have one of hers from last year and they are my favorites.

And my newly renovated  guest room needed a throw rug.  To my great surprise, I found one at the sale, I’d have liked it a bit bigger, but the colors were perfect for the room which still had lime green and turquoise furnishings from my daughter’s youth, and a handmade quilt on the bed (from my mom) that tied the room together making it less juvenile.  The throw rug looks gorgeous against the new wood floor.

Thanksgiving is upon us, and there is so much to be thankful for especially in this time of global unrest and confusion.  I am so grateful for my family, for the constant surprises my kids throw at me in a good way, for my son who will be serving his country in the coming year, that his conflict resolution skills will see him safely through, and for my absent husband, whom I miss dreadfully, and will really appreciate having him home for awhile, even though the clutter will resume as the pile of mail in the chair gets distributed all over the house…  Then there are all the newspapers I saved for him…