Well it has been quite the eventful week. When last I wrote, we had just returned from a lovely Thanksgiving weekend in the Catskills with my sister and her husband in their mountain cabin. Oh, and their cat. What I didn’t mention was my husband was bitten by their cat. He didn’t think it was a big deal, until he woke up Sunday morning, back here in NJ, with a hand swollen to the size of a baseball mitt. By Monday he had red streaks traveling up his arm, it was looking pretty serious. Even the doctor was shocked. Long story short, after four months in Saudi Arabia, he is taken out by a sweet faced grey cat. He ended up in the ER on Tuesday with intravenous antibiotics, which seemed to do the trick, and his hand/arm/white blood cell count, are all almost back to normal. Big relief. My brother in law, owner of the cat, brought some much needed humor to the whole affair with his blog post, http://cabininthecatskills.blogspot.com/2010/12/guest-blog-feline-atonement.html
Meanwhile, Wednesday’s rain storm was pretty horrific. 40-50 mile an hour winds toppled trees, knocked out power, killed a couple of people, fortunately I stayed safe in my studio, with the power on, yippee, playing with all my dyed yarn.
I’m amassing quite a collection of skeins, and my sample cards are growing. Course I made the mistake of going on Pro-Chem’s website last night when my nitrile gloves got a hole in them and to my complete delight/dismay, they had a whole bunch of custom colors of MX dyes on sale. So what could I do but order more colors, assuring that this little dyeing adventure will continue well into the new year, or until I run out of yarn to dye, whichever comes first.
I needed to get another run of scarves on the loom for the Santa Fe Weaving Gallery, and I think I mentioned in the last post I had chosen one of the palettes from one of my last forecasts from Handwoven, one called Lush Vegetation. I went on a treasure hunt around the studio, looking for bits of anything that were drapey and would work with the color range. Lining them all up on the cutting table, I printed out the draft, glued it to card stock, and proceeded to do a wrapping. I
worked hard the last couple of days to get the warp on the loom, stopping only to reset the AVL Warping Wheel so I could wind more skeins to dye.
I chose to try putting the supplemental ribbons on the lower beam this time. Just trying to see if I gain much in consistent tension. It did make the warp winding easier, I didn’t have to count so specifically, just winding the ground without the ribbons.
The samples have arrived from Irene at Cotton Clouds, so I can focus on designing a project for the article I’m writing for Handwoven Magazine. My husband and I took a break this afternoon and went to the Morristown Armory to see the craft fair there, it was a great show and I ran into a couple I haven’t seen in probably 20 years, Linda Kaye-Moses and Evan Soldinger from Plumdinger Studio. Lots of hugs, lots of comments how we are all so much older, and remembrances of craft fair escapades in the early 1980’s. That was back in the day when you could sleep in your van behind the booth and bring your dog to the show. That was such a long time ago, a different life ago… We are all old school craftsmen. It was great to see people like the Littlefield’s, Candiss Cole (who came to dinner Thursday night), and Sue Sachs, craftsmen who’ve been showing their work, living the lifestyle for more than 30 years. I don’t miss doing craft fairs, that was so very long ago, but I do miss the craftspeople, there were relationships formed that transcend time and space, a family of like minded creative souls that held each other up no matter how bad the sales, the economy, the weather, etc. It felt good to reconnect, and of course I still see Candiss and jeweler Sue Sachs on a regular basis.
So back to work I go, I’d like to get another scarf woven before bed, I want to get this run off and shipped before I leave on Thursday for warmer climates. A weekend get away with my husband. We are NOT bringing the kids… 🙂
I can’t believe how many people don’t understand that a cat bite is bad news. You always, always, go straight to the doctor so you can nip the infection in the bud before IV antibiotics are required. An acquaintance of mine ended up in the hospital and racked up a bill well over $100,000 by failing to get immediate attention for a cat bite. A friend had to cancel a trip to a major craft show because his own cat bit him and he decided to “keep an eye on it” rather than get treatment right away. Sweet little Fluffy’s… Read more »
Sigh…the “good ole days” of fairs and festivals. I remember wandering the grounds at Rhinebeck til the wee hours….visiting different groups of folks…often with guitars/banjos and “refreshments”, then sleeping in the livestock barns. And…do you know MX dyes can be mixed? Learned during the last class at ProChem that there is a basic list of MX dyes you can mix all colors from. Just like the Washfast Acid dyes. You can also adjust any colors you have by adding….say black to grey a shade…or yellow to warm it. Just measure your grams to get the correct depth of shade. Fun,… Read more »
78 times is really really good for a cat, I think he means it! I’m so sorry about the bite, but I sure got a good belly laugh out of the cat’s post. tytytyty