What’s in a name…

My weaving friend Ginnie and I were having an email exchange about following through on distasteful tasks that sort of overwhelm us.  I completely understood where she was coming from, sometimes a task is just overwhelming from the get go, causing serious procrastination, I can think of many of those just sitting in my inbox, and sometimes once a task is started, it takes on a life of its own, one you weren’t quite counting on.  I was trying to be a little cheerleader as I urged Ginnie through her particular arduous task, describing my own experiences with taking long drawn out affairs small bits at a time.  And I went on to describe the completely overwhelming task I started probably the end of October, (I’ll have to check my blog) of every day, dyeing a pound of yarn of assorted rayons and silk, with an MX color du jour.  I’ve mentioned it frequently in my blog, and though we are nearing the end of December, and I took off days for my Key West adventure, Thanksgiving, etc., and I’ve actually used some of the skeins already in the scarf warps,  I’m still plodding along rinsing every morning, tying up the dried skeins from the day before, winding eight new skeins, soaking them in dye activator, and then mixing up a batch of dye, and putting the new skeins in to cook.  The whole process takes about 1 1/2-2 hours, depending on how much I get distracted.

Anyway, Ginnie writes back and calls me a “Seasoned Plodder”.  What a wonderful name.  She is right of course.  I’m really good at breaking things down into very manageable pieces, and doing small bits at a time.  I have a lot of tasks in my in-box, and many of them are really overwhelming when I look at the whole picture, but very manageable in small doses.  That’s why, “sample all MX dyes” seemed like a nearly impossible task, but a couple hours a day, I now have this to look at to inspire me to keep on plodding.

In case you are curious, yesterday’s color currently hanging to dry, was Conch Shell, a vivid orange red, who knew, and the color du jour in the dyepot at the moment is Tranquil Water, a gorgeous teal blue.  Can’t wait to see that one hanging to dry.

My house is dirty, so Monday, I dusted, Tuesday I vacuumed, today I’m working on the bathrooms.  Tomorrow the kitchen, and Friday the master bedroom wing.  (Don’t be impressed, it was an addition put on when we added the two car garage some 21 years ago.)  And by Christmas day, the house will be as clean as it gets.

The big loom has about eight yards of fabric that has to be woven off by the end of the year, so I can get to the project I have to develop to go along with the yardage for the Handwoven article.  A yard a day, or in this case, two pirns of yarn in the shuttle, about 32″, means that more than likely by the end of the week, I’ll have it off the loom.

And one of the table looms needs 900 ends of linen/polyester sewing thread warp sleyed and threaded for a commission I need to get cracking on, so just a few inches a day, and I’m making progress.

And if I’m a good girl and get all my necessary tasks done, I try to take an hour in the evening, and sew.  The tunic I blogged about in my last post, is turning out well so far, I’m loving what’s happening with the pleats in the plaid.  As all Issey Miyake Vogue patterns, this one is an adventure to put together, always teaching me something new, and my sewing machine quietly waits for me to turn it on each evening.

After I posted that blog, I put a link up on my Facebook page, mentioning that I had a new post up, but not feeling as though everyone I’ve ever known in my life needed to read it, certainly not kids I went to High School with, or my son’s friends, etc., I tried to narrow my audience by posting this in my status…

For all those sewers out there, I’ve put up a new blog post https://weaversew.com/wordblog/2010/12/18/an-apology-and-a-tutorial/

I immediately received half a dozen comments about having to look twice at the status, confusing the word sewer (as in one who sews) with sewer (as in where the contents of the toilet flushes to…)  The more politically correct term is now Sewist, but it sounds so contrived and pretentious.  I felt that way when “Craftsman” became “Crafter”.  I still can’t use that word.  So Nancy came up with “Sewing Geek”.  As in “For all those sewing geeks out there…”  I loved it.  Thanks Nancy, I’m cool with that.

So, happy solstice from the seasoned plodder sewing geek, I hope you all got to see the grand celestial event yesterday early morning, the full lunar eclipse occurring the same day as the Winter Solstice.   That of course hasn’t happened since the 1600’s.  My wonderful photographer husband and my daughter, who just finished a college course in Astronomy, gathered on the deck at three in the morning, to watch the event, we kept running in and out of the sliders to keep warm.  Eventually the “bottom feeders” came up from the basement to observe the phenomenon, and we all ran inside when they lit cigarettes polluting the cold crisp night air.

Stay tuned for more adventures from the seasoned plodder sewing geek…