Best Laid Plans…

As it turned out, I didn’t start my Fibers Class at the Community College last night.  We had an ice storm.  A good old fashioned crummy awful, but spectacularly gorgeous ice storm.  More common than two foot snow storms in New Jersey, this is the kind of storm that makes everything look like it is frozen, like an ice palace, but driving in it is treacherous and scary.  The temperature hovers at freezing, so as it rains, the rain freezes onto every surface it touches creating a glaze that is light reflective, beautiful and dangerous at the same time.

So they cancelled school.  Sort of a snow day if you will.  I always loved snow days, everything gets cancelled or postponed, and you get a free day.  A whole day to do what makes you happy as long as you don’t have to go outside.  Which I didn’t.  I felt for my kids who had to clear the driveway and the cars and the walk ways.  It wasn’t the kind of snow that you could blow away with the snow blower.  It was about four inches of heavy icy slush and there was nothing to be done but shovel it.  They did the neighbor across the street’s driveway and another friend across town as well.  They were very sore when they woke up this morning.

So I have to wait another week to be Professor Daryl, and I’m glad I didn’t make myself nuts over-preparing.  And how did I use my free day?  First, I slept in.  There is no greater joy in life than just snuggling warm under the covers and knowing there is a whole day ahead and nothing that was on the calendar will actually happen.  🙂

The bleakness of the gray cold freezing rain was pretty depressing every time I looked outside.  The trees were sparkling with ice, but to get the best effect, you need the sunlight refracting off the surfaces.  Sadly it was just gray.  So the only possible thing I could do on this very gray cold free day was…

Yep, I decided that to counteract the gray day, I would make another scarf warp from the brightest of the colors that I had dyed over the past two months.  I used an old palette from one I designed for Handwoven Magazine for inspiration, Night at the Arcade, and I pulled the skeins from the overflowing shelves and got my daughter, who was also off from school with a free day, no trombone lesson, nothing on her calendar, I got her to turn all the skeins into balls.  🙂

As she worked through the skeins, I started winding the warp.  Previously I’ve painstakingly wound cards that had a thread by thread lay-out over a to scale draft.  I decided to see if I could just actually wing this one, it was taking a big risk, but I wanted to see if I could just wind the colors and see what happened.  I had the first couple of inches on the beam when my daughter wandered over and commented that I was winding two inches when I should have only been winding an inch based on the draft.  Oops…

I looked at the draft again, and reworked the colors in the weaving software I was using for a reference, and decided to just carry on.  This was to be sort of not planned, so what the heck…

Each section I wound was more spectacular than the last, and as I added the sections in, the gray rain outside disappeared and the room was filled with color and light.  I finished winding the warp this morning, and got the loom threaded up this afternoon.  I had to see how it would all look, so I wove a couple of inches and here’s what I’ve got.

It looks like there will be more snow showers on Friday and the chance of snow next Tuesday.  Well I’ll be ready to chase away the gray with this very colorful scarf run, and I’m hoping by spring I’ll be able to start my class at the college.  Stay tuned…