Life with Brianna…

The holiday’s are gone, the New Year is  here, and the clock is ticking.  In just a couple of short weeks, my lovely daughter will return to Massachusetts and I will be boarding a plane for the West Coast for a month of teaching.  So we are both trying to take advantage of every waking moment we have in the studio.  That would be the one Brianna helped me overhaul last weekend, and I have to say, it is like I died and went to fiber heaven.  I’m loving the arrangement, and the efficiency of the new space.

Except for two things.

First, the morning following this lovely rearrangement, I sat down at my desk, and to my horror, I realized that the window I had put my desk in front of, was south facing, so pretty much, if it was a sunny day, I’d have sun streaming in all morning/afternoon, which would backlight my monitor making it virtually impossible to see the screen.  The solution here I’m happy to say, I figured out on my own.  I had a gorgeous window shade I wove for an exhibition back in 2008.  It was actually photographed in this window.  When it came back from the exhibition in Florida, I packed it away and forgot about it.  I climbed up onto my desk, took down the old shade which wasn’t doing much to block the intensity of the sun, and installed the handwoven one, the hooks were still there.

The second problem was the closet.  Directly in view of the webcam, which means it can be seen when I teach online classes, is a closet, the door to which was removed about 30 years ago, because it was a huge five panel door and it interfered with the door to the room, and made no sense in a studio.  I went online and found 28″ wide bifold doors from Home Depot and emailed my husband the link and asked if he could get me a set of these that install them, like yesterday.  Silly me…  Thinking the whole world has my same priority list.

I mentioned to my daughter my dilemma, what to do about the unsightly closet directly in view with the webcam when I teach.  She looked at me like I had three heads and said, “Mom, really?  You have a complete textile studio here.  Surely you have somewhere in that vast stash of fabric something to hang in the closet doorway.”  Eye roll…

And so, a Guatemalan textile, that has been in my stash probably 25 years, it is gorgeous and fits well enough that I cancelled the order for the bi-fold doors.

Meanwhile, my daughter has the most envious stash of colorful Sharpie pens.  I discovered that they are permanent enough that they can repair areas missed when dyeing skeins.  So for Christmas I asked for my own set.  And last night I found out she has more colors than me…  She said, “Mom, really?  Just go online, they have all sorts of different colored sets…”

I had high hopes of having her help me this month with all sorts of tasks, and she has done remarkable things already, but she also has her own agenda…  (I can’t quite figure out why everyone in my house doesn’t subscribe to the same agenda app I do…)  She was leafing through  my downloaded Handwoven Magazine eBooks, and found a Diced Plaid Scarf by Yvonne Stahl from the Best of Handwoven Scarves on Eight Shafts.  And she found two cones of 10/2 perle cotton on my shelf, one a rich purple shade, and the other a variegated purple, lavender, green and white.  I believe both came from WEBS.  It was a marriage made in heaven.  She set up the loom vacated by the towel project, and this morning she sat down to weave.  We ooohhh’d and aaaahhhh’d and she told me that she wasn’t interested in weaving a scarf, she had put five yards of warp in the loom and was just going to weave narrow fabric.  Ok…

Meanwhile, I cut out a knit top from a gorgeous dark purple knit I’ve had on the shelf for awhile.

I stopped to vacuum the upstairs of the house, and I rinsed the latest color in the dyepot, and prepped the next batch.  Today’s color was Butterscotch.

I struggled with my serger which didn’t seem to like the knit I was working with.

I went down to the kitchen to make dinner.  Brianna was still weaving away.

After dinner I cleaned up the kitchen and when I returned to the studio, the knots were coming up over the back of the loom.  She had woven off more than four yards of this lovely faux plaid fabric.  She cut it off the loom and we stretched it across the room before she tossed it in the washer.

Then she headed over to the ball winder/umbrella swift to ball up the skeins of chunky cotton lace we dyed for a crochet project she is doing.  She had purchased a bunch of balls of a novelty yarn in pastel colors and was crocheting little medallions and needed a bright color to bridge all of them together.  So she picked out this particular yarn on my shelf, which was of course white, and we dyed it a bright turquoise blue.  She scampered off to sample one of the medallions.

I will miss Brianna when she returns to school, but I’m thinking my month of teaching on the west coast will be a much needed vacation.  I use to be young and energetic.  Sigh…

Stay tuned…