The List Keeper…

Sounds like the title of a book I should read…

I think there are two types of people in this world, that’s a huge exaggeration, but both types actually live in my house.  There are those that keep copious amounts of lists, and there are those who think (I have been informed of this), that keeping lists suggests that one isn’t capable of remembering so ergo, no lists.

I am the list keeper.  I have lists all over the place, and thanks to lovely Cheryl whom I stayed with when I taught somewhere in the mid-west (a place I can’t remember because it isn’t on a list somewhere) I have even discovered an app for that, (Our Groceries), an app that lists lists, and one that can sync with my husband’s phone (the one who doesn’t keep lists) so if one of us is at a particular store, the other’s wish list is handy.  This does work well for the grocery store and Home Depot and Staples, etc. It does not work well for Honey-Do lists.

I have running lists on my desk,

I have a virtual group of post it’s with lists on my computer screen, thanks to a feature in Windows 7. And I have a  ToDo List on my Home page. (Prontopage for those still in mourning about the loss of iGoogle)

I have computer print outs of all my packing lists for every class I teach.

I’m not embarrassed to say I can’t remember, and I can’t afford to forget.  And the effort to try to remember everything takes away valuable creative time, so when I write it down, I don’t have to remember anything, and I get the absolutely gleeful joy of crossing off each item as it is taken care of.

I even love the Amazon Wish List feature that lets me remember books or products that I am interested in but not in a position to buy at the moment.  If you can find it on the internet, you can add it to your Amazon Wish List.

This was a week of intense planning and my lists came in super handy.  I am teaching another in home garment construction intensive, for a pair of students, starting on Monday, and there was a lot to do for prep, mainly cleaning my house from top to bottom.  Not because I’m a compulsive cleaner, but because I’ve neglected it spending more time on the outside, planting and prepping and weeding and clearing and all that tracked in mud and debris made a huge mess.  So I divided up my house into parts and put what I expected to clean on a list for each day along with appointments like, have wisdom tooth pulled. (Seriously, I broke a tooth last weekend, and had to have it pulled Monday morning.  I had great joy crossing that one off the list.)

Last night I was scheduled to play with my friend, at a coffee house in Morristown, we played a trio of songs on the Baroque recorders, and my husband created a montage of photos on his iPhone.  Crossed that one off the list…

I love my lists, they keep me sane.  No other family member in my house keeps lists and actually seems to have a complete aversion to them.  I can’t function without them.  It takes all kinds to make the world run smoothly.  I am the list keeper…

Meanwhile, Wednesday, along with a couple of generous souls from my weaving guild, I spent another day at Peters Valley, working on loom rehabilitation.  Eileen and Carol sat on the breezy porch at the weaving studio arranging heddles on some of the 96 shafts on the 11 Macomber looms we now have.  Apparently no one told the students who previously used the looms that heddles should all face in the same direction.  There was one shaft that had each of the heddles alternating, one canting to the left and one canting to the right.  There are no words…  This will be a task that will take years…

Meanwhile I worked on replacing aprons.  This is another slow task.  Macomber looms usually came with cords instead of aprons and over the years the cords rotted, or were cut or generally failed and my goal is to have every warp and cloth beam have fresh new aprons (all 30 of them), but I’m settling for just replacing the beams that have cords with aprons for now.

And for those of you who were disappointed that I didn’t take any photos of the Peters Valley open house, I grabbed my camera before I did anything else on Wednesday, and took photos of the three rooms of looms.

Here is the front room…

Here is the middle room…

And here is the back room.  The porch is off that room.

And of course, I took a complete inventory of each loom and what is left to fix or repair and what parts we need to order directly from Macomber.  All 11 looms need beater bumpers and pads for the shaft levers.  Another list…

And I did manage over a couple of nights, to finish up the blouse I started a week or so ago, and though I’m reasonably happy with it, I would not make a blouse again that had double fronts.  Sandra Betzina suggested in this Today’s Fit pattern (out of print Vogue 7903) that she prefers having a double front instead of a front facing.  I found, especially in this pattern with so many vertical darts that the front was a bit stiff, considering the fabric was a light weight lawn, like a Liberty of London Print.  It should have draped more but can’t because of the double front.  It sort of wears me instead of me wearing it.

I’m off to finish cleaning the rest of my house, and cross those items off the list, and welcome home my lovely Brianna who is, as I write, traveling home from Massachusetts for the summer.  She is also taking the workshop, and teaching my daughter as one of the class participants should be completely entertaining…

Stay tuned…