Juggling…

I’ve mentioned before how perfect my job is for someone with ADD.  I love bouncing from one project to another with lightening speed, because the second my brain is left idle, I think of a myriad of other things that I should be working on…

And this week, I worked on them all.  Well really I didn’t even make a dent, but I did move into and through a lot of pressing stuff…

There was the winding of all the warps for the Beginning Weaving class I’m teaching this weekend at the Fiber Fallout in western NJ.  Done…

There was the winding of the warp, all 667 ends, for the Dianne Totten Crimp Cloth workshop next week sponsored by my guild, Jockey Hollow Weavers.  Done…  Though now I have to sley, thread, and beam the loom, the warp is 10/2 cotton.  Should take awhile…

In the ongoing quest to make sure I always have a sewing project going, I pulled another lovely hunk of yardage from my vast stack, no I didn’t weave this, but it is definitely handwoven somewhere in the world, you can tell by the selvedges, and when I washed it, it just plumped up and felt glorious. (Fabric is from Osgood’s in West Springfield, MA) Problem was there wasn’t enough to do the jacket I picked out (Vogue 8429), enter plan B, I found a left over half yard of beautiful grey wool, probably from  my mom’s stash from the looks of it, and you don’t want to know how old that is, and it was just enough to cut the cuffs and collar.  And I have some cool buttons from my stash as well.  And the button loops I got from taking apart a frog in my vast attic stash.  (Note: I love shopping in my own stash for stuff, however it makes me realize how much crap stash I have accumulated…)

And I managed to procure one additional sample loom, to add to my existing group of nine, this is the sister to my one Leclerc 10″ 4 shaft baby, which looked rather lonely next to 8 Structos. (See previous post)…  So I quickly removed the very old and very stained aprons, and used the cotton twill I keep in my stash for just this purpose, and put new aprons on the front and back of this lovely little loom, and now it will live with it’s sister in the sea of Structos.  FYI, LeClerc still makes a 9 1/2″ wood sample loom, I priced them and Leclerc wants $850. for a new one.  I think it is only available in an 8 shaft, but still…  It would be cost prohibitive to actually procure any small looms for a beginner class.  I’m starting to understand why the Structo is such a desirable item on eBay.  I can fit 10 of these little looms in my car to teach beginning weaving at a place with no weaving equipment.  Have looms will travel…

In the middle of all this, my lovely daughter, texted me from college that she needed emergency help with a Halloween costume.  I sort of thought I was done with all this, and in fact, the last few years she has been pretty self sufficient finding and creating whatever costume she needed, but she wants something pretty specific this year, a Dr. Horrible lab coat, as featured in the music videos starring Neil Patrick Harris, (google it, it is pretty hilarious) and she had done a great job procuring the goggles and boots, and the large lab gloves, but couldn’t find the specific lab coat, nor could she find a pattern for one.  I looked through my patterns, seemed easy enough to alter something, but over the weekend she discovered an actual pattern, downloadable from Erica Binns at Barefootsewing.com.  I ordered the download, more out of curiosity as to how one sends out a full size pattern in a PDF file, and when it arrived, it was actually 42 sheets of printer paper that all had to be taped together, pretty simple actually, I just used a whole roll of tape, and after roughly determining my daughter’s size, I traced off the patterns into a mock muslin of the pattern paper I used to trace with, and will ship that up to her in Massachusetts today to check the fit.  Erica did a good job, the sewing directions and lack of markings and match points clearly shows a new generation of garment maker, but I have to give her a lot of credit, the pattern works, and I’m skilled enough to create a pretty slammin’ lab coat if my daughter can’t handle this on her end.  The good news is this isn’t the week before Halloween, this is an entire month.  She is learning…

And so, I continue to juggle all the areas of my life, sometimes not feeling like I’m accomplishing anything and then suddenly accomplishing everything.  The gorgeous fall weather is beckoning and I’ve managed to bring in all the outdoor plants, the evenings are getting a bit chilly, and I’ve made all my garden basil into pesto, tucking it safely in the bottom of the freezer.  I’m looking forward to firing up the wood stove for the first time this season…

Stay tuned…