I haven’t been on the road for awhile, so I am sort of not in the traveling mind set. I leave for the Southern California Handweaving Conference on March 3rd, so about 10 days before I pack and head out, I have to have a final head count of students for each class, and then print the handouts. Then I have to print some of my monographs as well and of course, plenty of interfacings, and whatever other product I carry that would be appropriate for that particular class. All of it has to be shipped ahead well enough in advance to ensure it will be waiting when I get there. It is a two-three day job, depending on how many students, how many classes, and how much product I think I’ll need. So yesterday I cranked up my beloved HP Laser Color printer with a duplexer for double sided printing, and went through about four reams of paper. So today, I had the really fun task (she says with a slight degree of sarcasm) of binding all the handouts/monographs with my newest comb binding machine. I wear them out every couple of years, and I recently had to replace mine, so I splurged and bought an electric. Even with the electric, it is still a tedious task.
Once I bound the huge stack of handouts (I printed 18 books each for the Inkle Weaving class and the Photographing your Work class) and a dozen books for the jacket class, I then started rolling out my industrial bolts of interfacings. I use two different interfacings for the jackets, both in black and white, a lot depends on the type of fabric students bring, one is the fusible knit tricot, and the other is an inserted texturized weft fusible that I adore, that I had to scour the country to get when HTCW discontinued their Textured Weft Product, and I found it but had to buy 200 yard bolts. So I lift these babies onto the cutting table and chop off two yards at a time and package them for resale. All of it has to be shipped tomorrow with the bolt of pattern paper, and the Inkle looms, since they don’t fit in the suitcase.
So that was my day. Tedious, but part of the job. The highlight was my sushi lunch with my Thursday Philosophy Club. We have the best Sushi restaurant in NJ within walking distance of my house. Kim Sushi. Love it.
And my daughter had an asthma attack at school, I swear it is the air quality there, I brought her inhaler in, and eventually all was well. And when I picked her up around dinner time from the HS musical rehearsal, I let her drive home. She has her permit, and I will say, I didn’t have white knuckles this time when we arrived in the driveway. She is improving…