Tag: Huck Lace

True Confessions…

My life is so full of really fun stuff, gardening is winding down, the visuals are changing daily. New stuff is blooming, (hello goldenrod) and other plants are dying back, going to seed, and looking wretched (goodbye milkweed).

I’m taking a natural dye intensive through Maiwa, in Canada (remotely of course) and watching each module, carefully taking lots of notes, and starting to scour some of the yarns and fabrics in the kit.

I’m taking cello lessons. Yep, something I always wanted to learn, it is my most favorite sounding instrument of all. First draw of the bow string and I was hooked. I practice furiously every day, hoping the pads of my fingertips will soon harden up! The photo from the teacher is for me to try to replicate proper posture…

And in all of that, honestly, I miss weaving. I love and have always loved the gentle process of a shuttle going back and forth, feet and hands in a rhythm that makes my heart sing. That and the cello… Often I listen to one while doing the other.

So here is the true confessions part. I have 17 table looms, all with interesting stuff on them, and I HATE weaving on a table loom. Really. Please don’t write letters telling me all the advantages of having a table loom, I know what they are, that’s why I still have 17 of them, down from around 3 dozen. There is nothing better for teaching structure, portability, etc.

Before Covid changed the world and certainly my life, I was able to cart around an entire weaving studio in my car, and bring the world of weaving to the masses. I gave 12 of my sturdy little 4-shaft Structos to my weaving friend Anne Choi, who has a sheep farm and was excited to get them, and set up her own mobile weaving studio, concentrating in underserved areas that don’t have access to the joy of handweaving. She sent me these couple of images of my beloved Structos at the Newark Museum, here in NJ, this past weekend, another group of new weavers is born. Here is the link to her website.

So, what about me… Back when I was doing this regularly, with my daughter in tow (she is now an emergency vet tech, and has little time for weaving), I started to build a group of 4-8 shaft Structos, with all different structures, envisioning a follow-up round robin, where people could try things like Summer/Winter, Huck, Doubleweave, Deflected Doubleweave, Honeycomb, Rosepath, etc. I put 4-6 yards of fine yarn, cotton or Tencel, on these little Structos and got each of them started and there they sat. This photo is from October 2023, it hasn’t changed…

One of them, actually a Leclerc 10″ wide 4-shaft sample loom, with spools on the back, had a Huck Sampler in linen, the spools had come with the loom, from my mother-in-law, and I thought it would be perfect to use up all that linen. What was I thinking…

I had no idea how much linen was on this group of spools, so I finished the yard and a half sampler, and there was still plenty to go. I picked one pattern and figured, how much could there be? So, I wove… And wove… And wove… This went on for the last year. I will be honest, it was painful… I couldn’t believe that the end was nowhere in sight.

So determined to clear this little guy if it killed me, I finally last weekend wove until I saw the end of the warp, which on a loom like this with spools, is the paper tape end that tucks into the flange of the metal spool.

And there it is. 7 1/2 freaking yards. Of 10″ wide huck in fine linen. I could have done this in probably a couple sittings on a floor loom. Instead it took me months. Sigh…

I had needed one of the small looms for the group that went to the college for my retrospective. So back in January I decided to actually cut off a Doubleweave sampler I started, and rethread, and beam onto a floor loom. Desperate to weave something, anything, I sat down this week, and pulled out Jennifer Moore’s Doubleweave book, and started in again. Oh the joy of using my hands and feet. I only have two more units left on this sampler, and I’m loving every minute of it. I have the more challenging ones left, quilting in a pattern and doubleweave pick-up, but with my feet working as part of the team, I’m looking forward to this.

That said, I looked at that wall of Structos and thought, well damn, I’ll just take them one at a time, and dump them onto my little 8-shaft Tools of the Trade loom, and carry on. I’m actually excited. The planning is done (though I have to convert from a lift-plan to a treadling sequence, I have software for that), and once I dump onto my floor loom I can weave like the wind.

I was chatting about this brilliant decision of mine with a weaving friend, and as I took a sip of my tea, she blurted out, “Friends don’t let friends weave on a rigid heddle loom…” (Sorry, if you aren’t a weaver you won’t understand this comment) I spit my tea across the table! Them’s fighting words in the weaving community. Truth be told, I feel the same way, and again, please don’t send letters telling me the grand virtues and benefits of a rigid heddle loom, they have their place, much like my beloved Structos, but I have a dozen and a half table looms, all set up that are not fun to weave on. My blog, my opinion…

So I continue with my dye studies, and while I baby sit the pots for scouring and mordanting, I work on the quilt. It is all together, and I’m now starting on the 380-piece trumpet vine that meanders all throughout the quilt. This is something I really don’t want to finish, I’m having too much fun…

And, I looked at the calendar and realized I have exactly one month to make stuff for my guild sale. I still have lots of scraps left from my production years, though thankfully the pile is getting smaller. The pieced jacket I finally finished used up a nice amount. It will be for sale at the Jockey Hollow Weavers Show and Sale in Mendham NJ starting November 1.

I sold all those adorable bunnies I had last year, (blog post that shows the finished bunnies, scroll down…) and took the last of the mohair fabrics and scraps I had, and cut out four more. Mulder was doing his best to help.

So my days are full, garden for an hour, watch a module in the dye class for an hour, work in the dye studio for an hour, weave for an hour, do correspondence for an hour, practice cello for an hour, and fit in housework, processing a bucket full of tomatoes, basil for pesto (my freezer is filling up). Yes, I’m ridiculously busy, but having a blast, now that I am truly honest with myself and admitted I hate working on a table loom…

Stay tuned…

Bringing up the bodies…

With apologies to Hilary Mantel…

I wish I could have taken a picture of me following a County College of Morris Dodge Caravan heading west on Rt. 10, loaded with 20 dress forms, all stacked like bodies, on the way to the college gallery with the second load for the exhibition. It was pretty hilarious.

This has been one of the most intense but awesome assignments of my life, to organize a retrospective of my work, and all the moving piece parts, assign labels, write 15 artist statements for the 15 categories of work, some 90 pieces, including wall/art pieces. Enormous.

My best friend in High School said to me on Facebook, “I knew you when…” and “Is this like getting an Oscar?” Wow. What a lovely thing to say. I wouldn’t know, since I’ve never gotten an Oscar and have never done anything to deserve an Oscar, but this retrospective is pretty important to me. I think of it more like a lifetime achievement award. Slow and steady. Because one of the sponsors of the show is Morris County Teen Arts, there was a request to go back as far as I could with work to tell the complete story. So there is a macramé vest I did in 1972. I’m still proud of that piece. I was 17 years old. (And Macramé was all the rage.)

So the last couple of weeks, I’ve done nothing but dress bodies, and store bodies in my guest rooms. The forms I purchased through Amazon were really inexpensive. About $21 each. But… each form costs $25 to ship via Fedex, and the hip measurement of each form was only 33 1/2″. I do not know of a single adult human being with a 33 1/2″ hip. I don’t know who they were designed to fit. Maybe that’s why they were so cheap. So I invested in a few rolls of large bubble wrap, and armed with a tape gun, and a box of shoulder pads I found in the attic from my production days, I bubbled up some 41 dress forms to fit my garments.

All the forms were stored in my corner guest room. I also invested in something like two dozen shirt forms, for the smaller less important pieces that were necessary for the stories. The gallery director came up with a 40 form limit for the existing gallery floor space, and so I needed to also fill the walls.

On Tuesday, I moved everything to the living room to wait for the van. The dogs were initially curious but ultimately bored, nothing I do is of much interest to them. Unless food is involved… That was my workout for the month. I moved probably 40 pieces down a couple flights of stairs, one at a time.

And so everything for the show is now at the gallery. Except the demonstration loom. I designed a 4-shaft fabric, that sort of looks like my 8-shaft fabric, (a variation on my Custom Runner draft in my eShop) on a 25″ floor loom. I started with a poster from one of my Magic Puzzles. This one is called Sunny City. It was sort of sepia-toned and nostalgic. All the yarns are hand-dyed with fiber-reactive dyes.

I got the loom set up in record time. 5 yards beamed.

And I played around with wefts, struggling to decide if I wanted to focus more on the soft palette of vintage looking colors, or showcase the interesting combination of structures which would require a darker warp. In the end I settled on a mid-grey Alpaca/Silk, from WEBS, but I didn’t have enough on the cone for the 4 1/2 yards I would ultimately be weaving. I went to the WEBS site and not only did they still have the yarn, but it was on sale! Score! There is a second cone coming soon. (But I won’t be weaving this off until the fall. The loom will be at the college until the end of the summer.)

Here is the flier for the show, or rather both halves of the postcard. The show technically ends the end of March, moves to a smaller gallery (just the bodies) and everything else goes into storage while the college puts on its students’ final show. Everything gets remounted the beginning of May, there is another opening, and I give the keynote address for the Morris County Teen Arts Festival. The show will remain in the Main Gallery through the summer. Apparently CCM is redoing its website, so if you Google the gallery, the information is from last October and that won’t be helpful for this show.

We recorded a 12 minute video on ‘how to weave’, and there will be three Structo/Leclerc Sample Looms there for gallery patrons to try. I’ll swap them out each week to freshen, re-warp, etc. I gave a number of my teaching Structos to one of my guild mates who will be taking over the Learn-to-Weave program for my guild, so I needed to clear one of the 4-shaft looms I had set up previously with some random structure. I chose the Leclerc Sample Loom which had a linen warp and wove off the couple yard huck lace sampler. I still had linen on the spools so I figured, this should be easy, I picked one of the designs, and started to weave off the rest of the spools. This was a couple months ago. I’m still weaving. I’ve determined this loom is magical and that it is a warp that will never end. I know a pre-warped Structo spool, back in the day, could hold 20 yards of 20/2 cotton, and this linen is a similar weight. Dear Lord… The spools came to me with the loom, a hand me down from my late mother-in-law. I had no idea how much linen was still left, but how bad could it be? Bad…

I weave an hour or so a day, and still I look back there and it looks the same. I keep hoping I’ll start to see the end soon. I need this loom. Five of the six sample looms are ready to go. I have a five yard carpet warp waiting. Sigh…

So that’s a wrap up of Daryl’s Greatest Adventure, a 40 years look back over an amazing body of work, which isn’t even half of what I’ve done, because there is a ton that has been sold and I didn’t even count the hundreds of garments I sold in my 10 years of craft fairs. I promise to take pictures, and my daughter, who is currently on a Star Trek cruise to the Caribbean, promised to film a documentary when she gets back.

My only real problem now, is I have nothing to wear to the opening, since everything I have will be on exhibit… Hmmmm…..

And I should mention that today, in spite of everything else that is happening in my life, is the 22 year anniversary of my breast cancer diagnosis. 2/22/2002. I will never forget this date. And so it is fitting that I’m mounting a retrospective of what I’ve accomplished in the years since that diagnosis, and there have been many of them. I wish my late husband could have been here to see this accomplishment. I was one of the lucky ones to have lived through a cancer diagnosis…

Stay tuned…

New Year/ New Challenges…

So now it is 2024. All of those things that I didn’t have to think about, because they were so next year, well they are closing in upon me! Lots of remote lectures and teaching. Seems guilds, including mine, are taking advantage of knowledge gained via Zoom, and booking their dark winter guild meetings, with potential hazardous weather, with things that can be done remotely. I have already given a couple of lectures, and have a number of upcoming workshops to teach, all remotely, but alas, prepping for them, even though they are remote, is still at times onerous. Getting the contracts out, the correspondence, which guild wants what, shipping kits if necessary, letters to students, materials lists, and PDF’s of the presentation… Still all that makes my head spin and I’m trying to keep everything straight. There is always that fear, and I had it when I taught on the road, that I’ll show up (even via Zoom) and have the wrong presentation and materials! Fortunately with Zoom, I have other lectures loaded into the laptop, so it is easier to switch. It only happened once in my career, and I had the correct topic, but grabbed the wrong bag of samples. Still…

I briefly mentioned a few blog posts ago, that the local community college is planning a large installation of my work in their gallery, and I have more than 60 garments, plus all of the artwork. Since I wear many of the garments that will be displayed, each needs to be cleaned, de-fuzzed, pressed, bagged, and a handling swatch included. Mostly I’m hand washing everything, I’m not sending 60 garments to the dry cleaner, and they don’t always clean what I want and how I want. So that means that I have to start now, working on a couple a day. I bought a good fabric shaver from Wawak.com, which helps take pills and fuzz off surfaces. Works like a dream. I have to dig through bags of scraps to find a piece for each garment to be used as a handling piece. I have to make the occasional repair. And garments I opened up for viewing in my videos have to be stitched back together. It is all a wonderful challenge. But it will take time and this isn’t something I can do at the last minute. The end of February will be here before you know it.

Next Weekend is my guild’s Learn to Weave class. I bring 15 Structo looms and pre-wound warps and I check the weather every hour starting January 1st to see if weather will cause the class to be postponed. It is always a nail biter. I had a guild friend come and help me wind warps. We make a cross at both ends and then fold the warp in half and cut, so making two warps for our efforts. The class is full, with a waiting list, and I’ll get the final letter out to each student probably tomorrow. It looks like the weather will be warm and rainy.

Meanwhile, that guild friend, is planning on long term borrowing 12 of my Structo looms to do some teaching of her own, with the goal of bringing weaving to underserved communities. It is a pleasure working with her, but if I give her 12 of my Structo looms, and the gallery exhibit at the college is planning a hands on component, I need some additional looms for that purpose. I have a total of 30 Structo and Leclerc Sample Looms, and a bunch are 8 shaft. I had set up the fifteen not reserved for “Learn to Weave” with various structures which I’ve enjoyed over the past year and a half, but I need to clear a few for our joint needs this year. Clearing a Structo table loom with 5-6 yards of fine warp… Well I’ll be honest, is not my favorite task.

I could just cut off what’s on the loom and call it a day. And that might happen. But I started with the easiest one, or so I thought, and wove off the huck sampler I had warped, maybe a year ago. The sampler is from the Weaver’s Magazine “Best of Huck”.

The linen warp, came to me pre-wound on spools when my late Mother-in-law gifted me the Leclerc Sample loom probably 25 years ago. I believe the linen spools were original, so I have no idea how old they are. The linen is in good shape, but this is the warp that never ends. I have no idea how much is on them.

I picked my favorite part of the sampler and just started to weave. I have no idea how much I’ve woven and I have no idea how much is left. I just keep weaving…

The next loom I wanted to clear was another of the Leclerc Sample looms (I have 5) which had a double weave sampler, based on one from Jennifer Moore’s book. I threaded it in a different set up than she suggests, because some weaving buddies and I were embarking on a study group, and I found it tedious to have to translate each part of the sampler into a different treadling, or in this case a lift plan. I managed to do a few of the sample drafts, and a section of pick up. This pick up had quilted stuffing in it, and I didn’t like the lines I was getting, so I dropped the stuffing half way through and liked the results better.

So I brought the table loom over to one of my many floor looms, and decided to transfer the warp, once the sample was cut off, which was sort of hilarious. With just a few hours of work yesterday, everything is now on the floor loom, with treadles, and threaded in Jennifer Moore’s suggested threading. Life is good.

I blew through the first exercise in short order. Ok, I’ll admit, table looms are laborious. Necessary yes, but I didn’t think I’d ever get this woven off on the table loom.

I wove my little heart out between Christmas and New Year’s, and suddenly the knots in my 10 yard warp were coming up over the back beam.

The towels are all hemmed, and I’ve distributed those to whom I had promised a towel. This is a variation on my custom runner draft, a combination of structures, and some color and weave effects on 4-shafts. I’m pretty impressed with this, and I already have plans to put on another run as I have a ridiculous amount of 8/2 cotton on the shelves…

The coming year will be particularly challenging for me, as my son is about to deploy to a part of the world that is tough for me to imagine. My plan is to stay so busy I won’t have time to worry, but I’m a military mom and I understand my role and that this is what my son signed on for, and he is good at what he does. God Speed Eric…

So I’ve booked myself, on top of everything else, 8 classes at Peters Valley, some are remote, but I want to learn new things, and stay inspired. And I’m hoping all the new landscaping plans, involving native plants, will be underway in just a few short months. I look forward to lots of time on my knees in the garden getting muddy.

I wish all of you a gentle year, full of inspiration and creativity, surrounded by those you love and lots of fibery stuff.

Stay tuned…

Good thing I like hand-sewing…

Today is Memorial Day here in the United States. It is a day to remember those who went to war and never made it home. It is a day of reflection of what might have been if young men (and women) had lived and started families and made a difference in this world. Those who went to war in my immediate family all came home. So this day isn’t about them. My son, who is now a Staff Sergeant in the NJ National Guard, who has done two deployments, came home. It isn’t about him. It is a reflective kind of day, and I’ve been doing a lot of reflection.

Next month, just a couple of weeks to be more specific, is the sixth anniversary of my husband’s death. He died a slow agonizing death from esophageal cancer. There is a lot of time to reflect when you watch someone you’ve spent your entire adult life with, raised two children with, move on to another world beyond, without you. I’ve been thinking a lot about my late husband these last couple weeks when the news is just so horrific, so unbelievable, and so painful to watch.

When my husband was in his final months of decline, we went to a therapist, my idea, to help navigate this whole ordeal ahead of us. I was quite shocked to hear him say to the therapist, that he resented that I hid in my studio all day. I’ve been self-employed since 1978, and that means going to the studio all day, every day. I was still self-employed and had workshops to teach, samples to make, travel to prep for, but he never saw any of that, because he went out of the house every day to work, and came home for dinner. He had no idea what I did all day. In the later years of our marriage, he became a global analyst/consultant for a global telecommunications giant, and traveled the globe, spending months in foreign places. I had no idea what he did all day, and he had no idea what I did all day. We trusted each other to do our jobs. Nothing more.

Once he was forced to be home, because of his declining health, he got to see what I did all day, which was to him, hide in my studio. And I suppose looking back, there was a bit of truth to what he was thinking; my studio is the one place in this world where I have control over anything, not everything, but something. And in the darkest times in my life, going through breast cancer, watching my husband die, raising two children with struggles of their own, my studio was my friend, the one place where I could just be.

Now that I’m not traveling anymore, there are no deadlines, except ones that I put on myself, because I can, I don’t need to “hide” in my studio and work 8-10 hours a day. I don’t need to, I want to. The world is frightening, the complete failure of our elected officials to even dialogue about solutions to global issues is very very discouraging. The news is tragic, social media is a travesty. And that feeling of powerlessness, can be overwhelming. My studio once again, is my safe place, where I get to choose what path I take, figure out when there are problems, find solutions, and make stuff with my hands. And yes Kevin, you were right. I’m hiding. And I’m really happy here. Because out there it is hard to find light in such a dark place.

And so this Memorial Day weekend, I spent alone, in my studio, hemming towels and placemats, spending time in my garden, picking fresh greens to eat, and doing what I can in my small world, because that seems to be all I can do.

My last blog post I talked about the summer shirt I made from five huck lace dishtowels from a remote workshop I did through my guild, with Rosalie Nielson. There was still plenty of warp left on the loom, so I resleyed denser, to 20 epi instead of 18, switched to a darker weft for contrast, and proceeded to weave maybe a half dozen napkins. I really didn’t have many handwoven napkins, I still reach for paper at each meal, and that is so silly. My using a cloth napkin instead of paper isn’t going to affect global warming in the slightest bit, but it is one way I can feel like I’m contributing. Plus they are pretty…

I kept weaving… one napkin a day. I kept looking at the warp beam, seeing lots of paper on the floor, but no knots in sight. I kept weaving. Each new design block, I crawled under the loom, and retied the treadles. I got really quick at it.

I finally saw the knots on Saturday. Spurred on, I wove two napkins. When I pulled the finished napkins off the loom, I was shocked that I had woven 12. All for me.

I had finished weaving the overshot placemats for a friend, earlier in the week, but since I hate naked looms, I left them on. I knew I had a lot of hemming ahead of me, so I decided to cut them off as well. I sat in my basement yesterday, even though it was a glorious day, and most people were out celebrating the holiday, I sat by the iron, cutting and folding hems in 12 huck lace napkins and 6 overshot placemats.

And while I was at it, I had this vague recollection of another overshot placemat, part of a set of 8, that was a result of a placemat exchange through my guild, many years ago (2009 to be exact). The 8th one came in a couple of years after the exchange and never got hemmed. Obviously I never used them. I’m not really sure why.

So as of this writing, the odd overshot placemat is hemmed, and 7 of the napkins have been hemmed. The rest are all basted and waiting for me to curl up again on the couch and continue.

Meanwhile, in my quest to learn or relearn all the structures, to really focus on woven patterns and blocks that I could never really spend the time on in my active days of travel, I’ve set up two additional Structo looms, both 8 shaft, one with a Deflected Double Weave, the draft from Stubinetsky’s Double with a Twist…

…and a Quigley pattern, from Tom Knisely’s book on Table Linens. I’ve been in touch with the woman who designed that project, and she generously forwarded on the class notes so I can spend some time really exploring this very cool structure. I had done some Quigley when I was at Madelyn van der Hoogt’s School of Weaving back in 2018. It was my favorite structure of all the ones I wove that week.

As I set up these little looms, and I have a lot of them, I keep thinking of more things I want to put on them. And I pulled the little 10″ Leclerc with the doubleweave sampler and started trying doubleweave pick-up. I’m using Jennifer Moore’s design from her Doubleweave book I didn’t thread my sampler the way she did, so there was heavy brain work to make the translation. But that helps me learn.

And so dear readers, I consider myself really really lucky. I have a place where I can find some bit of control, no matter what happens around me. I have friends, and people I love. As a matter of fact, last weekend was my birthday, and a long time friend invited me and two of our other mutual friends to her house, on a river, and we sat, four friends who have known each other for 30 years, raised our children together, and we ate, and drank, and put our feet in the cold rushing water of the river. I felt safe, and whole. I wish for all of you a safe place, where you have a bit of control over what happens in your life, a river to put your feet into with friends who love you and give you some clarity and perspective in this tough world.

Stay tuned…

Move Over Scarlett O’Hara…

No, I didn’t make a dress out of the drapes, but I did want another short sleeve summer top, the weather is getting warmer, and that in-between summer and sleeveless, and early spring with long sleeves…

Anyway, I took a fantastic guild workshop this past week, remotely, with Rosalie Neilson, creating blocks using Huck Lace. For the non-weavers, this is a weaving structure that produces lovely lacey designs, with warp or weft or a combination, floats. Though I’ve woven huck lace many times, I was more interested in her discussions of blocks and designing blocks.

So prior to the workshop, I set up the loom, not for the recommended 6 yards, I put on 12, because, why not? Because I could.

Once I got the concept of block design, using her extensive handouts with design pages, and overlays, based on her pricey but incredibly worth it book, An Exaltation of Blocks, which I own, and I figured out how to efficiently transfer those designs to my weaving software, I was like a woman obsessed.

Within the week between sessions, I wove off five towels, each horizontal design across was different. Yes, I had to re-tie my treadles before each new design, and I was worried about my shoulder under the loom, but it worked out perfectly, and I got each re-tie down to about 6 minutes.

The towels were OK, not my favorite colors, and not my favorite proportion. I prefer bolder colors, but that’s what was staring at me on the shelf, so I went with it. I prefer a towel in a 3:2 proportion, usually 30″ x 20″. These were 16″ wide by probably 30″. And I’m not a fan of 8/2 cotton sett at 18 epi. I know that’s the going trend, Rosalie isn’t the only instructor who encourages this sett. I’m a garment fabric weaver, I like my fabrics, and my towels to have meat to them. Personal taste. I’m allowed.

So I had these five towels, which represented a terrific exercise, and I kept thinking, boy, I really could use another summer top…

So Scarlett move over…

I used my 1000 swing dress pattern, cutting the center front and center back on the selvedges, and overlaid the sleeve of the 200 jacket pattern, and used the sleeve for that jacket, cut shorter, to create the top pattern. It has an invisible zipper down the back.

Because Huck Lace can be pretty fragile if you cut into it, I used 3/8″ (1cm) strips of cross wise cut Fusiknit and fused it on the perimeter wherever the cut edges were unstable, like on the sleeve cap.

I basically sewed this top in one sitting. I was definitely a woman obsessed. The photo shows me modeling an almost finished top, just the handwork, and removing all the little red tailor’s tacks. Getting the blocks to match was challenging, since Huck shrinks differently depending on the design.

All the work is finished and it is hanging in my closet waiting for a place to wear it. I’m gathering with a couple friends on Sunday for my birthday. Sounds like a plan.

So back to Rosalie’s book… I bought this book a couple years ago, and I will be honest, I had not opened it. I do that a lot. My one weakness is a desire to acquire all the knowledge, whether or not I ever actually read it, as long as it is here at my fingertips, I’m happy. I’m running out of room for books, and I am acutely aware that I really have no idea what’s in my libraries, because I sent my daughter to an estate sale, lots of weaving and sewing books, and she kept sending me pictures of what was there, and I couldn’t run up and down the three flights of stairs fast enough.

So after she brought home another 45 books, a couple ended up being duplicates, I decided on one of those massive undertakings, which is making me so happy. LibraryThing.com is a site which many of you are familiar with I’m sure; my daughter is guild librarian, and spent a good 6 months entering their entire library. So each morning I enter half a shelf of books. Some are easy and pop right up with an ISBN number, and others are self published and pretty obscure or very very old, and I have to hand enter that data. But the important thing here is I’m handling each book, and seeing what’s in it. Wow, my head is spinning with all the knowledge at my fingertips, knowing I’ll never read most of it, but still, it is a comfort to have it here. Art, fashion, fiber art, and art history books are in my office, weaving books in the weaving studio, and sewing books in the sewing studio. One day it will all be entered and I can sort by tags and authors and subjects. Let’s see, what books do I have on huck lace…

I love these incredibly challenging long term organizational projects.

So with the leftover warp on the loom, remember I put on 12 yards, I resleyed the warp to 20epi, and I’m much happier, but I really won’t know until I wash the cloth. I’m weaving myself a set of napkins, trying some of the 4 shaft textures she suggested, after I figured out how to weave them on 8 shafts. This is really fun. And I changed the weft colors to something more contrasting to show off the pattern.

And I’m down to the last half placemat on my gift for my friend, a half dozen overshot mats to match a runner she purchased from our guild sale. Someone else wove the runner, but didn’t want to weave six mats to go with it. The mats are 20/2 cotton ground, with a 10/2 pattern thread, and I thought they would take me forever. Minimal breakage, usually happens when I have to go back a few rows to fix an error. The 20/2 just gives out. I was worried I would run out of warp, but it looks like I’ll make it!

I have my little daily routine, the days are full, the gardens are lush, and I’m eating salad at each meal. Except we just had a rabbit get in and eat all the kholrabi and dill… 🙁

Stay tuned dear readers, lots more to come…