Last Sunday, I picked up my son, newly back from a deployment in Syria, and off we drove to Maryland for the day. It is about a 3 1/2-hour trip, and I was thrilled to have the company. He is such an interesting person to converse with, his knowledge of history, what led to what, and where we are now, is fascinating. Great conversation, perspective, and knowledge.
We got to my mom’s to deliver the quilt, and deliver it we did. First, she inspected the label I had made and attached to the back.
Then the unveiling… Of course she cried. I cried.
My son helped me hang it…
I got a great picture of my mom and my son. Mom will be 94 in May, each day is a gift.
She was so appreciative, but I think I was more appreciative for the gift of a project that kept me going, marking time through a difficult year. We talked this morning and she tells me that it is the first thing she sees when she wakes up, and she stares at it all day finding something new she hadn’t seen before.
Meanwhile, there was that flood thing… No progress on the restoration because…
I got this great idea… I have these spectacular perennial native plant gardens, newly planted last spring, and I can’t see them well from any area in my house. Long story… I woke up in the middle of the night last week to a voice in my head yelling at me to just change the window…
So this is the den currently. I am getting rid of the TV and credenza, and will move the piano in there, the cello, my recorders, and turn it into a music room. And I want to be able to look outside and see my gardens.
I have contracted Pella to replace the east wall pair of double hungs with a window wall with two casements. But the window won’t be ready for installation for 8 weeks. Sigh…
I moved my bar table and stool in there to have my breakfast and look out the current window.
Of course I’m trying to eat my breakfast and enjoy the view, and Mulder decides that he wants to see too. So much for my view…
It will all be lovely, and just in time for spring. Right now there is about 6 inches of snow on the ground, so I’m looking forward to seeing what that looks like tomorrow morning.
This is January. This is my month for dyeing. Once I got my rhythm, I can wind about 14-15 ounces of mixed cellulose skeins, scour them, move them into an overnight soda ash soak, rinse the dyed skeins from the previous day and hang to dry, and move the skeins from the soda ash from the previous day into a new dyebath, all in less than two hours. It is my morning routine. I’ve probably done 8-10 dyebaths. MX Fiber Reactive dyes from ProChemical. They had new colors for 2025, what could I do but try them…
This one is called Swamp…
And of course, I finished the twill sampler I had moved to my floor loom, and grabbed the next Structo. This one is a four-shaft overshot sampler, from Robyn Spady.
I pulled the warp forward, and transferred it onto my small floor loom.
I love this. I adore pattern samplers, I can sit down and in about a half hour, run through the draft, all five design areas, switch my tie-up from Rose fashion to Star fashion, and do it all again. This one should be on the loom for awhile, as I think there was about 6 yards of 20/2 cotton on those Structo spools…
As we head into the great unknown politically, and as so many have lost their homes to natural disasters, the world is looking a bit bleak right now. I try to stay focused on what is in my control, mourning the loss of giants in the textile world, Claire Shaeffer, and Jannie Taylor, and closer to home, the moms of two of my close friends, and one of my own, one of my oldest friends, we raised our kids together. She is gone, at peace I hope, and life will be a little dimmer without all of them. All I can do is put one foot in front of the other, wake up each morning and find gratitude in the day ahead. Yes, I’ll have to do a lot of shoveling tomorrow morning, but snow is pretty and healing, and I have northern dogs who think this is just the best! I want to be like them, roll around in the snow with abandon, and eat large gulps of fresh clean snow. Rest easy Judy, I will miss you terribly…