OK, true confessions… I’m a baby when it comes to getting sick. I’m miserable, cranky, and very whiny. Fortunately my husband is on the other side of the world, and my son is safely in Boot Camp. That means poor Brianna has to listen to my misery…
This hit me like a ton of bricks, and I never saw it coming. As a matter of fact, I kept blaming my not feeling quite right on all kinds of stupid things like the jalapeno pepper I put in the cole slaw yesterday, and overdoing it at a new yoga class last night. Truth is, I’m sick. There is no denying it. How long I’m sick for, and what actually I have, remains to be seen, but I am achy, feverish, and have a deep rattling cough. Bummer…
I’m guessing that my body did what it had to do, got through the holidays, got through the New Year, got my husband off to Israel, and my son off to Boot Camp. I cleaned out his room, and his car (it would take a blog post by itself to describe those adventures, but I’ll be kind and just say, everything is now clean, beds are properly made, and nothing is currently growing or unidentifiable in the downstairs refrigerator.) 🙂
And now I’m sick… 🙁
I did manage to finish sleying the reed with the new marble inspired warps, and I did manage to update my sister’s website, but it was painful. Everything on me aches. I had to cancel attending the guild meeting tonight, which was tough because I was one of the panel speakers. Brianna is driving, as I write, to Mendham to take over for me as program chair, for the Jockey Hollow Guild meeting tonight. She is a trooper (and I think she welcomed the excuse to get out of the house since I was so cranky…).
I have to say I’m really really lucky. I can lay low. Other than dropping off my work tomorrow in Montclair at the George Segal Gallery for the Art Connections 6 exhibit, I have nothing on my calendar requiring me to be out of the house, and I can hopefully sleep it off. I have a slew of deadlines, but it is more important I get over this thing quickly, so I’ll cave and be a good girl… And I just started an 800 page book, the final installment of the Outlander series, Echo in the Bone, by Diana Gabaldon though I hear it really may not be the final installment. This is book 7 I think… It was a handweaver in Connecticut who turned me on to this series, many many years ago when I stayed with her. So I’m off to curl up in bed and read, and hopefully sleep…
Here are the photos from my loom adventures today.
I slowly but surely worked my way across the reed, pulling the appropriate amount of threads from the cross on the appropriate warp bundle. I loved the colors, and it was peaceful to just sit and thread, but I sure wish I didn’t ache all over…
Here is a tip, I found this out the hard way of course. If you are using hand dyed warps, always save a couple of extra threads, or wind a couple of extra threads to include when you are dyeing, in case one breaks while you are weaving. You’ll always have a way to correct the break with the right color.
The next step is of course, threading each of those warp ends, one by one through the heddles in the shafts. Here is another tip, one I also learned the hard way. Check how many heddles are on each shaft BEFORE you start threading. My loom is the type where you can’t add heddles once you start. You also can’t remove them. And I’m going almost the full width of my loom. So having a bunch extra squeezed on the sides, or heaven forbid not enough, can make the most easy going handweaver resort to hair pulling…
So I used my handy dandy computer drafting program (I use Fiberworks PCW) and it gives me the heddle count for each shaft. Now I just have to pull each of the eight shafts out of the castle, and lay them on my cutting table, and add the correct amount of heddles. I keep my heddles stored on knitting needles, so they just slip on the heddle rods effortlessly, checking first to make sure they face in the correct direction. 🙂
This process takes time. And I really don’t enjoy this step. But it is an important one, on most of my shafts I had to add at least 100 heddles…
Now they are all back safely in the castle, fully loaded with the correct number of heddles, and I can start threading tomorrow. If I can get out of bed…