Tag: The Weaver Sews Index

Above all, be flexible…

These last couple of weeks nearly killed me. So much so that today, I went back to bed after taking care of all the animals, and I curled up with a very trashy novel and had a real day off… I haven’t done that in years. The trashy novel was book four of the Bridgerton series, got it cheap on my Kindle, and it was the perfect thing to curl up with, and actually catch my breath..

This all started the weekend before Thanksgiving. I promised my 91 year old mom a long overdue visit. She lives about 3 1/2 hours from me in Maryland. I arrived on a Friday for lunch, she had chicken soup waiting for me. It was the best. From a completely weary and overworked daughter, coming home to mom and having chicken soup put in front of me, well I’ve never been so grateful for anything in my life.

We had lots of fun over the next couple days, picking up puzzles at the barn sale at her complex, she gave me half, and she kept half and we will eventually swap. I took her around for her errands, and Sunday afternoon, we had a lovely lunch of Crab Imperial. I carried the lunch dishes to the sink, and I heard an oof and then a thud, and I turned, and just like that, mom tripped over her rug, and landed flat on her face, taking out a dining chair in the process.

I can’t begin to tell you the myriad of things that went through my mind. And of course, the first thing was, damn, this happened on my watch, and my sisters are going to kill me. The ambulance came, she was transported to the hospital, x-rays, CT scans, lots of blood work, and because no one is available for rehab on a Sunday night, I sat with my mom in the ER, who broke her right shoulder in two places, same as me almost a year ago, in the hospital, for 30 hours. I’d like to say it was the longest day of my life, but I’ve had worse. I adore her, and she was really trying to keep her spirits up.

Above all, be flexible…

I stayed an extra day in Maryland, making sure mom was safe in the rehab in her complex. My Maryland sister will take over. And my heart bled for my mom. My broken shoulder was my non dominant side, and I’m only 67. She broke her dominant side. Though when she said to the medical staff, actually anyone who would listen, that this is the 14th broken bone she has had since she was 14, I did break a smile. I come from a strong stock of women who always find a way. But this will be a painful year to come. Ask me how I know this.

Above all, be flexible…

So I made my way home on Tuesday, two days before Thanksgiving, not what I planned. But I did my best to prep the house, buy the food, and though my guest list was small, just my kids and my NY sister and her husband, I was hosting Thanksgiving.

I set the table, with my favorite dishes, a wedding present back in the 70’s, with my new handwoven napkins, and my lovely daughter did all the cooking. My son made his infamous charcuterie boards. We had a 2 pound slab of fresh organic salmon with crab meat stuffing. The house was presentable, though I didn’t invite anyone upstairs.

Above all, be flexible…

Friday after Thanksgiving I promised I’d work a day at the Shakespeare Theatre of NJ, where I volunteer as a stitcher in the costume shop. They are in the final prep for costumes for Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, which opens next week. They save all the really hard stuff nobody wants to do, for me! Which challenges me and makes me think!

My private student Kyrie, whom I’ve rescheduled three times, once because I broke my shoulder, then a conflict with her schedule, and the last time, two days before she was to come, I got Covid, was due in Sunday night. I had two days to grocery shop, and clean the house again, including upstairs. I have multiple animals, I’m always cleaning the house…

Above all, be flexible…

Sunday morning, I was about to head to the grocery store, and I got an email, Kyrie was sick. Covid negative. But she wasn’t well enough to travel until Tuesday.

I thought I’d have a couple days to breathe. Hahahahah!

Above all, be flexible…

Monday night I got the first draft of my long awaited Heddlecraft article, all 36 pages, to start my editing. I suppose the timing was perfect, since Kyrie was delayed, but dear Lord, is there no rest for the weary?

Anyway, I furiously edited, checked links, checked .wif files, compared my original manuscript. We got through five versions as Kyrie was walking in the door Tuesday afternoon. The issue was released shortly after, and I’ve never been so proud of anything in my life. Here is the link if you don’t have a subscription (if you are a weaver you should) or you can get a single issue.

My student was an absolute delight. She was still getting over the remnants of some respiratory crud, but I’m beyond caring anymore. We wore masks and carried on. we worked hard and she proved to be a wonderfully adept student.

She brought a gorgeous handwoven fabric, using hand dyed warps from Blazing Shuttles.

She finished the jacket, all but the handwork, late Friday night, and was out of here Saturday morning, making a five day class work in three.

Above all, be flexible…

And that gave me the opportunity to frantically do multiple final rehearsals for the Montclair Early Music holiday concert, last night, Christmas in King Arthur’s Court. Beautiful music from the English Renaissance. I played bass recorder. It was so very much fun, I remembered why I love playing recorders with a group, and we even got a standing ovation.

Meanwhile…. There is a difference between what I need to do, what I have to do, and what I want to do. And sometimes there is a very grey area between those things.

Mostly what I need to do, is to constantly create, and life is certainly interfering. Silk City Fibers, whom I’ve had a long relationship with, periodically sends me yarn they are thinking of bringing in, or have brought in, or are just curious about. I’m always happy to make a test run, because that’s something I adore doing, I need to do, and I excel at; throw something at me and I’ll see what I can invent.

This yarn is a lovely silky rayon, two four ply yarns loosely wrapped together, in an exquisite purple. I had about 9 ounces, and so I immediately thought of a Spot Bronson structure, and did some fast calculations, and wound a warp.

I started weaving and my sett was spot on, pun intended. I ultimately made three samples and washed them in different ways, and then wove a lovely scarf. Took about a day, which was just before the Heddlecraft proofs arrived…

Meanwhile… My guild meeting is Wednesday night. We usually have some make it-take it project for the December meeting, and since we are still meeting via zoom, it was decided that we would all make an Anni Albers Bauhaus necklace.

You can buy them as a kit from the Philadelphia Art Museum. The kit is simple enough, a 1/4″ ribbon, with a bunch of washers. I’ve always been curious how this necklace works, but I really didn’t have the time or thought to plan ahead and order the kit. I was sort of busy… And besides, I’m a handweaver… Duh…

I bought a sample pack of some 60 different Sulky 12 wt. thread colors many years ago at a sewing conference. It remained untouched. Until now.

This was something I really needed to do, to keep my hands busy, and I knew that once my student started sewing her jacket, I would just be hanging out at the ready for a number of days, to make sure questions got answered, and that any mistakes were rapidly fixed, and she could keep going.

So I designed a 1/4″ ribbon, full length on my Bekka inkle loom, which is longer than the 84″ necessary to make the necklace.

Easy weaving…

And ultimately, I have long ribbon for my necklace project for Wednesday night’s meeting.

I keep trying to figure out how my life has become so out of control, and I’m hoping that things will quiet down soon. I needed today, to curl up with a trashy novel, but this afternoon, I tackled the last of the major projects on my overdue to-do list. I finished the Index for my YouTube channel, The Weaver Sews. You can find it here. Alphabetical by video, and alphabetical by topic. There were many labors of love I completed this past week, the Heddlecraft article finally got published, the Shakespeare Show will open next week but my work there is done. The concert was last night, my student finished and made it home safe, and the Index is finished. And I have a 1/4″ inkle woven ribbon for the meeting Wednesday night.

I’m tired. But above all, I’m flexible…

Stay tuned…

My arm gets twisted a lot…

I admit it. No matter how hard I try, it is hard to say no when people genuinely beg…

I’m not big on holiday gift giving. There isn’t a huge family to buy for, my kids are of the age where they need something specific that only they can pick out, and I write a check. I have two sisters. We decided long ago that gift giving was not necessary. My mom at 90 doesn’t need anything but company. I’m going to Maryland to visit her for a few days in the morning. My daughter will hold down the fort here at home and manage the animals.

A number of years ago I jumped on the handwoven dishtowel bandwagon. I’ll admit that I had never woven a dishtowel prior to that, and it all started when some generous hostess gave me one as a parting gift for teaching at their guild. I put it to use and have never looked back. My drawer is full of handwoven dishtowels, none woven by me, all from guild towel exchanges, my daughter, some purchased because they were really beautiful, etc. But each year I started a tradition that I would weave a run of cotton or cotton and linen dishtowels and give them to friends and family who I thought would love and use them. They also made great wedding and hostess gifts. The list included people who were really important in my life, especially after my husband died. My handyman and his wife. My tech guy and his wife, etc. And when my son moved out last year, his big request was for some handwoven dishtowels. Which I might mention he is afraid to use, they hang proudly from his oven door.

This was a busy fall. I had lots of private students come in, lots of remote teaching, and my life was generally too busy, after a lovely blissful year of quarantining. And more importantly, some of my lovely friends and family were very honest and told me that as much as they loved my dishtowels, they didn’t need anymore. Their drawers were full. And so I hadn’t planned to weave any dishtowels this year.

Word got out that I wasn’t going to have the annual towel and some of my other lovely friends and family threw a fit. I had to laugh. The drama that unfolded that I wouldn’t be giving them one of my prized towels was just too hilarious.

So I was arm twisted about a week and a half ago to see what kind of towel I could throw on the loom, with what I had in the studio, and whip out 8 or 9 towels for those who truly wanted them.

I had a cone of 5/2 and a cone of 6/2 cotton, in natural, that blended well. I wound a 10 yard warp. I looked at structures that would be beautiful in white on white. I found an 8 shaft Bronson Lace placemat from Clotilde Barrett in the Best of Weavers Huck Lace. I adapted it into a towel.

I just finished weaving towel number 7.

I’m enjoying these towels, easy to weave, and hopefully those that arm twisted me into this will enjoy this year’s very limited edition.

Meanwhile…

I’ve had a number of people write to me about how frustrating it is to know they saw a technique or tip on my YouTube channel, The Weaver Sews, and they can’t remember where it is. And some of these videos (there are 67 now) are a half hour long. That is a lot of screen time, and I get the frustration. The requests have been for some kind of index with time codes. Really. You cannot imagine what a time consuming task that is/will be…

I attempted to begin to update my pattern directions for all 12 of the pattern silhouettes I sell in my eShop. Honestly, I couldn’t remember what I covered in which video to try to link them to my directions. Was the alteration to the Y line covered in Sleeve Alterations part 1 or 2?

So a couple of months ago, I started watching my YouTube videos from the beginning. I found a number of typos in the Closed Captioning, which I immediately corrected. Those are easy edits. Creating an index is an enormous amount of time, watching and rewatching videos, noting time codes and figuring how what someone would look for when looking up a specific topic.

And would they want to look at the topics by video, or a complete listing alphabetically by topic, with the video and time code. The only way I saw this as realistic is to do an Excel spreadsheet. And though I can create a PowerPoint presentation with my eyes closed, and write anything and everything in Word, and I’m a pro at Adobe Photoshop, I’m pretty poor in my Excel skills. So this has been a labor of love. A gift I got arm twisted into…

I’ve indexed about 25% of my videos. I know that doesn’t sound like a lot, but it is. So today, I spent the day figuring out ways to actually generate the index. I have a couple of really trusted friends who weighed in and told me honestly how readable it was and how easy it was to navigate. Initially it wasn’t. The jury is still out, but this is as much as my skills allow at this point. And my daughter keeps yelling down the hall, “You owe your free fan base NOTHING!”

So as I hit my 2000 subscriber mark, this is my holiday gift to all of you, an incomplete index, for my YouTube channel, The Weaver Sews. Know I’m still working on it, in the perfect world I’ll update it weekly but don’t hold your breath. I just got in about 50 pounds of yarn from various sources, R&M, Peter Patchis, and Silk City Fibers, and a huge box of new Procion dye colors from Dharma, and a kit of acid dyes from Greener Shades. I bought the kit from the Woolery. There are a couple more Structo looms that have come in in the past couple of months. I have looms calling to me, videos to record, yarn to dye, and ways to be creative. So many ideas…

And so dear readers, I yielded to the pressure, and because I can’t even remember what I recorded and when, and my holiday gift to all of you is this index, a work in progress.

For a PDF of individual videos with their topics and time codes, please click here

For a PDF of topics in my YouTube channel, please click here.

These indexes will live on my website under EXTRAS, right next to the directions for all of my patterns. There is a date on the page with the links to let you know when the index was last updated.

I’ve been blogging now for 13 years. I’m fast approaching 900 posts. It has been my pleasure to have shared my life in such a way and I’m continually grateful for all those who subscribe and follow me regularly. You are and what will keep me going into the next phase of my life, more yarn, more dyes, more looms, more garments, more articles, more to explore.

I love you all! Stay tuned…