On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me:
Twelve empty bobbins,
Eleven top-Whorl spindles,
Ten bags of mohair,
Nine niddy-noddys,
Eight bumps of roving,
Seven shepherds shearing,
Six fluffy fleeces,
FIVE SPINNING WHEELS,
Four umbrella swifts,
Three silk caps,
Two English combs,
and a Spinster laughing out loud.
I imagine I am not alone in this:
The great euphoria of finishing a weaving project is over, and now I am staring at an empty loom.
On the one hand, there is all the fiber potential in the world — right there. I can warp fiber in my studio onto the loom. I can make the double weave waffle weave blanket I’ve been promising Michael. I can start the awesome lunch-bag-and-napkin project that’s been rattling around in my head. I’ve got silk and cotton and wool, alpaca and tencel and mystery poly-fibers — it’s all right there. And then, there it is again: an empty loom.
An. Empty. Loom.
This is where it’s appropriate to use the word “looming” in a conversation about weaving. There it sits, looming in the corner, reminding me that I’m not weaving anything right now. It’s like that ream of blank paper that looms in the future of writers . . . all potential, no work. I’ve started skulking past it, hoping that I can just ignore it. But I can’t get to my bed (or out of my bed and to the bathroom, or out of my room and to the kitchen) without passing it.
And my post-project euphoria shrank with the last project — over-washed.
You may recall it, almost 33 inches wide when it came off the loom:
It spent just a few minutes too long in the rinse cycle. Alas. It is no longer very big, and it is sadly, sadly, very thick.
I like what happened with the colour mixing:
But now I have to figure out what to do with this thick (think “boiled wool”) cloth . . .
. . . and what to do with that empty loom.
Holy Cow! The roofers are almost done!
(It’s not really anywhere near my last post about the dome . . . we haven’t done anything with the interior . . . but we’ll soon put it to bed for the winter).
Here’s the dome this morning . . . I should have gone up yesterday, while we had gorgeous sun streaming from the heavens, but here is the northside:
And the front of the dome (the three roofers are in the pic, standing over by the excavator):
I would dearly love to see this installation in person, but for now the multiple pictures on their website will have to do. Here’s a little taste, for you, though . . .
I have a black rotary phone on my desk . . .
This morning, I had a goat . . . an ancient goat — 16 1/2 years old. He’s started looking really ragged around the edges, as old men are wont to do, and I’d broached the subject with Farmerteen about the unlikelihood that he’d actually live forever. Piccolo (aka “Piggylo” aka “Piggy”) was older than Farmerteen, but still “giving her hell” every morning, butting his way to get grain and hay, and trying to eat her hair (it looks for all the world like the most luscious straw).
We don’t think he knew he was a goat. We think he was pretty sure he was a short alpaca.
When he moved here, he’d chase the alpacas up and down the hillside, bleating, “Wait up, guys,” and dropping some of the weight he’d put on in the flat field at his old home.
He loved saltines. He really loved all crackers, and he knew the sound of crinkling wrappers meant a yummy treat for him. If you didn’t get the cracker out soon enough, he’d paw at your leg, letting you know he knew, and that you’d better get on with it.
He went quickly, surrounded by the his fellow alpacas, and we buried him in a grove of trees this afternoon.
I am getting really good at taking my camera to weaving class and then taking no photographs with it, so I don’t have any thing to say, photographically, about the first of the six part weaving seminar. We had a great time, and I hope I didn’t overwhelm anyone with the drafting . . . I really think drafting and reading drafts is one of the hardest parts of weaving, and the whole class worked really hard to grasp all the different parts of weaving drafts. Next week, we’re working on calculating Sett and Yardage — it’s not too late to join us, if you want to. Added to the list of things to bring are the following:
1) What size of reed(s) do you have on your loom(s) at home?
2) What do you want to weave?
3) What kind of patterns would you like to use?
4) Bring a calculator! (We can certainly share — but there’s a bunch of arithmetic coming up!)
But I was going to tell you about Maynard. So after the really awesome class, Farmerteen and I went up the hill to her music class, and then decided to go see Roy Zimmerman perform at the Magic Lantern Theatre (which is good, because we were a full 1/5 of the audience — Spokane, where were you?) So we went to Huckleberries to grab some dinner, and on the way in, I saw a sign for “Citrus Trees” in front of what looked mostly like lavender bushes . . . and then, he came into view. One lone “citrus tree” — a Kumquat tree. I love kumquats, and I looked longingly at a number of kumquat trees at florists along the Seine this April, knowing I probably could not get one back in the country. And there he was. The last one. The gal at the register told me they ordered them well over a year ago, only got a few in, and that they were snatched up just like that.
Aside: Farmerteen and I take a lot of goofy pictures using the “Photobooth” on my Mac. Most of them involve her proclivity toward vampirism:
Or me crushing her head:
So we took several with Maynard this morning:
Including her favourite:
And my favourite:
And one that we caught on accident, when we kind of overloaded the computer’s working memory — or whatever it is when you ask the computer to do something, and everything comes to a grinding halt, but the whole thing doesn’t crash:
Then there was the singing . . . “Maynard, the Kumquat Tree” fits really nicely into the lyrics of the chorus of Taylor, the Latte Boy . . . to which I hadn’t realized there was a response!
. . . but the scarves created in today’s Rigid Heddle Class were beautiful, and everyone did such a wonderful job on them! One gal threw hers around her neck and said she didn’t care if it was warm outside, she planned to wear it all day . . . I hope she didn’t get too hot — it was downright sultry when I got into my car at 4pm.
This just in to my inbox . . . this little pirate guy was in my booth at ArtFest, and had a grand idea what should be done with the felted eyeballs:
check out his awesome pirate tie — I think it really makes the photo. : – )
If you’ve asked me about the scanty summer schedule of fiber classes, you’ve no doubt been treated to my diatribe on dome building, and my “other” job as a construction worker, which begins, “In 1979, my in-laws bought a geodesic dome kit, which has been moldering in a barn on the Mason Dixon . . . .”
Last summer, we finished the foundation, added the deck, and put the thing to bed just as the rains started rolling in in late October. So, last week, with the help of an emergency crew of friends (all of whom we called after 7pm Tuesday to beg them to come out at 10am on a Wednesday), we put up the first ring of triangles:
It’s not that we didn’t know this next part, but that first ring of wall doesn’t sit on the deck. It actually goes on top of a 2 foot stub wall. So, instead of taking the wall back apart (which would require the larger crew), we tied the wall together with chains (so it wouldn’t kick out), and jacked the whole thing up 2.25 feet into the air, and then put the stub wall under it.
I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to build walls from the bottom up, there being the issue of gravity and all. But we had an issue with the foundation not being as, um, perfect as we’d hoped, so we needed to know for sure where the kit walls were going to land, before adding the non-kit stub walls.
Then we added a second ring:
And began a third ring:
So I’m off, dear reader, to run the manlift, and finish off the skeleton of the dome.
Three days of selling handmade fibery creations, doing demos, chatting with folks, showing people how yarn is made, explaining what I’m angry about (social injustice, global warming, lipstick on dogs, the abuse of handknits . . .) and my voice has been reduced to one squeaky whisper. The Renaissance Guy has dumped a cup of tea down my throat, and has the kettle on for a second one. The dog is glad we’re back.
We’re tired, but no worse for the wear. The weather was beautiful, and we had this great lilac bush in bloom right behind the canopy that provided shade and little poofs of lilac goodness when the breeze blew just right. There’s this great joy in watching someone fall in love with something you’ve created. Friday, a young woman came into the tent, and looked for a long time at the amulet bags I knit. She came back three times, each time touching the different bags with great care, but coming to rest on the same one. It was cool to see her eyes light up, once she’d decided, and took the bag down from its hook, and brought it to me with a grin.
It’s those kind of moments that creators really appreciate and look forward to, as we work on our art — the moment when someone likes our work as much (sometimes more!) than we do.
Thanks, Spokane.