The Attic

Progress

I took FIVE towels off the loom this afternoon (I thought there were only four), so I guess that's progress.  Sort of....this is the time when I find all the problems and mistakes.  However, while there sure were a few mistakes, these cute towels tightened up a bit in the wash and look better than on the loom.  There are mistakes, though, so a few might need to be redone.  They are also rather small.  The width is okay (wider wouldn't be a bad thing) but they really need to be a few repeats longer.  When the photos show up via iCloud, I'll be happy to share them.  Meanwhile, IMHO I need to add a few repeats to the next batch....when I get the warp retied to the front bar and ready to go again.

One exciting thing.  I posted a picture of the next-to-last of the five towels (for a friend) today on a FB group and got a lovely compliment from the DESIGNER!  Whoa.  That kind of made my day.  What didn't make my day is the realization that I can't do any more weaving for a while because I have a recurrent of, are you ready, Weaver's Bottom.  Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing.  It's an inflammation of the gluteus something or other and I've had it before.  A couple of days away from the loom, a hot bath or two, and some stretching exercises should get me back to the loom in a few days.  Meanwhile, it's going to be a lot of soaking, drying, pressing and hemming for a while.  All of which can be done, um, standing up.  Okay, cut that out....it's NOT funny!

One thing I discovered with this project is.....well, two things.  First, don't RUSH.  I do need to increase my weaving speed, but not on gifts!  (Hey, any that don't make the gift pile stay with me, so there's a bright side.)  But, the big discovery is that I like using solid warps with different colors in the weft.  Maybe not such a "discovery" as I've been gravitating to these project for some time.  I love playing with the effects of the warp on what I choose for the weft...always a bit of a surprise.  But it mostly keeps my interest when doing, for example, many towels.  It might be turning into a a bit of a rut, but I'd rather do projects like this than stripes.  Terrified of stripes.

Family-wise, some sort of good news, and....no news.  The Appendix Kid is finally improving a bit (can always tell by his FB posts....he's hilarious when he feels good), but I haven't heard another word about my brother.  I'm hanging on to the old saying that no news is good news.

I really hate this time of year.....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Debbie Downer

Hate to be so negative, but I am just about done in.  I don't think my son with the appendicitis is doing as well as he should be and that's concerning, to put it mildly.  Now I hear that my youngest brother has been admitted to the ICU for an assortment of issues.  What is it about December?  NOT a good month in this family, either side!  

I deal with it most years, and get through the period from December 15 (date of my husband's death), December 20 (the funeral), to the icing on the cake, December 30 (our anniversary....it would have been 50 years this year), but add everything else going on this year and I just can't. deal.

I haven't heard more about my brother, so I'm hoping that means some improvement.  The thought is that my son is having issues with the antibiotics and will start to improve more rapidly when he's done with them in a few days.  The stress is wiping me out...and making it impossible to focus.  Three things on my To Do List for today, and I barely finished one of them.

Hoping for a better day tomorrow.... 

 

 

 

 

 

A Little Appendicitis With the Weekend

No, not me.  I had what everyone THOUGHT was appendicitis the day before my wedding, according to all the doctors at the hospital.  However, my husband-to-be worked for the bishop who would be marrying us, and the doctor treating me was invited to the wedding, so.....he made an educated guess that it was the flu, "jacked" me up with all kinds of drugs, and warned me to get it taken care of if it happened again.  That wedding was going to happen, come hell or high water.  It did.  Still have the damn appendix.  No, this was youngest son and it got kind of scary over the weekend.  Hearing words like "perforated", "sepsis", "103.5 temperature"....yeah.  Fun stuff.  Spent the weekend glued to the computer and phone waiting for news.  Thanks to "weapon-grade" antibiotics and some pain meds that didn't work out so well (hallucinations, and not in a good way), he is home recuperating. Not from surgery, though:  they don't just yank it out anymore, but treat with antibiotics and wait six weeks.  Who knew?

I did get a little weaving in.  
Too scatter-brained to get anything major accomplished, but a wee bit of decorating here and there, too.

 I think I'm done for the year, with about 75% of my normal stuff.  Just not into it.  I have made a couple of batches of granola,
and am plugging away on towels.  Have a few other ideas, but some of my children, and their children, are getting money.  Even internet shopping gets me tired!  It's kind of scary how tired I get (I NEVER used to feel tired, even after much busier days than I have now) but I'm told it's part of osteoporosis.  Some days are better than others....this isn't shaping up to be a good one, sadly.

There may be some pictures later if I can get the cloud to cooperate.  Stick around.

 

Survivor

Do you watch the show?  I've been with it since the beginning, although, to be honest, it was better in the early days before contestants got so calculating and "educated" about the game play.  I kinda liked it when they made them eat bugs and pig's blood, but I'm probably alone in that opinion.

Anyway, not that I am comparing myself to the folks on Survivor, but I do feel like one now with Thanksgiving successfully under the old belt.  I was VERY organized, and we kept things simple, but I have a feeling this may have been my "Last Thanksgiving" in terms of hosting.  If you only have two guests, it's still weeks of work for 20 minutes at the table.  Hmm.  It was fun, however, and I was glad to get to use my cute Thanksgiving dishes for company.  If they didn't look so cute in my dining room hutch, I'd think about passing them on to one of the kids.  I never even thought of taking a photo of anything that day....sigh.

So, by 11 pm on Thanksgiving night, I had the last load in the dishwasher and the Thanksgiving dishes switched out for my Christmas china.   Friday I was pretty dragged out still, but got the start on the holiday decorating.  My instinct is to keep it low-key this year. Might be going to Delaware for Christmas itself, in which case I will not do the tree.  It's not so awful to put up, but I really hate taking it all down afterwards!  I have plenty of other decorations to make things look festive around here:  an extensive Dicken's Village collection, a set of Byers Carolers, and an old Hummel Nativity set.

I've been fiddling with the Village and it's a bit different now.  Added icicle lights in the bay, rearranged, etc.  It's okay.

Some of the Christmas china (Portmeirion "Holly and Ivy") is in my cabinets, some is on display on the kitchen shelf.  

 

This whole period from Thanksgiving through New Year's is tough for me.  Hubby went into the hospital for the last time right after Thanksgiving.  He died on the 15th of December, was buried on the 20th, and, insult to injury, our anniversary would have been on the 30th.  Tough is an understatement.  I muddle through and some years I do better than others.  I guess you could say I just try to "survive" it all.  And what gets me over the hump is....weaving!

In spite of what I said about weaving for gifts in an earlier post, I'm weaving for gifts.  Spurred on by a friend, who declared the weekend after Turkey Day her weaving "marathon", I rolled up my sleeves and broke my old record for getting a warp on that loom!  Saturday and Sunday, I beamed.  Sunday was mostly concerned with threading and sleying.  By Monday, I had it all tied up and ready to weave.  Or, more precisely, fixing mistakes so that I would be ready to weave!  Part of the process.  Bottom line, this was part of the plan to do as many warps on both looms as possible between now and August.  In August I will take another Vavstuga class (Rosepath Pillows) and that one will involve a lot of the loom prep that we students don't normally have to do.  That was making me a bit nervous, but now I have some hope that I won't make a fool of myself.

Nice warp!

Back to the weaving that is on the loom right now.  It's a draft from Handwoven magazine that appealed to me right away.  I keep telling myself that I'm going to stick to Swedish drafts (I find them easier to follow, what with all that Swedish training at Vavstuga) but I keep falling in love with "American" designs from the magazine.  While it went on the loom very quickly and smoothly, I can't say the same for the actual weaving.  It's a tricky pattern from a treadling standpoint, but I think I'm up to the challenge.  It's like knitting in that you learn to "read" your work.  I've figured out, after only a few block repeats, how to figure out where I am.  That's major!  I am finding that working with two shuttles (pattern color and off-white tabby) is kind of a pain, but I'll figure it out eventually.

The plan is to use different Christmas colored wefts.  Hope I get the hang of this draft soon, or we'll be talking Christmas 2018.

Now, if only I could get "the cloud" to upload my pictures from phone to computer.....

Stick around.  That may happen later.