Living Like a Weaver

After yesterday's rain, today started out lovely, soggy and overcast, a perfect weeding day, but despite forecast of a thunderstorm in the afternoon, (and I really had my hopes up for a great thunder and lightening show,) the sun got brighter and, except for a few huge drops at 4.45PM, it turned into one heck of a glorious day. I'm tetchy about sunlight and when I can weed, but then it's scary how easily I can igmore the weather and be the weaver.

Back in early September (!!) I wound a short merino/mohair warp on the 4-shaft, and prepared to wind the lovely mill-end navy merino on the big loom. Today I threaded the 4-shaft in a twill, Davison's Gothic Cross, page 41, and sampled with treadling I and III. I spent two days looking up and making up undulating twills for this warp back in September in vein, so I'm game for a different kind of a draft for this.

For an unknown reason, I chose mostly bouclé wefts of different sizes and colors, most of which obliterates the lovely blue/green variegation of the warp and the pattern. I'm surprised how much more the teal weft shows these, though, compared to the purple, (same yarn, different color.) I'm partial to the teal or the flat black merino (bottom), but am considering undyled merino. I also wound the navy warp; it's the same yarn in different color as the gray with which I had such fun.

And then there are the unfinished projects:
* I have four pieces and a sample to wash;
* the three-brown warp, I'm wondering if I want to redesign or continue as initially planned;
* I've still not given up on my part of Weavers and Designers study;
* I'm sitting on four commissions while complaining I haven't sold any through the gallery;
* I'm dithering on setting up an online store;
* and last but not least, I've more than half a dozen paper/paint projects waiting to be finished. Two I think I'm just going to let go, as in trying to finish them after I came back from Australia last year, I ruined them more than improved on them, partly due to cheap student paint I use at home. An expensive lesson.
* And then I have a few kits for making small books/notebooks I bought from Seth at the workshop, which I'd like to tackle, perhaps after I've finished the unfinished ones.

Yikes. It helps to list them up, and I have been aware of all these, but put into one list there are so many! Because I can't multi-task all my brain juice has been spent on the garden and on none of these.

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I've been sleeping erratically, and I blame the sensory overload in the garden. Once again I've reached for "The Highly Sensitive Person", recommended by one of you ages ago. I got it right away and started reading but the language was cloying, ("Your Infant/Body Self"??) and I read to about page 40 the last time. I restarted a few nights ago but this time I got to page xi, but I know it may contain techniques I can use, so I'm sticking with it.

I have a few ideas I want sample/weave so I got out Lambert & co's "Color and Fiber" but this is a heavy book, (not a bedtime read,) and worth working out the theories in paint and fiber. (So, after Weavers and Designers?) What surprised me is how difficult I find the physical setup of the pages. I think it's the spacing between lines and the shiny white paper, but who knows; I catch myself squinting all the tie with this book. For goodness sakes, is this part of aging, too?

Last but not least, I started reading Australian-born art critic Robert Hughes' "Rome", another heavy number unsuitable for bedtime, but a special book I got at a sale at the bookshop in Wellington airport after a museum-and-bookshop visit some years ago. I'm going to make a special occasion of reading this one, Googling persons/places/artworks I don't know along the way. I hope it will quell my travel lust a little; although it could make things worse, yes?

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The hot water heater problem was easily fixed: the switch suffered from sub par job when we moved the cylinder in 2009; when we replaced the wood burner, the builder/project manager brought in his own electrician. Luckily, I now have a favorite electrician! He also told me our 1962 cylinder has a heating element with less than half the umph of an average electric kettle, but replacing just the element is affordable.

I asked Ben to leave rat poison in the roof cavity on the weekend so my stash room is still also the linen closet. Since I cleaned it, Ben has been calling it my walk-in stash room.