Sorry, I have no excuse

I have not been keeping up my end of the deal.  I have not been posting what I have been doing.  I'm sorry...It is so easy to get out of the habit and then I have an empty blog.  

The summer has been a nice one.  I have suffered from being hot a lot of the time, but the evenings recently have cooled down and it is easier to sleep.  That seems so odd, because it used to be that August was the hot and muggy month for us.  July had the wonderful lightning and thunder storms and August was hot.  We really are losing our "normal."

This summer, I have been teaching and weaving...

I was excited to see my pillow in the hallway show at the Utah Museum of Natural History and the Viking show from the museum in Sweden is fantastic.  It is interesting to see the real history after watching the TV version on the show "Vikings."  I will be teaching a class in simple weaving for them in October.

I finished weaving a commission that ended up being 42 scarves.  That is a lot of weaving.  I am glad to have it finished and there will probably not be another big commission for a while.  That means that I can get some of my projects finished and get some work done on re-doing the shelves in the storage room.

Pinwheel scarf warp

Twill scarf warp

One of the lace scarves

There really are some beautiful scarves in the group.

I did a four-wheel trail ride with my husband and son.  It was the Hastings Cut-off.  This is part of the pioneer trail where wagon trains traveled from the "civilized" east to the "wild" west.  The Hastings Cut-off is famous, because that is where the Donner Party traveled, took too much time there and because of that, they arrived at Donner pass one day late, they got snowed in and many died.

The trail ride was led by people that had studied the journals of the time and had great information about the troubles that these people faced on their trip.  Lack of water seemed to be one of the worst problems.  We were there in June and it was hot and windy.  They were there in August and traveling over the salt flats must have been horrible.

The salt flats are just that, miles of a salt crust over mud.

It was great to learn about some of the history of the state I live in.

June passed in a blur of classes.  At the end of the month we did our family trip, we stay at Bear Lake on the Utah/Idaho border.  We are there for three nights and four days and we just enjoy the sun and the water.  The days were warm but not too hot, and the evenings were cool and I slept well.  We did not have too many of Mom's great grand children, so it seemed a little quiet.  There were only about 20 or 25 of us in the group, but three generations.  Mom really enjoyed being with her family...at 92 I don't know how many more she will be able to go to.

Mom by an old church in Idaho

I spent a Saturday in July at the local farmer's market advertising the classes at Pioneer Craft House.  It was hot and sunny, I thought I would get sunstroke from being there.  (Last week when we had a booth again I was much more comfortable the temperature was at least 20 degrees cooler.)

The end of July, I spend a great week in Durango, Colorado at the Intermountain Weaver's Conference.  I took a class on doing sprang and it was very interesting.  I only got a couple of small pieces done, but I now understand a lot more about the process.  There were some great workshops and it was so fun to see old friends and catch up.

Teacher's sweet sprang cap

The teacher's sprang shawl

I feel like I was much busier that that for the summer...