The Year

This year has been difficult for me.  Somehow I have felt out of "sync", like I have been a little off and not able to do anything.  I know that I have done some things, am I just doing less and that is the problem.  Am I not doing "everything" that I feel I should, so I feel like I do nothing?  It is a hard thing to face and to figure what I can do to bring myself out of it.

On the whole, I look at my life with a smile and so thankful for everything and everybody around me.  I am so blessed to have been able to do so much.  Why do I feel I am not able to do enough?  Do I have a deep down feeling that I need to do more to "repay" the world for giving me such a good life?  Am I just thinking too much?  Are the American politics just wearing me down?

When I was taking pictures and posting earlier this year, I seem to have been doing a great deal and having a wonderful time.  But this fall I have been slower at recognizing the joy in my life.  I need to get my joy back and enjoy life.

In September our season tickets to the Utah Symphony/Opera started and I have loved being able to listen to live music.  I have been able to hear pieces that are well known to me and be introduced to new music to learn about.  Utah Opera productions seem to get better each year.  Romeo and Juliet was not my favorite over the past couple of years, but the voices that they bring in are fantastic and I enjoy the sets and production.

In October I was able to take a workshop from Bonnie Inouye and it was fantastic.  She is so knowledgeable and I have been wanting to take a workshop from her for a while.  This one was Big Twill and she introduced a few things in ways I had never thought about before.  

Look at the cool movement in her sampler.

Her workshop was a continuation of the interest that I have in the "Echo and Iris" book and the techniques covered in it.  I had some classes and a workshop in Reno this summer that fell under that study heading and this workshop added to the knowledge I have acquired.  

I had two self study directions that I tried this year.  "Echo and Iris" was one and the other is crackle.  I have been working on a sampler exploring the structure of crackle.  I have woven it before, but I wanted to really understand the possibilities.  I am not sure that I have it down yet, but I will finish that sampler and move on to a couple of projects to try learning more  I plan to continue the crackle study next year and will be taking a workshop from Susan Wilson to help me learn more.  So one of the first things to do in the new year is to finish the crackle sampler.

I will also continue the echo and iris study line in the next year.  I have a couple of projects that I want to put one to extend my understanding of the four color work.  I want to understand a little about picking colors out to make the design look iridescent.  I worked through some of the book when I was doing some double weave this summer in the Spady class, but there is so much more in that book.  I hope to do a four color piece on the crackle sampler, I like the turned crackle and want to see how it can be done to give the iridescence.

I have worked to empty some looms.  The big push was to get the RH looms empty and put away.  I have three done and one to go.  I need to spend less time on the internet and more time on my weaving.  I have a lot of plans and need to work a little harder on "follow through".

This year, Christmas was the year of the bad lights.  I had one garland with the center lights out.  I replaced it with an led set.  I hope this garland lasts longer.  I have four garlands on top of three of the bookshelves/cabinets in the house and one on the stairs coming into the house. 

We have a couple of small trees outside by the front door.  This year the lights did this.

There must have been a short in that section of the tree lights, because every one of the bulbs was burned out.  My husband found the look very disturbing so he bought a small string of lights and wrapped them over the top of the tree.  The trees looked great for about a week, then the other tree did the same thing.  My DH bought another string of lights and wrapped them on top of that tree.  Now the bottoms of the two trees are out.  Like I said a bad year for lights.  I had my DH buy two additional strings of lights, so I can strip down these trees and relight them and put new colored ornaments on them.  The beautiful red ornaments that I originally put on these trees have faded to an orange color so it is time to re-do them.  So that is another project for me to do after the 12 days of Christmas when we take down the greenery.

Short Summer

As we ease into Autumn, I am trying to see what I did the past summer.  I know that things were busy, and I know there were some thyroid problems causing me to be a little down, but overall it was pretty good.
My daughter joined a local Cambodian dance group.  She was in long enough to do one performance.  I had fun going to the festival and eating well, then seeing my daughter with the dance group.

The only non-Asian in the group.

 I also went to the local Tulip festival with her.  I enjoy my adult children and I love flowers.

As a family we camped in Arches National Park.  This is an area that we have been to many times, but it has been several years since we were able to camp in the park.  It was a great time and being in the "red rock country" refreshes my soul. 

Our Campsite with the table, our tent and son's ten

We also checked out the Black Dragon Petroglyph in the San Rafael Swell.

My sisters took mom for a weekend away.  We visited her old family home, and a cousin that she grew up with.  It was a great time for her and I think we managed to not wear her out too much.

I taught another video classes with Curious Mondo.  I enjoy the classes, but it is a lot of work to get all the equipment set up and moved to the studio.  I am still working on emptying a couple of the four looms that I set up for the class.

July was two weeks in Reno with the weaver's conferences.  I had not been to Convergence for quite a few years.  I always enjoyed this conference, but it is expensive. For the years when I worked in the weaving store the manager would always go and I ran the store while she was gone.  Now that Convergence and Complex Weaver's are in the same city I can go to both.  I took a great workshop from Robyn Spady and it jump started my interest in parallel threading and "echo" weave.  I followed her instructions and then when I got home, I used the great book "Echo and Iris" to get some additional treadlings on the sample.  I want to continue my exploration in this direction.  My problem is that between teaching, commissions and life I don't seem to have the energy to do my own projects!  I always found the fashion show wonderful.  It used to be mostly wild runway pieces, but this fashion show had many pieces of clothing that we could wear in regular life.

Three conferences ago, I went to my first Complex Weaver's.  I loved this group of sharing women, and loved feeling like there was so much more I wanted to learn.  These women are doing some things that I don't have the equipment or interest in, but they challenge me to try new things and explore places in weaving that I hadn't tried before.  I decided at that first conference that I would try to attend it every time.  I may not be able to always attend, but I love that thought of going and learning new things, and looking at weaving in new ways.

This was a great experience that I had looked forward to for a few months.  I loved hanging out with several hundred weavers...my tribe.

We had a fall trip to Yellowstone National Park scheduled, but between Reno and Yellowstone, I had a commission to weave 19 rugs.

Four 3' x 5' rugs

Fourteen 2' x 3' rugs

I put 24 yards of wool rug warp on the Macomber loom at Pioneer Craft House and used a lot of it for these rugs.  I have an additional four rugs to weave for a second rug commission and that should use all the rug warp.  These rugs are alpaca corespun yarn, quite fast to weave because they are 4 to 5 ppi.

Our Yellowstone trip was fun, I had not been there of several years.  We decided to not worry about cooking all the meals, so we just planned to eat at the lodges part of the time..  That turned out to be a good decision, because we had evening and night rain a couple of days and no one felt like cooking in that weather.  There are so many places to eat there it was no problem.  My favorite was the Yellowstone Hotel, I want to go back and stay there.

On our way to breakfast after early morning bison watching.

Baby bison

We have been doing a lot this summer, but somehow I feel that I have not been keeping up with things that I am supposed to be doing.  I need to learn to enjoy what I am able to do and let go of those things that I don't get to.











  

Summer

Hooiser Lace

Spring

April has been sunshine and snow.  It is funny to have a day when the temperature is 70 degrees and the next day it is snowing.  My daffodils got snowed on several times this year.

This one was just a light dusting

I have been working on some placemats with a variation of honeysuckle overshot.  She picked out the design when I showed her some of my work.  I was surprised to see that I wove that pattern in 1988.  I really like the look of it and I am surprised that I have not done any other work with it.  I often thought I would like to do some yardage with a fine thread using that design.

It has a lacy look and I am very pleased with it.

I also did some weaving for a woman who does baby wraps.  I have always wondered about weaving them.  It is a lot like weaving yardage, just the same thing over and over.  In this case the 8/2 was about 24 ppi and it took a while to weave a yard.  I was slower than I usually think about my weaving.  

It was pretty familiar to weave, because it was on a Macomber loom.  It was about 8 inches wider than mine, so it felt heavier, but I love to weave on a Mac.

I also took a class in tonder lace with the bobbin lace group.  I have always loved the look of point ground laces and I was interested in tonder.  I was a bit over my head.  I had not done lace for a few months and it took a couple of hours for me to get into the groove.  Tonder is done with 140/2 cotton and so after a six hour day, I had about a half an inch.  I took it apart a couple of times and I had to adjust to that fine yarn.  At first I was breaking it.

This is a piece from the more experienced students

The second piece that I got to start is a straight edge that this heart is based on.  It is really beautiful lace.  I am not sure if I like this better than Bucks point.

I am also working on getting my old stacks of stuff cleaned up and some of it given away.  I really think it is time that I pass around some of my "stash".  There are some projects that I will never get around to.

Time Flys

My life continues like everyone else,  some days are good, some days are better than most and some days we are just getting by.

I started getting a list together of how much each of my looms have been doing this year, but it just got stuck and never made any progress.  So I abandoned the list, my looms have been working, but I don't know exactly how much.  

I was disappointed that the yardage did not come off the Big Mac before the end of the year.  But a couple of weeks in I finished it.  I was not able to find any weft to continue the fabric, so I did a slightly different color for the last yard, maybe it will work for a companion piece or trim on the original.

Finished yardage, not wet finished

On the right side is the original stripe with the very bright handspun (about 2 yards) in the center is the coordinating fabric (about 3 yards and on the left is the extra fabric (about 1 yard).  The original two fabrics have a peacock yarn for the warp and weft, and the extra fabric ended up with bottle green for the weft.  I think it made a good fabric and I hope I can come up with a good piece of clothing.

I taught a rug class and a beginning weaving class for the winter session.  Both classes filled and were fun to do, but I sometimes want some time off to do my work.  (But when I do get that day off, I have so much on my mind to do that it seems like nothing gets done.)

I have started to be satisfied if I get two or three of the things taken care of.  I try not to feel bad if I don't finish the "To Do" list.  Instead at the end of the day I try to look at what I did manage to get done.  Usually I am very satisfied with the list I was able to do, and I try not to just look at what I did not get done.   

I warped my three rigid heddle looms for a video class, then decided I needed a fourth example and bought a Baby Cricket (10") and warped her up.  I have not got any of the projects off the loom.  But the one that did badly in the class, I resleyed it and got a good sample going.  I think it will be used for small zipper bags.  I need to get things done to try to have for sales.

I resleyed to a larger dent heddle

Now the boundweave is covering the warp!

I think I will be much happier with this structure.  I did some small bags with this type of boundweave on a rigid heddle loom years ago and I liked the look and feel of them.

I have been binge watching too much Netflix.  I think it is an avoidance technique.  But while I am watching, I keep my hand busy doing stitchery.  Things I have not done for a number of years.  It has been fun.  There are a couple of counted cross projects that I have started, but the things I have finished are quite an odd group.

A needlepoint ornament for my son

A needlepoint ornament for my daughter

A beaded sheep ornament for me

To top it all off, last fall when I was in Harrisville, I bought a pot holder loom.  You know, the kind we all made potholders from sock loops when we were young.  This is the Pro-sized and makes bigger potholders.  I made about 30 of them!

Bright Christmas colored ones

Multi-colored ones

Deep Christmas colored ones

Bright Kitchen colored ones.

I went crazy with color and weave patterns.  What am I going to do with so many potholders.  At our Sister's Date in January, I let everyone pick out a couple for them to use, so I am down about 8...but that is still a lot of potholders!