Another week flies by.

This has been another crazy week. Due to the impossibility of stopping up all the holes in the barn...including from below...since the woodchucks dig holes up into the barn.......we bought a 10'x14' metal shed to put the wood pellets in. After the first night, I thought my husband was going to "take the bridge", but after rereading the instructions, he decided to stick it out. His comment was, "I'm Irish, and if it takes me 6 months, I am going to get that "blankity-blank" together."
Today was day 4, and he had a helper for all 4 days, and he still has to put the door on. He says he has made mistakes, but it looks good to me. 956 bolts/screws whatever.....so he tells me. Sounds like a nightmare I had once.
Anyway, I was safe in the studio.......I declined to be his helper....smart woman, eh?
And I had orders to finish, and orders to start.....so that was that.
I am still waiting on a crank for my newest loom acquisition, another Union Custom. I may try to put a warp on this week without the crank.....I just can't wait.
I had a student this week, Candy, and she was a quick study.....easy to teach, and eager to be a weaver......an eager weaver? Yup......she was loving it, you can always tell when someone has been bitten by the weaving bug. She was getting herself all set up so she could do it all herself. She made a rug, and it looked great. She is off to a fine start. I can just imagine what she will be weaving a year from now!
She will be coming by one of these days to watch me warp sectionally, since her loom has a sectional beam, and it is my favorite way to put a warp on. I bet it will be hers, too.
Visit her blog, see her rug, and even find out how to make vanilla extract......I was amazed.....I never knew! I am going to have to try that one.
That is one of the perks of teaching weaving....I get to meet the nicest, most interesting people.
After all, they are going to be weavers, so it only makes sense.

Here it is September already, leaving me wondering what happened to summer.
I have a resident raccoon in the barn, who has decided to open EVERY bag of wood pellets, just to see if perhaps there might be something ELSE in the bag that he might like. The Havaheart is set with grape jelly, and let's hope that he has a sweet tooth. I don't have any particular dislike for raccoons, except when I have $1000 invested in wood pellets, and that changes everything.
I just bought the pellet stove, and the pellets, so that this winter I wouldn't cringe every time the furnace starts up, which by the way sounds like an old VW starting up in the cellar.

I am busy putting gumball rug kits together. I am pretty excited about this.........enough sock seconds from Sol Mate Socks cut into strips, toe clips, warp, and instructions, to make 2 (2'x3') gumball rugs. I sent out 5 kits today, which proves to me that other weavers are like me, they can't resist color and texture in a rug.
After my whirlwind trip to the UPS center, which has convinced me to get my own UPS account.......I met my friend Alice at the Feeder Dam, and we put our kayaks in the Hudson and paddled away. It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining, the water was like silk, and there was just a slight breeze. It was awesome, and I totally needed the break.
Sometimes I forget just how hard I work.

I am guilty of working too much, has been a character defect of mine for quite some time.........but I do consciously try to modify that behavior. I recently did something that I have been saying I wanted to do for a long time, but somehow never got around to. I bought a kayak. My friend, Alice, and I went to Dick's Sporting Goods and bought kayaks together. True, we didn't have a clue about what we were buying, but apparently we aren't accomplished enough kayakers for that to matter a great deal.
We've been out twice, both times on the Hudson. Today, we paddled 6 miles down to Feeder Dam, and back up. I am exhausted, but it feels good. And it especially feels good to finally do it, after I have talked about it for so long. As I was driving home, with the windows down, with my orange and yellow kayak strapped to the top of my car, the sun was behind me, the kayak appeared in shadow ahead of me as I was going down the road. I couldn't stop smiling.