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Crazy as a Loom

Sunday, November 24, 2024

Working on it

I told you I was trying to be better about blogging, so here I am, again.

Even though the show was a huge success, I am relieved that it is over.  I worked 
very hard to get everything finished for it, and then the weekend itself was long.

It was exciting to get back to the studio and the things I wanted to do.


Here is the AVL warping wheel.  After getting a demo from a fellow weaver a few weeks ago, and watching the AVL video about three times, I started putting a warp on.

Of course, I couldn't put a 'short' warp on........what is it they say?  Go big or go home?

So I put 30 yards of Pima cotton on the Megado.

It was organized, and slick, and I loved it.

Warping the usual back to front, or front to back can occasionally be chaotic, to say the least.
It can be uneventful, but you never know.  It can be a royal pain.

This. however, is LOVELY.


I am seriously considering getting sectional rakes to put on the David.




Upstairs, I am busy winding cones.  That is a learning experience, too.  Most of the time, they look pretty good, then you get one that looks like a 10 year old did it.




Yes, that would be me.

They are pretty though, aren't they???

Hand dyed banana pearl. 



I recently suggested a movie to a very close friend, on Amazon prime, for only $3.59.

When she started watching it, she texted me, and said, "Are you sure about this movie?".

I told her to stick with it.
When she had finished the movie,
She sent me a long line of HEARTS.


It's a true story, and it's lovely.



I highly recommend it.....if you watch it, let me know what you think.  I'm about ready to watch it again.


So I started weaving on the Megado.  I am having some computer issues with it, that I have not yet figured out.  Some days, it recognizes the commands, and other days, I believe it is thumbing its virtual nose at me.

But when it works.....it's amazing.



That's what keeps me going.

I do love circles.



All my friends have heard me BITCHING about walking two dogs at the same time.
One pulling ahead, because he is younger, and faster.  The other stopping behind me to smell
every single blade of grass that there is.


Today they made a liar of me.....and showed me just how pleasant they can 
make our walks, if they want to.





So the week ahead looks like a quiet one, except for pie making on Wednesday,
and turkey day on Thursday.

Otherwise, I'll be weaving and walking, and waiting for cold weather, that seems
to have vanished entirely.


Later.......


Monday, November 18, 2024

The Show

Once a year, my guild, the Hudson Mohawk Weavers Guild, has a show.  This 
year was the 46th year. 
The show lasts 3 days, and we get more successful every year.


We had 900 towels in this show.  At the end there was less than 200 left.

This photo was before the doors opened on Friday.  The real devoted shoppers
are waiting in line outside!!!  We were mobbed all day Friday, and Saturday, and
shockingly busy on Sunday too



This is the only show I do these days.   Not having my husband, or Lois, to help me, I have given up the show circuit.  It's just too hard.


I sell things on my FB page,  Crazy as a Loom Weaving, and I'm having a SALE on towels over there now.


Very soon, I will put the clothes on SALE that I have left over from the show.......there are only NINE pieces this year, so they should go quickly.
I like to clear everything out, and start over fresh for the new year.








This is my new AVL warping wheel, and probably, hopefully, my last expenditure for 
a while.
I bought it to be able to warp the Megado, and put more yardage on it at a time.

Hopefully, take off is this week!!!






I loved hearing all your responses to my rants........I have thought a lot about it, and I remembered a book I read years and years ago. 
It was one of those pivotal moments, when something, or someone, makes an impact on your thinking.
In this case, it was a book called "The Control Theory, by Dr William Glasser.

I wanted to read it again, but when I looked it up on Amazon, it was $30 for the paperback.  But you can buy it used for $6, and I did.

 It helped me once, in a big way, so I think it will help me with dealing with our new reality, and the fear of the future that will 
bring.

But once more, I am taken back to my Al Anon  days.

And that quote.......that I have come back to time and time again.



Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing or situation—some fact of my life—unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in God’s world by mistake.


So accepting is what I'm working on.......because inside I feel that I have not accepted it because it is so despicable to me.
And I can't move on, until I  do.
 I think it's the only way I can find a way to maintain my serenity, and live my life without letting it make me unhappy.

It ain't easy.










Wednesday, November 13, 2024

And again.

I am trying to be calm, after seeing the headline that Matt Gaetz is going to be the new 
Attorney General.
This is hard.
So hard.

Horrible people with their own agendas, put in positions of power.
What are we doing America?????

OK, I will try to be good.


Another "egg towel" warp on the loom.   
Twenty new egg towels coming up.





My friend made me a blue jean rug, for next to my bed.  I really love it.



Naya loves to lay on my bed and look out the window.





She is a princess, isn't she???






When I first bought this house 20 years ago, I took note of this beautiful door in the basement.  It separated the old part of the house, 1790, from the newer part, 1820.  But then the duct work for the furnace was put through the door way, since the alternative was to break out a stone wall.....
And suddenly the door had no purpose.
I loved it, and planned that one day I would get it out of the cellar.

Well, that day came.



Here it is coming out into the sunshine.



The door is 54" wide, and 75" tall.



I couldn't sell it.  It belongs here.
So..............





It has a brand new life inside my back door, where everyone comes
into the house.
A place for coats, and shoes, and everything else that would normally get thrown in the corner.

I just love it.



Here's what it looks like in the dining room.  It may not be for everyone, and it may not fit
into everyone's house, 
but it's perfect in this old house.





While trying to concentrate on this post, I heard the local news say that the House and the Senate are now in total control of the Republicans.....so the Congress and the White House are in cahoots........nothing to stop them, nothing at all.
I fear this is gong to be a very painful lesson for this country.
I wish I didn't have to think about it at all.

I feel that the world has gone mad all around me.  Every day I have to keep looking for 
sanity, and serenity.  I wonder if this feeling of panic will ever subside.   





Friday, November 8, 2024

What's happening.

I don't like to post political stuff, and in fact I rarely do.

But I would be remiss if I didn't at least tell you that I am grieving what I see as
a huge loss of character for this United States of America.  
We have chosen a misogynistic, racist, crude, really evil man, when we could have
chosen a sane, reasonable woman.
But, ah, there's the rub. 
A woman.
And a black woman at that.

I knew from the moment she announced that she was running, that she was doomed.
My friends tried to reassure me.......she had a good chance.
But no, she never had a chance, not even the slightest little bit of one.

This is America.  Women are still second class citizens, fighting for rights that men
take for granted.

So this is it, we have a president who mimics giving oral sex to a microphone, who openly
talks about shooting a woman in the face, who can now "pardon" himself in all the criminal activity he has been involved in.
And millions of people are waiting with high hopes for all the "good" that he is going to 
bring into their lives.
I can't laugh.  It's far too sad, and it's also very, very scary.

So that's enough of a rant.  Whether you agree or not, we can choose to disagree.
I don't try to convince anyone of anything.  
As Mark Twain said, " A man who carries a cat by the tail, learns something that he can learn in no other way."



I am staying in my own lane, so to speak.   Plenty to do, and I love doing it.  I have looms, and lots of other "toys" in my studio.


I have. a LOT of undyed yarn, and it needs to get a life, with me, or with someone else, and that means it needs to be dyed.





So first, I wind it into skeins.



Then I dye the skeins.









Then I wind the skeins back on to cones!!!




It's a bit tedious, but the results are very satisfactory.



I have over 100 cones, so this should keep me kind of busy all winter.

To be honest,  I want to hide in my little corner of the world.  I am going to
be "news free" as much as I can be.  No more evening news, no more WAMC
Round Table every morning, only a skim of the top headlines of my daily morning 
digital NY Times, and very quickly onto the puzzles.
I will try not to be entirely ignorant of what's going on, but I am NOT 
going to let it rent space in my head.
I did that for years with an alcoholic ex husband, I am surely not going to do 
it with this demented person.

I have started walking the dogs alone, because there is no one right now that 
can manage it.  I understand that, but they do not.
So every day, we go to our favorite dirt road just 3 miles from home, and we 
sniff everything that has roamed around there the night before.
Well, they sniff.

I don't sniff, but I am on the lookout for any sign of anything crossing the road.
A rabbit, a deer, a squirrel, anything that would have them charging off together and putting me in the ditch.
If I see it first, I can be ready.




Years ago I read a book that I have never forgotten.  It took place in the northeast, in the 
Revolutionary War.  Times were hard, and the future looked bleak.
The name of the book was "The Day Must Dawn"

No matter how horrible the future appeared, they knew that the sun
would come up the next day.

We can only hope that remains true for us.











Welcome to my world.

Because every thread counts

Because every thread counts