Ordinary Time

Our Halloween tradition... Candy from the cool candy store, Middle Eastern take out, and a movie marathon. This year it was the two Addams Family movies. 

I should probably issue a warning that I really don't know what you're going to get here for the next month while I bury myself in my studio and try to get as much made as possible. Here is what it looked like when I shut the door this afternoon.  That would be a bunch of fiber of various sorts and my drum carder. I'm trying to get enough fiber prepped so I can spin a few more skeins of yarn.  But there were a couple of things that happened today. R. and H. had their semi-annual neurologist appointments today. They were the most low key and uneventful appointments ever. (This is a good thing.) We were gone an hour door to door. Even better? The doctor decided he doesn't need to see them for another year! Multiple neurologist visits have been a staple of our lives since 2012. This feels rather miraculous.  The other this was that G., L., and Y. chose their classes for next semester at community college. There's guitar, Intro to Theater, Communications, and a couple o...

I'm going to write about weaving two days in a row, but I have some thoughts that go beyond fiber-y things. First a picture.  This is the back of my loom. (I know any weavers out there look at this picture and immediately feel great sympathy.) Do you see those hanging pill bottles? Those are warp ends that needed to be added or repaired for various reasons. Pretty much everything in weaving is fixable, but in general, no one wants to have to do this. I'll show you one of the reasons in a moment, but I think an uncooperative warp has several things to teach all of us.  1. A distracted brain is never as competent as you think it is. I really and truly thought I was focusing on dressing this loom while I was doing it, but I also know I was pretty concerned about getting it done in order to have everything finished in time. Truthfully my focus was on finishing and not the process. Multiple errors in tyeing up the treadles and in threading could have been averted had I spent a litt...

As the days go flying by, I'm becoming increasingly worried that I won't get done everything I need to get done. Here's where I am. This is the stack of guest towels that still need to be hemmed. These are the towels that are done.  Hand hemming takes a while, but the results are miles better than a machine hem. I'm starting to weave the dinner napkins. But this warp has been a bit of a bear. It might have its own story later.  And then on top of holiday market items, I'm still in my pattern drafting class. These are all the pieces for my final muslin for my personal sloper. It's a front and back bodice, sleeves, and front and back skirt. I finished tracing them into the fabric today and tomorrow and need to sew them all together for the final fitting in class on Wednesday. After that we begin drafting pattern blocks from these that can be used to create wearable patterns.  These are the hand crafted paper patterns I traced to create the muslin. The process is f...

For the past month Buddy has been battling laminitis. (Yes, this is what Vienna was dealing with that very bad winter a couple of years ago.) I watched him get more and more uncomfortable and I was 99% sure that I would need to make the hard call to the vet. We made one last ditch effort to see if it would make a difference... and it did! Buddy is now back to his old self and is completely off all pain killers. I think he will be around a while longer.  You needed that introduction for my story from this evening to make sense. All while Buddy was struggling, Vienna was extremely solicitous. She would check in on him, she would always be sure he went first while she slowly brought up the lead, you could tell she was concerned and was caring for him. It was so sweet, but I couldn't even begin to ponder how lost she would be without her Buddy.  From the incident tonight, I know Buddy is out of the woods and doing well. The ponies spend their day in the dry lot and come into the b...

A couple of weeks ago we moved the baby chicks into the coop with the other chickens. Try weren't really babies anymore and they had stopped peeping. Moving chickens happens at night after all the birds have gone to bed. Chickens are not great in the dark, as if their brains are solar powered and don't work when the sun goes down. You can just pick them up and carry them to their new lodgings. Then when all the birds wake up it's as if the newcomers were always there having arrived while the chickens were sleeping.  Putting the young chickens in the coop meant that no birds could be let out for a couple of weeks as the babies learned that this was home. Tonight, while J. and L. we're switching the waterer to a heated one in anticipation of the hard frost that's predicted, they decided to let the birds out. It was good practice because there was just a half hour or so of daylight giving the new ones very little time to get into trouble.  They all came out of the pen ...

Yesterday I felt rather under the weather, so after doing some weaving (an endeavor which is not optional at the moment), I spent the rest of the day drinking nettle tea and binge reading Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguru. (He won the Booker Prize for his book, The Remains of the Day.)  Has anyone read this book? I really need to debrief with someone about it. I can't even really discuss it here as the whole point of the book is the slow build as to what is really going on. It definitely falls into the category of book that I need to finish in one go because I can't have it lingering. The Handmaid's Tale is another book that fits into this category for me. I also can't even tell you if I liked the book or not. So, if you've read it, I'd love to hear your thoughts. 

I have finished two-thirds of the first fifteen yards warp and I hope to finish the last third this week. I think I'm still on target for having everything I want to make ready for the holiday market. There is something.... motivating about receiving an email with details and due dates. Due dates that are now less than two months away. Because along with the weaving, I'm also planning on selling handspun yarn, so when I'm not at the loom, I've been working on that. But up until now I've been kind of relaxed about the whole thing. I work a little bit here and a little bit there. Today I came to the realization that to be ready with everything I want to be able to sell, I'm going to have to be a bit more diligent. This is the only good thing I can see about having a very light schedule in terms of people coming to do horse stuff.  But don't feel too badly for me because in truth, I love weaving and spinning, so it's not really a hardship. The whole process...

We celebrated H.'s birthday tonight. Her actual birthday was earlier in the week, but this was when most everyone could get together. H. asked for sweet and sour chicken and jiaozi (Chinese dumplings) for dinner with cheesecake for dessert. G. made the cheesecake and also went on to make a peach pie for those who can't eat dairy.  As always there was a lot of laughter as we celebrated together.  H. got a rabbit pin on the card from Grammy which she loved,  as well as two books from her favorite graphic novel series. She also received snacks, a shirt, a new spirograph set, and some other books. It was a very good birthday.  And earlier today, R. had her own ongoing party as she continued to enjoy her protest swag and spent a lot of time recounting everything she saw the previous day. R. is now very enamoured of protests... there were lots of friendly people, she was given things (including a cookie), fun costumes, and lots of honking cars. I'm her world, things don't ...

when the world is heading to hell in a hand basket. 1. Spend time with family and friends. You need actual in-person interactions. Texting a friend is good, but meeting for coffee is better.  2. Spend time in nature. Science has shown being in nature, even for a short time, lowers cortisol levels.  3. Spend time with animals. But truly, horses are the optimal choice because their regulatory system is so large that it is easy for our bodies to co-regulate with theirs. And they can't read the news so they aren't living in a perpetual state of stress. 3. Get physical exercise or do manual labor. It's even better if it takes place outside. 4. Find ways to laugh. Laughter does wonderful things to your immune system. J. was watching clips from The Carol Burnett show this afternoon. Harvey Korman and Tim Conway are gold. 5. Make things. Using your hands, being creative, and working with physical things (as opposed to doing something online) can help keep you regulated.  6. Take ...

First, before I get into the content the title suggests, I feel I need to address something. I know life is challenging right now. There is very little good news out there, tempers are hair trigger, and people are afraid. Well, many of us are feeling fearful. I know one way many people are coping is to become an ostrich. If you don't listen to or read any news, it's harder to be upset by it. I get it; I am certainly limiting my exposure to news and social media. But ignoring a problem because it makes you upset or uncomfortable doesn't make it go away. In fact, the problem will grow bigger the more people who do so. (And this is true for anything in life, not just the political situation.) But if you are able to completely screen out any upsetting news, then I'm afraid I have to tell you that your privilege is showing. It means you haven't had to have conversations with your children about which states they need to avoid or check with them that they are carrying pro...

I need to do some crowd sourcing because I think I need to realign my expectations. Here's my story. Last year J. needed some new work shoes, so took advantage of a sale at a not-high-end department store. They were not real leather, but they looked decent and the price was within our budget. Well, the soles on one of those pairs of shoes have cracked making them not so great especially in wet weather. When we lived in Evanston, I would just run our shoes up to the shoe repair guy and for a nominal fee, he would fix soles, heels, and whatever else needed fixing. So we decided to try a shoe repair place out here to see if we could extend the life of a pair of shoes whose uppers were still in good shape even if they weren't real leather. That particular errand was on today's list, so after some really horrible Maps instructions I eventually found the place. When I asked about having them resolved, I was informed I probably didn't want to do that. I did actually want to ha...

The conversation at the end of dinner tonight focused on what would be on a T-shirt if we decorated them with each person's pet phrase. There was a split decision on mine. One possibility was, "It's not a four-way stop!" Due to my repeated shoutings at cars who do not understand merging into a roundabout.  The second possibility was, "Live person!" Which is what I've taken to saying repeatedly to the bots that answer business numbers. If that is all you ever say to every (often irrelevant) question it asks, it eventually gives up and actually transfers you to a live person. This might have been fresh in their minds today because I had to call both the large medical group in our area as well as PayPal. It's not my favorite activity to begin with, and the only reason I am actually calling is that my question is fairly complex. No, the bot cannot help me, so there is no point in wasting time while it figures that out. There was some discussion about my ...

I had a group of fourteen students and their parents out to the farm today, and one of the activities was learning to spin with a suspended spindle. Y. doesn't have classes on Monday so was home and that was a good thing. Between the two of us, within an hour, we had everyone starting to spin. I absolutely could not have managed without her.  I haven't worked with a group that large in a long time. For years I directed a children's choir that had dozens of students, so I have the skills. It turns out that this is one of those riding a bicycle things, the skills are always there even if they aren't being used. But my goodness, the skills might be there, but the endurance is not. I definitely needed to make a cup of tea and put my feet up for a while. At least I recovered enough to weave another guest towel. The total so far is that I've done six of the overall pattern towels, then after changing the tie-up I'm working on the Christmas trees. I've completed on...

I've mentioned before that I feel I am in an in-between time right now with children having switched to learning via dual enrollment and my role becoming rather miniscule. Earlier this week as I was working in my studio, I looked around me at the hundreds of books that we used for homeschooling and stored in my studio and realized that I could close that aspect of my life. While the memories are all very good memories, the sheer weight of it all was becoming a bit much. I didn't want to be surrounded by it all all the time anymore. Plus, I could use the space.  On Friday I began the process of moving books off of shelves, made a huge mess in the middle of my studio, became overwhelmed, and left it. At that moment I didn't really know if I could physically or emotionally tackle such a daunting task. J. offered to help and we came up with a game plan which involved tackling every bookcase on the second floor, both in the studio and out. By the end of the day, we had sorted an...

Spending time with horses. Eating homemade bagels for breakfast. (Made by Y.) Dyeing some wool for a group that's coming on Monday to learn about sheep and horses.  Getting to visit with my friend and nextdoor neighbor while standing in her hay field.  (The hay field is on the other side of my pasture fence and it was during the day, not at sunset.) Enjoying some homemade English muffins. (Made by G.) Washing part of the Romney fleece that I brought home from the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival.  And setting another part of it to soak.  Not pictured, cleaning up the kitchen, doing a couple of loads of laundry, and the long phone conversation with DSCC (IL Division of Specialized Care for Children) trying to get various bills sorted out and pre-approval for some services.  And now I'm going to read my incredibly light and fluffy book and go to bed. Another day of living in an area being taken over by fascist troops successfully navigated. 

This is a bit late and it's not Monday, but I didn't finish it up until yesterday. Last week I took a class on the Theo Moorman inlay technique. This is a way of weaving where yarns are floated on top of a stable woven fabric and secured by very thin warp ends which tie them down. The finished project was a series of exercises designed to teach us how to do the technique. Here is what I ended up with.  A little explanation of each section.  The bottom three rectangles was to demonstrate what the inlay process is and how it differs from regular weaving. The set of smaller rectangles was to learn how different yarns cover (or don't cover) the warp. Then the figure at the top was introducing working with more than one color at a time.  Those overlapping rectangles are transparencies where color mixing happens. I wasn't pleased with my first attempt (bottom), so I did it again. I was much happier with the second. Above the transparencies is the exercise teaching how to use ...