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After trying to convince myself for a whole day that the camel/silk yarn I found in the stash was going to be the perfect thing for this two-week teaching trip, I quickly caved when Emily (the enabler) suggested we could make a quick stop by The Loopy Ewe on our way downtown last night. It took me no less than two seconds to agree whole-heartedly. Luckily for me, the Ewe is open until 8:30 on Thursdays and yesterday folks, was Thursday.
There comes a moment when I'm getting ready to go on another trip when I feel compelled to visit one of the excellent yarn stores here and buy the supplies for a new knitting project. The voice in my head is very strong.
"You have two long travel days and two weeks among strangers. If you run out of knitting/weaving/spinning projects, you might not survive." --Rebecca's head-voice
Resisting this voice is difficult, but I am determined to go shopping in my own yarn stash first. This is only practical. The stash is threatening to take over all available space in my clothes closet and even I need to wear clothes most days. Certainly I can find an appropriate match of knitting yarn and pattern for the upcoming teaching trip to Penland School of Crafts? Surely I can.
My mom didn't grow up with computers. I didn't either for that matter. We got our first computer in about 1985 when I was in junior high. My dad bought an Apple IIE and I think it had a total working memory of 2 MB. Everything had to go on those little 3 inch floppy disks and heaven help you if you lost the one with your 9th grade English paper on it.
My mom just got her very own Macintosh computer and I am so proud of her! What I have realized from watching her struggle with technology is that for those of us who were not born with a smartphone in our hand, learning how the world of the internet works can feel really overwhelming. The internet didn't really exist until I was well out of graduate school and my own education in how it works has been largely courtesy of Dr. Google.
The piece on my loom right now is a commission for a couple's home. Managing a commission demands some organization and I am fairly good at this. What I'm not as good at is estimating how much time the accumulated tasks on my calendar are going to take. Oh sure, I can come up with a fairly good estimate of how many hours creating a certain piece of art will take me. I can also estimate how long it'll take me to rebuild my website or do my accounting for the month or answer Monday's emails.
What I can't seem to do effectively is ADD. I might have a separate number for all those things in my head, but when I add 2 + 3 + 4 hours, I tend to get 5 instead of 9. So though I'm sure that I can shoot six videos, weave a foot on the big tapestry, and manage all the online teaching in a week, the chances of that actually happening are really zero... due to that addition thing. (And perhaps my eternal sense of optimism.)
Weaving on a portable loom. I can take it camping and even backpacking. It fits in my purse if I have a long evening of babysitting my nieces ahead of me and it is a great companion for road trips especially when I'm not driving. I have been messing around with these Hokett looms for years now and this loom got to come on a quick camping trip in northern Colorado last weekend. I think she liked the starts the most.
Proctorsville is a small town in central Vermont. After the retreat in Plymouth, I headed there to teach a two-day introductory tapestry class. Vermonters are people who can figure stuff out. Everyone in the class was pretty new to tapestry weaving, but they quickly picked up tips and were weaving before you could say bobbin.
