Happy New Year!

My husband and I watched an online streaming of the ball drop at Times Square on New Year's Eve. Since we don't have TV access right now, we had both my desktop and laptop Macs set up side-by-side to see which one gave us the best view. The larger screen, of course, was the best view, but then we noticed a nano-second difference in timing... the laptop was streaming faster. So, we turned off the big guy and believe we actually caught the New Year's arrival at about the right time. Of course, the acknowledging and marking of time is only a human thing, I guess.

My tapestry weaving has been put on hold while we try to recapture our house and move back in. We've had major repair and renovation done there over the past year; in fact, my husband, cat and I have lived in my studio house for going on seven months now. I'm glad we didn't have to stay in the midst of the confusion of ripping out plumbing (polybutylene pipes), shower and ceiling below where there'd been water leaks, replacing kitchen cabinets as well as adding new countertops, repainting the whole interior of the house--and that only notes the highlights. We moved here to my studio house, bringing along about a week's worth of clothes and the notion that we'd be getting back to the house in about a month's time. That was before I left for Convergence in Tampa in late June.

Our house was built in 1871; we bought it twenty years ago and did a major renovation then.


This R&R (repair and renovation) began as we were needing to replace the polybutylene plumbing pipes installed at the time of the 1989 work. We've been fortunate that we haven't had too many leaks from the polybutylene pipes through the years--although in 2004 there was a pretty major flood in the room I use as my home studio. Luckily, there wasn't damage to any of my looms or tapestries--only lost a few paper things. That particular repair caused us to have to move everything out of the studio and distribute throughout the rest of the house while we replaced the sheetrock of the ceiling and a couple of the walls, and worked to save the hardwood floor of the room with a complex system of tubes and dehumidifiers. Here's a scanned photo from that particular event.


Now, as we are about to move back home, I'm continuing the BIG EDIT of stuff that my husband suggested awhile back and that started with my things from the attic. I have notebooks and files from my years of full-time teaching at NGCSU that I've thought I might use again. BUT, let's be realistic here--I won't be teaching those courses again and even if I were, I'd need to redesign them after a hiatus of nine years!! And, no--I won't need the knitting books that I've collected since I won't be knitting anything but dishcloths (if even that). Do I really need two or three copies of Handwoven, American Craft, Fiberarts magazines that have gotten into my stash? For some reason, I think I probably won't need about a thousand #2 pencils that seem to have multiplied in dark corners while no one was looking. You know, even my comic books from the mid-60s are looking suspiciously superfluous at this point.

Edit our lives now since we don't have children to do it for us later. All will either go to the estate sale or to the trash can as somebody will have to deal with it after we're gone if we don't do it now!

I said that my tapestry weaving has been put on hold--well, that's not entirely true. I have a loom at the home studio that's been warped for about two years, just waiting to be woven on. So on January 1, I started a new time-passing weaving, same idea as when I did the tapestry throughout the month of May 2008. But this one will be done throughout the whole year of 2009--or at least that's the intent as we get to the 4th day of the year, with only 361 more days to go! Again, no planning ahead of time--just spending a few minutes each day that I'm in town weaving a small area. Once more I've made a few rules and those will probably evolve as the weaving does. First rule is that I'll only use yarn that's at the home studio and whenever possible, from past weft bundle remains saved from other tapestries. Second rule is that I'll indicate out of town days somehow. This morning my though is that I'll use a neutral color for the "blanks". I'll be testing that idea before the month's out since I'm hoping to take a class at John Campbell Folk School during the weekend that Noel will be teaching a spinning class.

So, Happy New Year--no resolutions other than to be resolved to get this edit of life's stuff all done and enjoy the ride!