Albuquerque

I'm home after a marvelous week in Albuquerque. I did get pictures with my new little point and shoot camera, but not as many as I had hoped to get. My friends had gigantic fancy SLR cameras, though, and they got TONS of photos, and I'm hoping they'll share some of those with me. :-)

I didn't register for Convergence this year, and was too late to sign up for Complex Weavers - this is the first year they had online registration and sold out in a few days! Not good for me, but good news for weaving! But I have a group of dear friends - weavers and one quilter - that have been good friends since the early 90's - the days of the Crafts Forum on Compuserve. This trip was mostly our reunion, although we did purchase day passes to see the exhibits and roam the vendor hall. I did make a few purchases - I'll share those in the next post.

The first few days, ABQ was hot hot hot - bright sunshine and very dry. The city has beautiful vistas from almost anywhere you find yourself. It sits in a valley with mountains just east of the city. Our rental house was in a fairly new subdivision just west of the city - we had a great view looking east toward the mountains, overlooking the lights of the city at night.

This Sun happy face was on the front of our house - good symbol for Albuquerque!

One of our first excursions was to visit Petroglyph Park. It really is amazing to view these ancient carvings in the black rocks of the area. I'm not sure why my camera gave this one a rainbow sheen, perhaps because the sun was REALLY bright?!





From one of the trails at the park, looking south, you can see encroaching suburbia.


It's a shame the whole area can't be preserved. We did see some graffiti - which is really sad because there is nothing that can be done to repair the damage. Still, it was amazing to contemplate an ancient communication device. Times have changed. :-)

Starting to Move

I'm so excited - I've started moving things into my new loom room! Here's the view so far, as you walk in the door. I haven't moved my books yet, but the boxes of Handwovens and Weavers magazines are in place. On the left you can see my floor inkle loom (which doubles as a warping board.) In the back right corner is my reed stand and the winding station with my electric bobbin winder. My plan as I start moving books in is to list them in my librarything.com collection. I started listing my books there, but stalled due to the effort to schlepp them to my desk. Now that they have to be moved anyway (and dusted off ) - this seems like the perfect time to *really* get them organized.

And this is a view that thrills me everytime I see it - I moved the metal shelves and the bins holding my yarn stash from the storage shed in the back yard to the closet, and they all fit!

Mostly weaving yarns on the left, knitting yarns on the right, and the middle stack is spinning fiber. I probably could spin and weave for the rest of my life with just what I've got in my stash. On the left you can see my takadai and marudai, and the warping wheel. In front is the bench I use with the David loom, and behind the tv tray is my spinning wheel.

I'm planning on moving the looms Saturday. There will be quite a bit of dismantling and reassembly that will have to happen, so it's going to be a big job. Then, all that is left is getting a worktable setup. I look forward with great joy and anticipation to enjoying my creative time in this room!

There will be one delay, though. On Sunday, I am flying to Albuquerque. I didn't register for Convergence, and I was one of the people who missed the Complex Weavers registration, but I am going to stay in a rental house with 3 of my dearest friends - we became buddies back in ancient times in the old Compuserve Crafts Forum, way back in the early 90's. Our friendship has blossomed over the years, with lots of shared additional interests besides weaving and spinning and braiding and quilting. I can't wait to see them face to face! We'll be getting day passes to see the exhibits and peruse the vendor hall at Convergence, with the highlight being getting to see Debbie's marvelous double weave piece in Small Expressions!

I feel like so many dreams are coming true for me this summer, and I am so grateful. I've been in a sort of limbo for quite a few years now - feeling painfully stuck, but something has broken loose and I'm back in the flow again! The bonus is that for many years, San Diego Creative Weavers Guild has been searching for a home. I served on the Vision committee a while back, trying to figure something out, but no matter what we tried, thing fell through. Well, last month we got to hear a wonderful presentation from Kay Blatchford, owner of Kay Blatchford's San Diego Rug Cleaning Company. You may remember from a previous post to this blog what a neat place that is - we had an excursion there last year with the Warped Explorers group. Well, during the business meeting, a report was given on the recent arrangements that fell through, and they offered us meeting space in their building, since we meet on Saturdays and they are off that day. They are even giving us an unused office to house our guild library. This feels auspicious, and once again, the answer to a dream many of us have held for a long time. I'm so thrilled and thankful - for Kay Blatchford's wonderful and kind offer, for the committee of members who have worked so long and hard to manifest this. Maybe this will be a shot in the arm for the guild, like my new loom room feels like a shot in the arm for me. :-)

Happy Happy Joy Joy!!!

New Loom Room Floor

Eldy and Sam installed the new flooring yesterday, and I LOVE it!

Here's a shot looking across the room from the door. Eldy bought new baseboards and I painted those yesterday afternoon. He's going to install them later this afternoon. I've taken measurements of the room and of my looms and stuff, and am going to play with arranging things on paper before I actually start hauling my equipment in there.

And here's a shot looking from that back corner back toward the door.

This is something I've dreamed of for such a long time, and I'm so thrilled to see it become a reality!