Mystery Tool

Yesterday was guild meeting and what a lovely day.

First, we just had a lot of rain, and to wake up to sunshine and oh-so-fresh air was divine.

Second, the program at our guild meeting was one of my favorite topics, given by one of my favorite weaving teachers. Jennifer Moore talked to us about Mathemagical Design. Here she is holding one of her fractal double-weave pickup samples. She combines an amazing design sense with a beautiful use of color that is just thrilling. 

Another fun thing happened during the business meeting - I was given the following "tool" for free. The only requirement is to report back whatever I discover about its function. It looks homemade - you can see there is one hole drilled in the far end of the board, and two in the near end.  the upright part consists of two pieces, with two holes drilled in each of them.

 In between them, there is a lower piece of wood, and the top piece can be removed. It is connected with a bolt, and secured with a washer and wing nut at the top. In the second photo, you can see that top piece removed.

So what this is for? I thought maybe for clamping the end of a warp to use for tablet weaving, or perhaps for band weaving with a small rigid heddle. Or maybe it's used for twining? What are the holes for? Anybody know?

Lost My Shadow

I guess I'm not very good at this blogging thing..... once again, it has been a very long time since I posted. I can give oh so many excuses.... the full-time job  (thank you Universe for the opportunity to clear debt, and thank you for the brain cells that still work),  the music ventures (still singing with the La Jolla Symphony Chorus - we're working on Bach's St Matthew's Passion right now, also starting a new 20 voice sacred choir called HeartSong Chorale - heartsongchorale.blogspot.com.)  The result of all the busyness has been that I have spent very little time in my new and beautiful loom room. I still hope to change that, soon, real soon.

But that isn't where my attention has been lately.  For the last couple of weeks, I have been consumed by grief.  In the early morning hours of March 7th, I lost my shadow. My sweet poodle, Joy, passed away. I thought my heart would break. 

Joy
1/3/1997 - 3/7/2011

  I knew it was coming - for the last six months or so, she had gotten thinner and thinner. She still ate, and pooped, but her muscles were wasting. Someone had recommended that I add brewers yeast to her food, which I did for a while. But soon after starting that, she had her first seizure. I was feeding her a premium, well-balanced dog food, and I suppose the additional protein of the brewers yeast put a load on her kidneys or something, so I stopped adding it to her food.  She had a few other seizures, several months apart. Most recently, she could barely walk on her back  legs. When I took her for her walk (or really, just to check her smell-mail)  I didn't let her walk on the concrete anymore. I carried her over to the greenbelt, let her walk on the grass and go visit the "dognip bush". She couldn't see very well, or hear very well, but to the last, her nose worked and she so enjoyed checking out all of the smells.  And though she slept most of the time, she would still follow me around the house whenever I was home.

Sunday March 6th was my son Matthew's birthday - he came over for steaks and we celebrated his day. When he got up to leave, Joy gazed over at him from her perch on the couch, and he went over to her and said goodbye and patted her head.  I cleaned up the kitchen, and as I removed the steak scraps, I cut up a few and put them on top of the food in Joy's bowl.  When it was time to go to bed, I carried her upstairs and put her on the blanket nest in my bedroom where she liked to sleep.

But she wouldn't lie down. She kept pacing and stumbling, getting into strange tight spots and getting stuck. I kept picking her up and putting her back, but she wasn't able to settle, so I picked her up and carried her downstairs. She kept pacing down there, then began retching like she was going to throw up. I tried to support her, thinking she'd feel better after she got whatever was bothering her out of her system, but nothing ever came up but drool. Thinking her stomach was upset, I thought the steak pieces would spoil before she got to eat them, so I went in the kitchen to get them from her bowl and throw them away. She had already eaten them.

Joy laid down on the floor, and I laid down next to her, petting her and talking to her. She seemed uncomfortable and wasn't moving much. After a while, I picked her up and put her on the small couch, still petting her, and she seemed to relax a bit. By this time, it was 4:30am and I was exhausted. I decided to lie down on the big couch, and reached over to put my hand on her nose. She made a little cooing sound to me, and I made the sound back to her, and we did that back and forth 5 or 6 times. By then she seemed to have calmed down, and I laid back on the couch and fell asleep. When I woke up, she was gone.

I wish I had stayed awake to comfort her until the end. I googled about the drooling I noticed, and then read about the retching without throwing up being a sign of bloat, something I didn't know anything about. It wouldn't have changed the outcome, I suspect - it's a serious condition that often requires emergency surgery, something I don't think she could have survived. I wish I hadn't given her the steak scraps - most of her life, I was vigilant about not giving her any table food (except pieces of apple, that she adored, and I also always gave her the end pieces of bananas.) I'm guessing she wolfed the steak scraps down - a rare treat for a dog accustomed to kibble and milkbones.

I'm a very lucky person, I've realized - I'm new to this grieving thing, because I haven't had much practice with it. And I'm not doing very well with it, either. I've been able to go to work - only missed one day, and I only missed one chorus rehearsal. But it has been hard, oh so hard. One minute I'm calm and fine, and can talk about her with ease. The next minute, a wave of sorrow washes over me.

I regret that I didn't take more pictures of her over the years - I've got some, but not as many as I'd like. I wish I had taken a picture of her lying underneath the baby grand piano - she loved to lie down there while I played. I wish I had a picture of her lying down on the carpeted stair landing. She used to look at me from there like she was saying "Hey! Are you going upstairs or downstairs?! Make up your mind!"  

Mostly, I'm very lucky to have had such a great dog - she really lived up to her name, and brought me great Joy. Her nicknames were Joyful or PoodleHead (that one was given to her by the trainer at her obedience class when she was a puppy, and it stuck.) When she was younger, we'd run around the back yard and play catch with each other. Our back yard has a retaining wall with a slope behind it, and she loved to run across the yard and take a flying leap up to the slope, and then run along the side and bark if there were dogs on the other side of the wall. She never was one much for fetching - if we threw something, she'd look at us as if to say "You expect me to do what?!"  

We have an island in the kitchen, and she loved to chase around that, too. She'd steal food if you left it on the counter.  A group of my weaving friends met here for lunch one day, and someone left a round of cheese near the edge of the island counter. It disappeared.  Someone commented that is was to be expected, after all she was a French poodle.

Joy loved taking long walks, and I'd let her lead - sometimes it felt like she was my tow dog. :-)  The Dog Whisperer would not have approved, but she already had me trained that way.

I don't really expect anyone to read this, but it helps to say it "out loud", so to speak. I miss her with all my heart.

Back(b)log

It's been quite a while since I posted, and a LOT has happened in that time, so for the two of you who read my blog from time to time, I'll go ahead and start catching up.

The last time I posted, I had just moved my big loom into my new loom room, and got everything running, and even got a USB adapter to connect my Toshiba laptop to the dobby.  Sadly, life has been pretty busy and complicated in the last couple of months, so I haven't done any weaving. Soon, real soon, and when it happens, I'll announce it here first. :-)

Also on the weaving front, the San Diego guild has begun meeting at San Diego Rug Cleaning Company - and what a delight!  Instead of basketball noise, we have the ambiance of lovely color and texture and cool tools all around. (You can see Rebecca Smith giving a presentation on her artwork based on petroglyphs in this picture.)

So what has been going on?  Well, that full-time job has cut into the playtime in a serious way, although it has also cut into debt in a big way, too, for which I'm enormously thankful.

On the music front, I've been busting my chops learning Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, which we will be performing on December 4th and 5th. This is probably the most difficult choral music I've ever sung before, so I expect to feel both joyful and immensely satisfied when we're finished!  In addition to all that has been going on with the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus, I've been working with Carl Martens to begin a new sacred choir in San Diego. Many, if not most, New Thought churches (and I go to a Unity Church, which is part of that movement) have contemporary music during the services. It's often soloists with a band, doing pop style music. There might be a choir, occasionally, but the choir sings backup for a soloists, doing..... pop style music.  I discovered in the springtime that Carl has a great deal of experience as a choral director,  and suggested to him starting a sacred choir, and it's going to happen!  We've arranged for a place for rehearsals, and have scheduled auditions for the second week in January, and have a blog all setup. We are planning to have a group of 20 singers. I can hardly wait!

What else? I got my obligatory fall cold, and am just about recovered from it.  I'm beginning to suspect sugar - I normally avoid it, but tend to indulge on Halloween (while handing out candy, of course). And I'm starting to realize that every year, I get my fall cold right after that. Maybe it's time to buy the non-chocolate (and therefore non-tempting) kind of candy to hand out.   

Also, on the list of challenges - my beloved dog Joy is having a harder and harder time getting around. She's almost 15, and it shows. Her back legs aren't working very well, and she's getting very skinny. The good news is that she doesn't seem to be in pain, and she's still eating well. But walks are shorter in distance and take a lot longer. I'm glad I still have her with me, and intend to enjoy every single day.

So that's it from here. I've got several weaving related things I want to talk about (incredible customer service from Fireside Fiberarts, the new edition of Kati Meek's book, among other things) but that will wait for the next post.  I promise not to wait so long next time.

Last, but not least, I'd like to say thank you to Sue, of Life Looms Large.  Since she's started the color of the month posts on her blogs, I've found myself noticing my environment much more than I ever have before - and not just the colors, but seasonal patterns that are unique to this area. It's a nice feeling to be more aware of things I've previously taken for granted.

Murphy

No pictures this time, but I do have an update.

I had an email exchange with someone at Louet - no real information available about the USB plug on my dobby box. This person said to go ahead and plug into it and try it, it couldn't hurt anything, but they didn't think there was any circuitry inside the box for that plug. Rather than go out and buy a USB-USB cable, I opted to take the safe route and buy a USB-serial adapter and just plug it into the serial plug on the dobby box and a USB port on my laptop.

I looked back through the WeaveTech archives - I mostly use Fiberworks PCW, so I was looking for their recommendation. They recommended a Belkin. So Sunday after church, I headed to Frye's. They were out of many of the USB-serial adapters, only had 2 brands left - one was Belkin, the other an off brand. It didn't mention Windows 7, but I thought (ha!) surely they have a Windows 7 driver I can get online.

Well, when I came home, I tried and tried. Tried installing one of the drivers on the CD that came with it. Tried finding a Windows 7 driver. Tried getting a Vista driver online and installing that. Googled for some solutions, and found some strange ones I wasn't willing to try. All in all, it was a hot and frustrating afternoon, with no luck.

That night, I decided to go online and order a new adapter - one guaranteed to work with Windows 7. I even found one that supposedly will work with Windows 7 AND Mac OSX10.x so I ordered it.

Just before going to bed, I decided to go back in the loom room, try it as plug and play, and voila - it worked! I decided not to cancel the order - I suspect I'll be glad for the other adapter at some point. But still, at least things are working in the meantime.

So this weekend, now that everything has been moved and is in place, I actually plan to wind a warp and get the big loom to work. I am thrilled with the prospect!

Whole Again!

Yeaaaaaaaaaa!!! Today I reassembled my loom, and she is working fine!

I am so thrilled!!!  I had baggies with doodads, labeled with my names for the parts, and happily, I still understood what I had written on the labels. I had notes on the order in which I took things apart, so I could just reverse the order to reassemble.

I have an ancient laptop that came with the loom. Next up will be to see if I can connect my fairly new Toshiba laptop. The ancient one works, but it is, well, ancient. Plus, the new one has wireless connectivity, and then I can get rid of the external floppy drive. :-)

This is a huge milestone, and makes me very very happy!  Now to decide on what will be the first warp woven in my new loom room.

Loom Parts

Well, yesterday I got the Megado taken apart and Eldy helped me carry the sections upstairs. It was iffy for a few minutes, but we were able to get everything in there. in spite of my needing to stop and pant for air a few times.

So here are the guts of my loom - waiting for a Frankenstein sort of resurrection.

The castle is sitting on saw horses (so right now, it's sitting higher than it will actually be.) The treadle assembly and uprights surround the castle, and you can see the cloth beam and dobby box in the foreground.

I was too tired when I got home from work tonight to start the reassembly, but soon, real soon.

A Purchased Dose of Loveliness

I attended Convergence in Tampa on day passes, just like I did this year in Albuquerque, but there was one big difference. Two years ago, money was so tight that I just got to ooh and aah over all the wonderful stuff, but I wasn't able to buy anything. This time, I was able to buy a few things - most of them had been on my wishlist for a while, though a few things found me unawares. :-)

This photo didn't come out very well, but at the top you can see two skeins of hand-dyed tencel yarn from Just Our Yarns. Their yarns and dye colors are luscious, and I've coveted some ever since I first saw their wares at a regional conference in Riverside, California. The green/blue/purple skein is 30/2 tencel, and the purple/fuschia/red skein is 20/2 and they are gorgeous both to see and touch. At the bottom of the photo is a small bag - made out of recycled huipils, which appeal to me on so many levels.

Just Our Yarns Tencel skeins and Recycled Huipil Bag

Books, Bamboo and Shuttles

The second photo also contains a mix of planned purchases and nice surprises. At the top, you can see the 2 books I bought. I've been planning to buy a copy of Robyn Spady's book Handwoven Decorative Trim for a while, and was happy when I found it at the HGA booth. It's a slim book, but the photos are great and the writing is clear and I'm really looking forward to exploring this.  The other book is a new one, just published by Margaret Coe, called Fit 2 Be Tied. This one I pre-ordered, paid with Paypal, and then just picked up in Albuquerque. I am *thrilled* with it. A few years ago, I was lucky to be able to read through Alice Schlein and Bahkti Ziek's amazing book, A Woven Pixel. Fascinating stuff, though most of it targeted at jacquard looms. (There is a chapter geared toward dobby looms, plus it has amazing information on using Photoshop.)  I wasn't able to afford purchasing my own copy of the book, but have thought about it a lot since I read a borrowed copy. Well, this new book also describes using Photoshop (or Elements) for creating presets, but focuses on double two-tie unit weave (something I am also fascinated by, ever since hearing Madelyn van her Hoogt speak about it - I think that was at Convergence in Minneapolis in 1994.) Since I have Photoshop, and I have a 32 shaft dobby loom, this book is right up my alley, and fit in my budget, and I'm really looking forward to studying and working through it and seeing what I can come up with from my loom as a result!  (I had a few posts a year or so ago about double-two tie designs - after reading a great article by Jannie Taylor.)


The bottom of that photo shows my other serendipity purchases. I love beautiful little shuttles, so the Bluster Bay shuttle jumped into my hand. The one below it is very neat - Hockett Woodworking, and it is an "end of warp" shuttle - very skinny low profile (and beautifully made, too.)

Last, but not least, my friend Ruth is making some new spindles and gave me one to try out (I'll include a picture of it in my next post.) I loved her spindle - it actually has a square whorl with a circle of copper - beautifully balanced and spins very very well. So, in spite of having a gigantic stack of bins filled with spinning fiber, my last purchase was a hank of bamboo in a luscious combination of blue and copper and white (color-way is called Blue Eyes). Yummy stuff!

So there you have it - my acquisitions from Convergence.

Loom Room Status?  Yesterday was manual labor day - I moved tons of stuff and books into place, and the loom is getting filled fast - and the big loom isn't even up there yet! Yikes!  Today, I'll be disassembling the big loom and starting to move it. With any luck, it should be up and running by next weekend. We'll know when it's history, as my husband often says.