Road Trip

Today I finished the 30 yard shawl warp - just in time to bring the shawls with me to fringe twist when I can find the time on my trip. :) Which I am sure I will, in the evenings or when ever. One of the really nice features of the AVL is that the cloth is stored at the back of the loom and I can just keep weaving and weaving. This beam will get transferred to my work table in order to cut and inspect/repair the cloth. I think I remember one warp thread breaking early on, but perhaps that was the last warp.

I'm heading south tomorrow and will be back on the 27th. Well, late on the 26th if the weather is good. It's a long drive from Seattle to Prince George, but my host/ess rise early, so I plan to hit the road by 6 am. It's about a 12-13 hour drive with minimal stops, so it will be dark before I get home. Many years I've driven home in the dark, in the rain. So not nice! However, the Seattle Weavers Guild sale is great and I'm looking forward to visiting with the friends I've made there.

However, I'm not going directly there - first I'll be at the Desert Mesa Spin In in Cache Creek, BC with Loralee, helping her in her booth. And spinning. So many people have no idea I came to weaving via spinning and dyeing, and frankly I've done very little of it over the past 20 or so years. But somehow I managed to acquire 3 spinning wheels in the last little while, so I am looking forward to spending some time getting acquainted with spinning again. As always I'll be the odd ball - I spin woolen long draw and can't seem to get my hands to do worsted. :}

In between Cache Creek and Seattle I'll be visiting with another friend, helping her get her new-to-her loom fine tuned.

I'm looking forward to the trip, but also to getting home again as I will be re-tooling all the workshop handouts for the various topics that have been booked for 2009. There are so many new yarns in the market that I want to drop old ones and add some new. But it will be work of many hours, and probably some sample warps to test them out, so I expect most of Nov/Dec will be devoted to pouring through sample cards, ordering yarns, weaving samples, and re-generating workshop handouts. It's going to feel good to finally do that.

The local guild has booked several demo's in Nov/Dec so I'll also be helping out with that where I can.

So this will be my last post for a couple of weeks.