Change One Thing

beaming the warp for the next project

still some 'goat' trails

With my retirement from production weaving and selling my work, the move out of the annex, the disbursement of production equipment, there have been many, many changes in my life and my work space.

With the acquisition of someone's silk yarn 'estate', space had to be made for the seven (!) boxes of yarn, much of it extremely fine.  

Moving everything from the annex back to here meant gigantic upheavals, daily, as my studio got snowglobed and things got put where ever they would fit.

Doug is in the final stage of finally (finally!) moving the last things out of the annex and pretty much everything that needed to come here, is here.

One wall of the laundry area was turned into a gigantic wall of shelving.  There are bins of spinning, lace and teaching stuff there along with all my finished inventory (what is left) and the goal is to clear all those bins out from there and put them...somewhere else...and then what isn't finished inventory will be pantry.

Our house is modest and one of the things that has made living - and running a business - in this house challenging is the lack of space.

People don't realize that in order to be 'organized' you need to have the space/room to do that.

For about 40 years I have had goat trails in the studio as the boxes of yarn and such were stacked here and there.  Not to mention I wasn't just weaving, but teaching, spinning (at times), lace making, knitting, writing, self-publishing small run publications - and not so small run.  I not only wrote it, I - and Doug (and various family and friends) - assembled and shipped it.  So, shipping boxes, labels, unsold copies - all had to be stored somewhere.  Which is where the annex came in, for a while.

The top photo is the Megado.  Changing the AVL (60" weaving width with fly shuttles, two beams, air assist et al) to the smaller footprint Megado helped enormously as it freed up quite a bit of space.  Every inch of wall space that could be was converted to more shelving.

My goal was to be able to see my stash so I knew what I had in order to use it up.  We have done fairly well in the main area of the studio, but there are still some piles of rubble - things I'm not quite ready to get rid of, things that haven't yet found a home while Doug keeps trying to get them into the hands of people who might want them, teaching things I desperately need to sort through and decide if they are applicable to the Olds program - or not.  And if not, what do I do with them?  I also want to get back to spinning, but just haven't found the right time/place/motivation/energy.  And then there is the lace.  

Since December I have mostly been making a serious effort to become friends with the Megado.  Mostly we are.  But it is a different loom, engineered differently, and requires a different approach to things.  In the end I kept the AVL tension box and had Doug mount the tension box rail to the loom.  I looked at the Megado tension box and kept balking at actually using it.

So yes, holes were drilled.  It's a tool, it needs to work the way I want it to.  Or as closely as I can make it.

Am I happy I bought the Megado?  Let's say that at this point it was the correct decision.  There are things about it that I wish it had - like auto-cloth advance - but it doesn't so...

Do I wish I could weave faster on it?  Yes, but it won't go faster than it will go, so I must adjust to it.

Do I like that it is quieter?  Yes.  I also like the fact that much less physical effort is required to weave on it.  But it is still noisy enough when the solenoids activate that I will continue to wear hearing protection - because I already have documented hearing loss and would like to keep what is left.

I wish it had a bigger circumference warp beam, but Doug and I looked carefully at it and the loom is so tightly engineered I decided I would just have to get used to the smaller diameter.  And in the end, a 20 yard long warp is plenty.  I am no longer a production weaver, I am a retired production weaver.

So what does retirement mean for me?

Mostly it means not having critical deadlines by which time product must be ready to be sold.  It means no longer doing business tasks such as balancing books, collecting and remitting sales taxes.  It means not having to juggle multiple deadlines daily.

It means sitting in the sun soaking up the sunlight.  Making jigsaw puzzles.  (Still not reading much - my brain still feels incapable of absorbing much - even though I have stacks of books I do want to read.  And will.  Eventually.)

It means not beating myself up when the energy drains out of me and I don't feel like doing anything in the studio.

It means I am learning how to focus on what is important to me - and what isn't.

At the weekend I led an Intro to Weaving class and it was a delightful group of six who got that they needed to understand principles, gain knowledge, practice their physical skills mindfully.  I am hopeful they will continue, but mastering weaving is a lifelong pursuit.

Learning how when you change one thing...everything can change...