Hunkering Down

 

The temperatures warmed up for the weekend, but the wind was blowing and snow drifts built up.  Doug spent much of the weekend clearing snow.  Just in time for more snow to come down.

Now that the holiday season is (more or less) behind us, we enter the dark days of winter.  It is time to hunker down.  Time to pull back and rest.  Time to hibernate - a bit.

The weather forecast for here is more cold weather.  When it comes with wind, it becomes dangerous as the wind chill makes everything more difficult.  Add in falling snow and the roads become difficult to travel.  Plows try to keep the roads clear and that usually means sidewalks get covered.  If you are someone who has mobility issues, this is a very challenging time of year.

I am fortunate enough to be able to isolate as Doug has been cheerfully (more or less) dealing with the majority of errands outside of the house.

I am also fortunate in that I have a studio full of yarns I'm trying to use up and don't need much of anything.

As I look back at the past few months, I can feel some sense of satisfaction.  I have managed to move some inventory via the guild sale opportunities.  Unfortunately I've been making more!  But that's the thing.  Stacks of woven textiles take up less room than tubes/skeins of yarn.  So I AM seeing progress on the stash busting front.

I'm pleased enough with the current towel warp and have been adding more empty tubes to the recycle box.  I've managed to reduce the heap of fringe twisting down to just three scarves.  I've sorted the 2/16 cotton and made a priority list of which colours to use up first, and sorted the close dye lots into their respective piles.  As much as I can.  Any dye lot issues will be ignored since a slight colour change will in no way reduce the effectiveness of a towel to dry.  But so far, I think I've only woven in one dye lot difference.  It's slight, and who knows, it may diminish in the wet finishing.  

Progress is being made on the on line class.  The editing got done before Christmas and the tweaking continued over the holiday week.  Written documentation is being generated, and final touches will be done over the next while.

I continue to make progress on the weaving with two towels per day.  Today I hit the halfway mark and will cut off what I've woven so far, then tie on and keep going.  As the cloth roll builds up, it becomes more difficult to tension the warp and my knees start to bump into the built up beam.  Just so much easier to cut off and re-tie.  The little bit of loom waste has been factored in and well worth sacrificing a bit of yarn for better weaving.  IMHO.

Today I will also sort through my tea towel inventory and decide which pattern to upload to ko-fi first.  Seems I do still have some Snail's Trails and Cat's Paws towels.  Looks like six of them with cottolin weft.  So those will be first, I think.  Be nice to get them to new homes - and free up some space on the shelf.  One of these days I'll take a photo of my shelf - one of them, anyway.  I have two right now and at the rate I'm making new textiles, that will soon return to 3?  

This winter I am again ducking and avoiding Covid as it rampages through the world.  While I miss getting together with friends, I'd rather stay home for a while longer until it is safe(r).

January 2022 seems like a really good time to just stay home, stay focused on reducing my stash, and looking forward to the on-line class with SOS.  (The link should give you a 15% discount coupon for a 3 or 12 month membership in SOS.)