Breaking the Ice

 

When I found out I had shingles, I'd just cut the last of a warp off the loom and had about 20 towels ready to be hemmed.  Thing was, I couldn't see properly.  My left eye was so swollen up I could barely open it and I went from having poor depth perception to...none.  The hemming pile languished as I continued to deal with watering eyes, eye drops multiple times a day, not being able to see well enough to trust I could actually hem.

Even after I could weave again, it was different - I didn't need to be able to focus clearly.  Most of my weaving skill is so ingrained that much of it is done by feel anyway.  The big challenge was threading, but by then I could manage to see well enough that by taking things slowly and carefully, I was able to do that part.

I got the diagnosis mid January and here we are in mid March and the hemming pile has grown to the point where I was feeling pressured to begin hemming.  Two weeks ago the eye doctor gave me a schedule that would begin cutting back on the frequency of putting eye drops into my eye and last night I looked at the pile of towels beside me, thought about the two bins with yet more, AND the new warp that is now ready to weave on and...picked up a towel and started hemming.  

Since I now have a three hour window in the evening without drops I think I will begin to feel able to hem again.  

We are participating in a gourmet 'show' in May and that will be a good time to have tea towels, so I'm feeling like it's about time I dug into the hemming and got these latest ones finished, finished.  

The gourmet 'show' is a new event in our town and there is a chance it will not go very well in terms of sales for the vendors.  But the guild is going to take a booth anyway and see if people will come and spend money on handmade textiles - I'll just have tea towels and place mats/runners.  Other guild members will bring things to sell as well and it might go very well as covid restrictions have been lifted (again).

Personally *I* won't be working the sale although I will likely help get the booth set up - masked, of course.  Doug will offer to do shifts if needed.

But I am still immune compromised, and since every level of government has basically told people like me that we have to do our own risk assessment, mine is to stay away from crowds of people who will not be wearing masks.  In the post office the other day, which has signs all over the place saying that masks are still mandatory, half of the people in there were not wearing them.  They were still maintaining 6 feet of distance, but it was indicative of how many people just aren't going to bother with any kind of mitigations, even if they are still 'required' in certain places.

So I guess I continue to avoid all public events, continue to isolate.  

In the meantime, I continue to weave as much as I can.  We are also working on the next content for SOS with the first lecture the first Wednesday of May about fibre characteristics.  Now if I could only figure out why I cannot share my laptop screen.  I have some administrivia to deal with today so it might be tomorrow before I feel up to tackling Zoom.

However, I have new inventory of tea towels in Snail's Trails and Cat's Paws coming soon and my weekly ko-fi towel was posted on Monday.  And people can always email me to ask about specific colours.