Keep On, Keeping On

 

A local friend phoned this morning.  We haven't spoken for a while (last year?) so it was pleasant to catch up a bit.  She advised me that her raspberry bushes were producing well, and I offered a couple tea towels for the fresh fish she and her husband caught and a bowl of fresh raspberries from her garden.  

Her family has been dealing with health issues and we commiserated about dealing with bodies breaking down and agreed that since we are still here, we need to keep on, keeping on.  In spite of everything (waves hands).

The photo above was taken for one of my 'small' publications called A Good Yarn, this one was for the cotton issue cover.

So many people don't really know much about the materials they work with, and my attitude is that if you don't know your materials, it's a lot harder to make 'good' - or appropriate - decisions.

Someone gave me the cotton boll on one of my trips to the US south, and I love it.

Yesterday I worked on a couple of the articles for WEFT, sent one off to be read by my alpha reader, the other was a review to remind myself of the samples I'd woven for another - and which I need to add to fairly quickly.  I've got to the end of August to get them to the editor to be rolled into the issue they are for.  Plus there is another cotton article to be written.

And then got another contract for one more.  So, yes, I'm going to keep on, keeping on.

One the things I need to do is to get all the contract copies and lay them out and then enter them on my planning calendar.  When I fell and had the brain bleed last August, I cancelled all my teaching and let the writing 'slide', only working on them when I felt able to do so, and tried as much as possible to ignore the ticking of the clock, the flipping of the calendar pages.

Now that I seem to be feeling a bit better, I'm getting a bit stressed at how much I've let things slide.  So this week I'm going to work on the other cotton article and try to get that to alpha reader asap.  I have a few samples for one of the articles, and I'd like to send them and the extra ones I'm about to start weaving in the same parcel, which should help lower the cost by paying shipping for 2 (or three) articles, not one.

I managed to get to the loom 'early' today (in spite of still not sleeping well) because I'm occupied with appointments this afternoon.  After lunch I'm going to begin pulling my thoughts together.  You'd think it would be easy, considering how many years (decades?) I've been pounding my 'drum' about some things.  I think I did the A Good Yarn series around the mid 2000s - 2004?  5?  And written lots of posts for this blog, given guild programs, zoom classes, hammered the message home at the Olds College level 1.

But every time I need to sit and think about who I am going to be talking to.  Order my thoughts.  Choose the words that seem 'right'.  Fold into my presentation anything knew I've learned since the last time I presented the material.

Because there is always something more, something new to learn.  (heart cockles, warmed...)