Little by Little

The other day I mentioned to Doug that trying to run a business while also shutting that business down is stressful.

I need to keep producing inventory for the last three shows I will do as a professional weaver while also making decisions of what to keep and what to sell - or throw away.

At this point I'm ready to say 'load it up and take it ALL to the tip' - or words to that effect.  He has been reining me in, partly because I spent money buying the equipment I have accumulated, partly because there is really nothing 'wrong' with it and if someone can use it, there is still life in it.

This morning he found a buyer for the Whitin winder.  It will be picked up in a couple of weeks once the new owner makes arrangements to come and get it.

There have been requests for some other things and slowly they are being sent to their new homes.

It is hard to remain tranquil with so much chaos in my work and living space.  The living room has piles of boxes and bins of things people have asked about but not committed to purchasing.  Yet.  The studio has heaps of things, ditto, that I trip around.  Sometimes literally.

There are bins and piles of specialty yarns for which I need to send a quote to someone.  The AVL shuttles may be spoken for but I still haven't dug out all the pirns.

And of course there is the day-to-day administration - bills to be paid, orders to be shipped, weaving to be done.

I'm out of padded envelopes so on my town run today I'll go to Staples and buy another package because I have a book to mail and two towels as well.

In the past I could juggle 19 different things simultaneously but no longer.  I have to focus on one thing at a time and get that to the point of completion because I just can't keep everything sorted out.  I start confusing who wants what, when.

Chemo brain is a thing and I really notice it in terms of 'forgetting' words, but also in tracking complex jobs.  Add stress to the mix and I really feel like I'm constantly dropping balls all over the place!

But the studio is slowly being cleared in preparation for the arrival of the Megado.  And six months isn't that far away. 

I think this retirement thing is going to be grand...

Letting Go

(photo taken from AVL website)

As we work our way through tearing the loom apart and setting aside things that someone else might possibly want, the piles of bits and pieces are beginning to be spoken for or even delivered.

The first delivery happened last week.  And now I begin to look deeper into the nooks and crannies of my studio.

I have several AVL fly shuttles with the Honix tensioner.  I have a couple dozen or so plastic pirns.

They have been used and show signs of that usage but I'd like to see them continue to be used.  If anyone is interested, email me laura at laurafry dot com

These are easily mailed so will accept offers from people outside of Canada.

I have agonized over the Whitin winder which winds industrial pirns for industrial fly shuttles.

I have 12 of these heavier and slightly larger shuttles and about 1000 wooden pirns.  The pirns don't have to be wound on the industrial pirn winder - a bobbin winder that holds a spool, bobbin or pirn on both ends would do the job just fine.

But if anyone is interested in the pirn winder, they would have to come get it.  I have no desire to try and ship it.  Anywhere.  Bring a truck.  Or trailer.

A couple of people have expressed an interest, but so far it's been too much work to get it, then modify the fly shuttle boxes on an AVL to fit the ever so slightly larger-than-AVL shuttles.

However, if someone has a loom other than an AVL, these might be just the thing.  I can provide measurements.

Apparently I don't have a photo of the winder in my files but it is a Whitin winder, comes with maintenance manual.  It has two winding heads and if you keep yarn feeding through it and pirns in the carousel it keeps on winding perfect pirns.

A couple of people have asked for other bits and pieces but I was out of town, soon to leave again.  If you haven't heard from me and still want what we discussed?  Let me know.  The Megado arrives next month and I would dearly love to see these things shipped and on their way to a new home.

The next few months are fraught with tight deadlines.  And now I need to go weave.  Fall craft fair season is coming up.

Facelift

One year ago today we put the 'finishing touch' on the face lift of our home.  Since then the plants have managed to grow, but I still want to buy more of the Dragon's Breath sedum to fill in the beds.

Life is a constant state of maintaining what you have, both physically and emotionally.

When I was a kid, I honestly thought adults had it 'easy'.  I think the myth that you can do what you want when you are 'all grown up' is what gets us through childhood!

Looking back I know now that life is a tangled web of responsibilities - to yourself and others.  Human beings aren't meant to be solitary and the constant reports of 'cabin fever', a well known state of mind in remote or isolated places, shows that we need some sort of interaction with others.  Well, the majority of us.  I know some who are quite content to be completely alone.

Even an introvert like me wants and needs some relationships with others.  I find many of those here, on line, but I also dearly love my friends and wish I could actually spend time face to face with them more often.  So many of them live so far away that a visit in real life becomes a huge treat.

The past week I had a rare opportunity to spend a little face to face time with a few people who mean a great deal to me.  I was able to find out more about what two of them were doing with their lives.  We are all of an age, going through many of the same kinds of scenarios, each trying to be productive and give back to the weaving community.  The third friend is dear to me beyond the weaving, although that was how we originally met.  We keep in touch daily so I see photos and hear about what she is doing in almost real time, but there is nothing like being there, walking through her studio, touching her textiles.  She even gifted me with some of her recent work.  As every weaver knows, a weaver sharing her textiles is an honour to receive.

But really what we are all doing is working on keeping our lives in 'order'.  As all of us are in our - ahem - elder - years, we are all being faced with the same things.  What will happen to our looms and yarns when we can no longer weave?

So, I spent a lot of time on the drive home yesterday with emotions roiling.  Do I get the surgery on my foot, and if so, when?  Doug and I talked at length about it and given the huge impetus to close down my business we decided to wait until after the craft fairs are over, extend renting the annex into January and not feel so pressured to get everything done NOW.

Delaying the surgery will give me a few more weeks this autumn to work on increasing inventory for the craft fairs because right now I don't have enough inventory to make a decent showing at the third and largest of the three I'm contracted to do in Oct/Nov.

My desire to shut down the business of my studio grows daily as I find myself increasingly unwilling to deal with the administrivia of running a business - the bookkeeping, budgeting, scheduling, governmental reporting of taxes and income.

The AVL is all but gone.  Doug needs to take the air system apart, currently looking like a tangled mess on the floor, but actually still in it's working configuration should anyone be interested.  It needs an air compressor, which Doug will move into his shop but all of the hoses, fittings, switches are still there.

The industrial pirn winder is still here along with a dozen industrial fly shuttles and around 1000 pirns.  While an AVL fly shuttle box might have to be modified to accept the shuttles, it's not a huge fix for someone with decent woodworking/engineering skills.  And it might well fit some other brand of loom's fly shuttle.  One person has dibs on it but it thinking it's not a good fit for her after all.

There are a couple of 'spare' sandpaper beams, 60" weaving width, but that can be cut down.  One is covered with the cheese grater stuff, the other is the beam off my loom.  Plus I have a coil of the cheese grater stuff which can be applied to someone's beam.  (Primarily use for weaving with rayon chenille so it will grip properly.)

With the Megado arriving next month I'd really like to get rid of the rest of the AVL as quickly as I can, but since we are keeping the annex until the end of January, I can store some things until then.  The larger items will need to be picked up.

I am considering letting the industrial cone winder go, too.  I'm not repackaging and selling yarn anymore so once I get a few larger cones broken down into smaller packages for my own use it can go.  Frankly it can probably go now if someone wants it.

With everything at the annex needing to come here, I am in a constant state of 'if I move this here, I can set up more shelving there' or 'who can I sell/give this to?'  'Do I really need this?'  'Am I seriously going to make lace again?'  (Probably.  Maybe.  Hopefully.)

Nothing is 'settled'.  Nothing stays the 'same' for more than a day or two.  I find the constant shifting of the ground under my feet exhausting. 

But out of the trip came some hints of what might lay ahead.  Avenues I might pursue.  Rabbit holes I might fall down.

I have also been doing a lot of thinking about the Olds College Master Weaving program, and I find I am still heavily 'invested' in wanting to carry on doing that.  I just don't know if my state of health is going to co-operate.  So I leave myself open to whatever happens in that regard.

I am trying to focus on the here and now and not look too far into the future.  I feel as though this coming 7 months will show me what is important to me.  And at the end, my life will have received a much needed face lift as well as my house.

Clue by Four

I'm not stupid, but I can be incredibly stubborn and therefore slow to change course when I set my mind to a goal.  There have been several times during my life when The Universe (or whatever) has had to resort to a handy 'clue by four' to make me see reason and change what I'm doing into something more...appropriate.

This week has finally seen some signs of gradual improvement in several areas.

I've been sleeping better, had more energy, even dropped a couple of pounds (yay!).  But mostly there has been a reduction in the amount of pain/discomfort in my hands.  Still not all the way there, but a definite improvement.

People keep asking me what comes next.  I still have no answers.  I need to finish dealing with closing down my old life before I can really begin to think about my 'new' one.  Or at least my new direction in this life.

At the very least I get to continue my life for a while longer.  I think about my brother almost daily right now because the fact that I am able to make such a huge change in my life is - in large part - due to him.

I didn't realize how much of a supporter of me doing this crazy thing called being a professional weaver he was until he died.

He retired 'early' from a job that he had dreamt of doing for his childhood, and did, for 27 years.  But he was still a young man when he saw the writing on the wall and let management know that he'd be open to a 'golden parachute'.  They offered him a deal he could not refuse and he retired in his mid-40s.

Like me he didn't squander his money.  We'd been raised by parents who lived through the Great Depression and every penny was squeezed hard before it was spent.  We wanted for little as adults.  He loved to travel and loved taking trips, sometimes with friends, sometimes by himself.  He especially loved Australia and went several times.

He encouraged me to write my first book and let me take over his basement for literally years in order to assemble it.  1000 copies, 20 projects (originally) before and after samples needing to be first stapled to the pages, then all the text and sample pages assembled and put into the three ring binders.  Doug did the bulk of the stapling - 40,000 samples.

From 2002 until his death in 2008 Don held his annual holiday party but told his friends they couldn't play pool or go downstairs to the rec room because his sister was still working on her book.

Several of his friends told me at the reception after his funeral service how proud he was of me.

My biggest regret was losing track of the diary that he wrote during the construction of the electric train line to Tumbler Ridge.  We were going to one day get it published.  I still feel guilty about how that diary got 'lost'.

Which was in many ways one reason for my dedicating the second book to him and launching on his birthday.  I wanted to go 'live' soon enough before Christmas that people might use their Christmas money (or request it as a gift) and Dec. 2 seemed like the perfect day. 

The AVL is a pile of sticks and bolts and the first 'shipment' will be made next week.  The wood will go to woodworkers and several boxes plus the small sectional beam will go to a friend to update her loom.  Another box will be delivered in September.  The rest I'm waiting to hear if the people who inquired will actually take what they were interested in.  Adjustments have to be made and they may decide it's too much trouble.

In the meantime I am working - slowly but steadily - on making more inventory for the upcoming craft fairs.  Today I finished the next warp and cut/serged the mats apart.  I'm about to rough sley the next warp. 

I slept in this morning and got a late start so I'm not going to get the loom dressed.  But I can at least get the warp beamed.  Since I'm feeling better than even a couple of weeks ago, I don't run out of energy as quickly.

Slowly but surely I am crossing the jobs that must be done off the list.  Several new things have presented themselves, tantalizingly inviting me to consider them (pick me, pick me!) for once I'm fully 'retired' (in other words, the business is shut down, come January.)

I still have card stock if I should wish to do another short print run of something educational with samples.  I am keeping the electric stapler, just in case.

I began mulling over another 'major' writing project which may, or may not, get written.  And if so, what form will it take?  Does anyone even want to read such a thing, written by me?

Convergence is happening in Knoxville, TN next year.  I have friends in TN it would be nice to go hang out with.  ANWG is in Salem, OR in 2021.  A two day drive, but still.  Lots of friends in the Pacific northwest, too.

I'm quite sure my brother would approve of my using some of the money he left me to travel...

Endings...and Beginnings

And so, it has come to this.  The loom is taken apart, leaving this pile of 'rubble' on the floor.  These bits and pieces are the air assist.  When I upgraded to air assist, I also upgraded from two box to four box fly shuttle capacity.  The beater became rather heavy and changing the boxes became physically demanding, so I challenged Doug to design air assisted 'elevators' for the boxes.

My loom had an underslung beater with pickers to launch the shuttles from side to side.  The pistons mounted easily on the loom to the bottom of the picker.  The 'elevator' apparatus took a lot more thinking, in no small part because people kept telling Doug it wouldn't work.  In the end, he found a way to make it work.

The air assist was the last upgrade we did to the loom (other than a new computer to run the dobby) and it is the last thing on the floor to be dealt with. 

The rest of the 'bits' have been piled up with the names of the people who expressed an interest.  One person will have her pile delivered next week.  One - hopefully - will get hers in September.  The others are still thinking if the things will work for them.

There are other things that will go up for sale when I'm home in September.  I just have zero time to deal with it now.  In fact I may not have time until the end of November when I've finished the last (the very last) craft fair I will do as a professional weaver.

At that time there will also be booth stuff that may be offered for sale, too, although that is more difficult to ship.  But maybe someone 'local' will be interested. 

Weaving, as is Life, is full of endings and beginnings. 

Threads end.  Warps end.  The point is to understand that nothing is 'forever'.  Things change.  Metamorphose.  New opportunities arise.  Beginnings offer themselves.  Until they, too, end.

People ask me if I'm sad about the loom.  No, I'm not.  Not really.  It served me well for almost 4 decades.  It arrived here in 1982, took me about a year to get comfortable with it, then in mid 1980s I started weaving for a fashion designer and continued weaving for her, sometimes with the help of a studio assistant I hired, until 2002.  Many, many miles (yes, actual miles) of cloth off these beams.

So, I will admit to a bit of nostalgia, but I am also happy to know that another loom will be arriving to sit in this space.  The new loom will be smaller, quieter, require less physical exertion to weave on.  It will allow me to continue to weave for a while longer.

How long?  Don't know.  As long as I can, is about all I can say.  The useful life of this loom - for me - has come to an end but some of it's bits and pieces will live on in other people's looms.  While it ends it's service to me, part of it will serve other people and their needs.

Endings.  Beginnings. 

It's all good.

Voting for Hope

Change is never easy, especially when that change is something that comes from outside of yourself, so to speak.

I found myself musing to a friend on what is to come in my life.  As best I can tell, of course, because the future isn't here yet.

We are half way through July of this year, and I am about 7 months away from a massive change in my life - shutting down my business.

It was not a change I was prepared to make but outside 'forces' have managed to convince me that it is time.  Beyond time, really.  I just wasn't emotionally prepared for it.

Shutting down a business is not a small task.  There are things that have to happen.  Contracts to fulfill.  Obligations to others to honour.

When it comes to the business - so much in the way of details.  Things that have to happen to make it official.  Every one of which is done reluctantly.  Because emotionally I was not, am not, ready to do it.

However I am working on acceptance.  I am 'here', now.  This is what I can - or cannot - do.  Things may change.  I might change my mind as to what I can manage.  Or cannot.

Next year is a big 0 type birthday coming up.  I had hoped to teach until I was 75 - and I still hope to be able to do that for Olds.  But every year is a new assessment of where I am, what I can - and cannot - do.

As the AVL comes apart I repeatedly ask myself why I am buying a new loom.  Especially a rather expensive one.  As I set my thoughts down to share with my friend I shared the fact that buying the loom is a vote for the future, a vote for hope.  I  made the decision to buy the loom before I decided to shut down the business and I did think about cancelling the order.  Except that I am not 'done' weaving.  Yet.  I still have ideas I want to bring into material form (pun alert - well intended).  I can still educate through the written word and one of the ways to do that is to explore further.  Follow rabbit holes I had to turn away from before I'd rummaged in them completely. 

I still love weaving - all of it, from planning the cloth, dressing the loom, throwing the shuttle, watching the web transform during wet finishing.

No, I won't have the big industrial steam press after this year, but I do still have the small flat bed press that we used for easily 20 years before acquiring the big press.

Not doing craft fairs anymore means that I won't need to weave to the production levels needed to stock a booth, but that doesn't mean that I won't want to make useful things, either for gifts, or donations.  I can still sell through the guild booth or on consignment, which will hopefully bring in a little money to pay for materials, if needed.  Or trips to conferences, should I desire to go to one.  Or take a workshop!  Yes, I still learn!  I still get inspired by others and the paths they are following. 

It was brilliant to be able to take a workshop with Bonnie Inouye a few years back.  I came home all inspired and then couldn't do anything with that dip into the material she presented because Life Happened.

I have the booklet she handed out as part of her workshop and I still would love to investigate those techniques further.  With the Megado, I can do that.  With the four shaft Fanny?  Not so much.

As I deal with muscle pain and the prospect of potentially more to come with the next cancer drug, the Megado will allow me to keep weaving because it doesn't require so much physical effort. 

The thing I am dealing with right now, mostly, is how long it is taking me to 'bounce back' from the latest round of physical challenges.  Previously I have been able to slowly but surely regain nearly all I had lost - through the adverse drug effects, the broken ankle, the chemo, the bypass surgery.  But this time?  It's been almost six months since I stopped taking the cancer drug, and I'm still dealing with muscle pain.  Granted it is about half of what it was when I stopped taking the drug, but it just keeps on and on.  Knowing that it could begin all over again with the next drug?  Dismaying, to say the least.

So even though the decision to shut the business wasn't what I was emotionally ready to do?  I look ahead, not knowing what will happen in 7 months, just knowing that it is the right decision.  It is the correct decision. 

And buying the loom is my straw of  hope that I will persist.

Coming Down

Doug made a good start on taking the loom apart while I was gone but needed help with some of the 'bigger' pieces - the sectional beams for instance.

We talked about what needed to be done yet, then last night I helped him lift beams out and take things apart.

We went through the lists of pieces people want, got the parts for my friend ready to deliver next week, boxed up what another person wants, which will hopefully get delivered in September, or mailed if I don't go to TN/NC then.

There are three others who I need to email and check in with and will do that today.

I have also spent time rummaging in the store room and nooks and corners in the studio, finding more pirns, more shuttles, more bits and pieces that I'd completely forgotten about. 

Part of the challenge with this loom is that it is so old and some parts are quite worn.  Others we replaced at various times so people are getting the 'best' parts as we send them off to new homes. 

The fact that it bothers me so little is indicative of the fact that I am ready to let it go.  Of course I am replacing it, so that helps! 

I started weaving place mats and the first warp will come off the loom today, to be cut/serged apart, then the next warp dressed.  I'm hoping to get that warp off the loom before we leave on Monday, which I should be able to do.  But I doubt Doug will have time to do any pressing so the wet finishing heap will have to be done once we are at home.

There are a few things I need to deal with today - order yarn for the level one class in August, book my tickets, my housing, and work on packing.  I don't leave until the 10th of August, though, so I'm focused on the trip to Vancouver and Vancouver Island next week.  Fingers crossed the surgeon will consider me a good candidate for the new surgery to fix my toe, which I'm hoping will reduce pain.

Since the cancer drug, my muscle/joint pain has not gone away - and it may never go away.  The bad news is the new cancer drug, which I hope I won't have to begin taking for a while, also has muscle/joint pain as an adverse effect.  If I start taking it while I'm having this much muscle pain, it doesn't bode well for the future.

OTOH, I may never have that adverse effect with the new drug - not everyone gets all of the adverse effects, after all.  But at least reducing some pain in my foot will help.  And the Megado takes so little physical effort to treadle, that can't but help, too.

Even though my hands and feet ache, it does feel really good to be weaving again.  And seeing inventory begin to grow.