three good things

23 Jun 2006 in journal

three good things accomplished yesterday:

1) baked delicious cinnamon swirl biscuits yesterday – the recipe calls for coconut oil, which added a really nice taste. plus i have a whole jar of it from a while back when i thought it’d be a good idea to put on the tips of my hair. i smelled really good, but the greasiness was a bit too much to handle, sheesh.

2) read an incredibly good book that at one point had me all weepy and pissed off – meg rosoff’s “how i live now”. it’s a YA book, just won the <a href=”http://www.ala.org/ala/yalsa/booklistsawards/printzaward/Printz,Michael_L_Award.htm”>printz award</a> (which is the newbery equivalent for YA), and is a quick read, though not one you’ll forget anytime soon. for a while now, i’ve been meaning to create a page of books from two of my favorite genres: dystopias and post-apocalyptic lit. don’t know why they’re my two favs, but they have been for years and years. classics like neil shute’s “on the beach” cemented it, but surprisingly there’s a whole lot of YA and kid’s books out there that fit the bill as well. anyhow, “how i live now” was really really good – highly recommended.

3) a while back i posted a wishful picture of some warp all chained up and ready to be put on the loom (i’m missing some crucial terminology here: warped? loomed? help!) but really, beyond cutting the warp, i had nooo idea what to do. what’s that? you didn’t know i had a loom?

ok, ok, it’s just a rental. i rented it for three months, after a flurry of emails, from the local weaving guild, which those in the local l.a. spinning guild call The Big Guild. that same afternoon, with my friend rose, i watched a very basic video on weaving that promised to be so much more and, while helpful in understanding some general aspects of weaving, did little to explain how to set up the loom. we were both left scratching our heads, wondering what the various sticks were for
(one was the apron rod, just unattached from the warp beam area), why were strips of cloth included (to be used as headers, a-ha!), and so on. a week or so later, i went down to l.a.p.l.‘s central library (love it! always will – one of the best libraries i’ve ever been in) and grabbed a handful of weaving books. then, nothing. three weeks or so passed and it just sat there on my desk, becoming a clothes hanger and something i would pat absentmindedly now and then.

now we’re back to yesterday. i was puttering around, feeling a bit antsy (don’t know why. still feeling kinda unsettled, like “what next?” argh.), and i just looked at the warp sitting there on my table, all hopeful and ready. six hours later – ta-daa! my loom was ready. now, six hours for a warp with only 60 ends is a tooonnnnn of time, but i made every mistake in the book. i messed up the cross of the warp, i didn’t count the right number of heddles out so the warp was unbalanced, i mistakenly cut one of the warp so i had to tie some on to make it long enough (knots! cringe), and so on. i think i beamed the warp like four times, over and over again. but hey, i know the basics now – at least there’s that.

and, i even had time to do a little weaving – the basics of the basics, but whatever. the weaving isn’t the prettiest you’ve ever seen, but it’s cloth, isn’t that amazing? sigh. i love fiber.

p.s. i’m super-late on replying to emails, etc, but my deadline to catch up is today, promise. i’m off to work now, but tonight is all about cleaning my apartment for my fiber weekend with rose (yay) and responding to folks. have a great weekend ~ ~