This year was the antidote to last year. I taught at Madrona again, with a room full of lovely women who shared my passion for things that glow and blink. It was a mellow and peaceful class. They gave me permission to blog about derby and non-weaving things. I don’t have to words to explain why that was important (or rather, I do, but it would take about 10,000 of them) but it was huge to me. I’m an eclectic, shy, multi-faceted person, and it’s hard for folks like me to feel 100% accepted, and in that moment, I did.

I had lunch with a friend and mentor, and that was a wonderful treat.

Class continued. We wove. Things lit up. We turned off the lights and there were moments of illuminated beauty. I had a great time, and I hope they did as well.

Eric and Kai came down that evening and injected some family pack bonding into the evening. We ate Mexican food, tussled on the bed, made bad jokes, and I fell exhausted into bed and slept well.

The next day, my actual birthday, I spent taking a class with my favorite tapestry weaver in the whole wide world: Sarah Swett. (I can say this only because I consider Mary Zicafoose a rug weaver.) Sarah combines both being a hoot-and-a-holler as a person with amazing technical skill that takes my breath away. She doesn’t teach often and I consider myself lucky to have gotten into her class.

We wove tapestry bags. Tapestry is something that makes my brain hurt. I’d taken a class with James Koehler, and was blown away by his mastery and technique. But his brain worked very differently than mine, and as soon as I stepped away from his class, his teaching fell right out of my head. Sarah’s teaching settled into my brain like a faithful dog and curled right around my cerebellum. I came away from the class with an enthusiasm for tapestry and a belief that I might actually be able to weave a tapestry I was happy with one day.

Oh, and Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (aka: the yarn harlot) is considering taking up an affair with a bad-boy loom. A loom with its brake smack in the center of the warp. With a tricky warp tensioning system that is just waiting to unspool her warp all over the floor. A handsome fellow, dark and mellowed with age, something rare and fine, but temperamental… I worry for her weaving adventures on it. Though I suspect a swat team of Canadian weavers is likely to descend on her if things get out of hand.

Several people asked questions about my unfinished projects, some asked kindly, some more pointedly. Here are the answers, in case you’re wondering, too.

What about WeaveCast? Will there be more?
I don’t know. I hope so. Between more-than-full-time work, family, and doing the things that keep me happy and sane, I haven’t found the time to edit audio. I’ve got several episodes recorded that I’d like to produce, but I don’t know when I’ll get to them. There’s another fibery concern that’s considering doing a weaving podcast–a group that’ll likely do a much better job than I ever did–so even if I don’t get around to it, you still have hope.

What’s the status of the birthday blanket?
The first 13-yard warp is woven. The second 13-yard warp is lying on the floor of my studio on lease sticks, ready to go through the raddle. I really, really, wanted to get it done in time for Madrona 2012, but two other time-critical projects got in the way. One was my producing Linda Ligon’s memoir This is How I Go When I Go Like This as an audiobook, the other is still under wraps. I feel mortified that the birthday blanket isn’t done yet, and I promise that it will be done before I am. My other worry is, now that I have a smaller presence in the fiber world, how will I get the word out when it’s done?

I came away from Madrona 2012 feeling like the fiber arts world was welcoming me back. It won’t be what it was, it’s scaled back from when I was trying to make a living publishing weaving content. But you know, the things that drew me into the fiber arts are still there: the love of making beautiful fabrics, the friendly people, the meditative work.

A lot has happened in the past year: I’ve gotten a new career. I watched my friend Selah birth her son. I took up roller derby and played in a game in front of 300+ spectators. A long-time chronic health issue that has plagued me my whole life was diagnosed and addressed. I’ve let go of a lot of expectations.

For the first time in my life, I don’t know what I’m working towards. I don’t have a master plan. It’s strange to be like this, but also peaceful.

I acknowledge the irony of after a sedentary life, suddenly finding fitness in my forties. (Sometimes I make little offerings of ibuprofen to the gods of irony and aching muscles.) But there it is.  The more I exercise, the better I feel, and I’ve finally found a team sport that I enjoy.  So I’m not young, what can I do about that?  Sit on the sidelines and sigh?  No, it seems a better route to get out there and do what I can for as long as I can.

Being older in some ways is rather freeing. I don’t have to worry about saving up my body for my later years. It also adds a bit of urgency, “Do this now! While you still can!”  Which really, applies to all of life when you think about it.

But back to the bootcamp.  It was hard, it was terrifying, it was hella fun. We skated and did things like skated laps with all our weight on one leg (until it felt like it would fall off) and then skated laps with all our weight on the other leg (until it felt like it would fall off.)  It sounds masochistic, but afterwards, my cross-overs were stronger and I understood better how to push fast around corners.

We did scrimmage drills, and blocking drills, and start-after-start. I’m a bit scared of starts, where you run on your toe-stops for a while, because the first time I tried one, my feet flew out from under me and I landed on the back of my head—hard.  But doing something hard over and over again makes it less scary (another of those lessons that apply elsewhere in life.) I learned that my toe stops were too high, I was supposed to be running on the balls of my feet in starts, not on-pointe, like a ballerina.  I also, on the advice of one of the coaches, went out and bought much bigger toe stops, the size of a snuff can instead of a quarter.  I’m feeling much sturdier on my starts now.

We got to slam into pads—hard, and that was fun, too.  (Though two days later my ribs and neck complained.)

As always occurs at these things, I was working too hard and having too much fun to stop and take pictures when everyone was on the track, but here are a couple of shots to give you the flavor of the place.

For the first time in my life, I might be starting to consider myself an athlete. It’s odd the twists life takes.

This last one, with just skates and hands is my favorite. Both because it’s so artistic, and because that’s what I see of myself when I’m skating, just my feet and hands.

So I walk into the classroom and I was the only girl…by a lot.  That’s really the only way I can explain it.  Not only were the other 25 people in the room male, but they were all the same kind of male. Geek alpha male, Linux flavored.

No one else had multicolored hair, or was knitting, or played roller derby. They all looked at me like, “I think you might be in the wrong room.” And I looked at them like, “I think I might be in the wrong room.”  I mean, where were the other women who think taking Linux certification classes is a fun career enhancer?  Am I really alone in this?

After I got used to the culture shock, eased in part by Ken, my 50-something lab partner who was a real sweetie, I had fun. The instructor was in his late 20s or early thirties and uses Hadoop in his work (an open-source, big-data thing that’s also part of my work.) And it was good to finally start learning about this side eddy of the web that’s eluded me thus far.

I loved that the class is hands on.  The very first day I got to install Debian 6 (a flavor of Linux) and set up boot, swap, and storage partitions.  I mean, what’s not fun about that?

Next class we get to learn the GNU commands…

I was instantly hit with an overwhelming wave of jealousy, because I’d been looking for months for exactly that kind of batt, with no joy on Etsy, online retailers, or my local yarn shop.  “Where,” I breathed, “Did you get that?”

“My children made it for me,” she replied, smiling proudly.  She went on to explain how one batt had been made by her son, another by her daughter.  It was an absolutely sweet story with stunning results. About half-way through the story, it hit me: I have a kid. I have uncarded fiber. I even have a rather impressive stash of sparkly Angelina fiber (enough to get me through any apocalypse, actually.)  Kai and I could card our own batts!

I rushed home after the meeting was over and proposed the idea to Kai. It involved sparkly things and dangerous tools, so he was all for it.

What started as a lark, grew into an obsession as he and I got into trying this color combination, then that one, then throwing some recycled sari silk bits in, then more Angelina, then some mohair locks….well, you get the idea.

I, lucky woman, ended up with fifteen basketball-sized bumps of roving in a variety of colorways and filled with enough glitter to satisfy my magpie soul.  Kai and I built memories (and he learned how to card and doff using a drum carder).  Best of all, I didn’t have to buy a thing, all the materials came from my stash; I felt virtuous converting bags of random uncarded fiber into exactly the kind of roving I’d been looking for.

A ruby-slipper day, for sure.

• Thirteen yards is 39 feet, which is a lot (Laura Fry, hush now.)
• The weaving goes better when the loom is fixed.  I wove several painful yards before a cable fell off.  When I put it back on, the shed was twice as high and the yarns much more taut. So in future, if the weaving is tough, I’ll look closely at the loom before pressing on.
• Flyshuttle weaving is a skill that needs regular practice.  I also tweaked the flyshuttle string again (simplifying the routing) and like the new version much better.

I have a some mending and fixing to do because of the bullet points above, but I suspect this will be good television-hand-work fodder.

The different stretchiness of the yarns was not a problem at all, not even at the end of the warp. I believe this is because I distributed them evenly across the warp and they were mostly wool (except for the folks who sent cotton, thank goodness no one sent linen.)
The daunting thing that this is only half the yardage for this project.  I have another 13-yard warp waiting in chains to get put on the loom.  My goal is to weave enough fabric for two king-sized blankets.  One as my birthday blanket, and one as a raffle prize for a Doctors Without Borders fundraiser.  I’m also hoping that I’ll have enough extra to send swatches of the finished fabric to everyone who participated.  So if you sent in yarn for this project, and you’ve moved since you sent it in, you might want to send me your new address via the contact page on this site.

The smart thing would have been to leave the cloth on the beam and rolling it off slowly to inspect and repair.

I couldn’t wait, however, I unwound it with abandon and stretched it out in the longest hallway in my house (child added for scale.)

I also draped it over my stunt double. (Selah came by a month or so ago and helped me fit a new Uniquely You form, since the old one didn’t work any longer.)  I love how the cloth pools at her feet.

But at 5:15pm, I found myself milling around with a whack of knitters, trying to look innocuous. (above)  There was so much excitement in the air, and so many participants, that we totally blew our cover beforehand, and that was cool. I ran into Julia Grunau (of Patternfish) while waiting around, and Lisa took our picture. As you can see, we’re ready with our “dancing skeins.”

Then the dance! It was fun! To a song I can’t stand! Totally fun! And the group as a whole looked coordinated and together. With that many people all making the same moves it was easy to follow along. I was glad I participated. At the end, the crowd let out a huge cheer and some skeins were spontaneously tossed into the air. It was a great moment, to be part of something that big and silly and wonderful, with everyone having a grand time.
I can only imagine the great things all the skeins of yarn that were there soaking up all that enthusiasm will become.

“Syne?” he said, in a wry tone, “Was that a mulberry tree you were looking at?”
“Um, yeah…”
“Are you planning to buy a tree, raise silkworms, reel your own silk, dye it with local plants, weave it into fabric, and sew a shirt?”
“Um, yeah. How did you you know?”

Unfortunately, after about five years, just when it was starting to get big enough to perhaps support silkworms, the mulberry tree died (or was killed in a late-night transplanting, stories vary).  Which put a damned fine plan back a decade or so.

So with that story in mind, I’d like to introduce you to my burgeoning willow empire. Last year I decided that I absolutely must learn how to weave willow basketry in about five years, and thus I neded to create  a willow basketry orchard. I searched around the Internet and found Bluestem Nursery, which has more types of basketry willow than I even know existed.  I purchased 12 starts each of S. fragilis “Belgium Red”, S. triandra ‘Black Maul’, and S. viminalis. Which means that when my willow empire starts producing shoots, I’ll have red, black, and green rods to weave with. Bluestem also threm in three free starts of another willow, whose name I don’t know because the tag faded in the sun.  But it looks like a hardy green variety. I also have some “curly” willow that I bought at a garden show. (It was meant for floral arrangements, but still grew when I stuck it in dirt.)

At my house, there’s a slope that gets a lot of rain runoff from the hills near by, it’s always wet, gets a lot of sun, and I think the willows will love it.  In addition to feeding my future need for basketry supplies, they’ll also hold the ground and prevent erosion. It’s full of potential win.

I’m logging the progress of my willow empire (and other plants such as the madder I started years ago) on Folia.com, which is a cool Ravelry-like site that lets you enter in details about the plants in your garden and record growth and harvests. I love it because it totally solves the issue I used to have with wanting to keep all the information from the plant tags, and yet not wanting a drawer of messy random bits of plastic. That and the “what the heck was this plant again?” question, since you can take pictures of the plant and have it right there in the log.

I totally got my geek on last week entering in a bunch of my plants and chortling over the accumulation of osbcure knowledge. You can see my garden (or at least what I’ve entered thus far) here: http://myfolia.com/gardener/syne.

Which reminds me, I need to order a new mulberry tree.

About ten years ago, Eric made a desk. it was an adventure, his first in furniture making. He started with a commercial desk that had an ergonomic base (ie: you can turn a crank to raise and lower it.) The original desk was designed for CRTs, and thus was in the shape of a triangle, taking up a lot of office space. With the advent of flat-screen monitors, there was also a lot of wasted empty space in the back.  So he bought a solid wood table top from Ikea and carved it into an L-shape, rounded the edges with a router (I had no idea the man had router skills) and painted it black.

Then he went to put in on the base and realized that he’d built it upside down.  The reverse had ugly metal channels in (to reinforce the table it was originally designed for) and there was much gnashing of teeth and wailing.

Eric recovered his equilibrium and filled the channels with black fimo and glow-in-the-dark stars, turning a mistake into a design opportunity.  And for ten years, it was his desk, as in wooby, as in pride.  Then he decided that a standing desk would be better for his lower back.  So, having had such an adventure with his first desk mod, he only bought a pedestal, and created his own top which is a three-dimensional work of art.  Go bug him at his blog to show you pictures.

Of course, this made his black desk redundant. He talked about getting rid of it, but how can you part with something like that? At about the same time, I’d started working at Amazon where, because of a funny historical event, everyone uses a door desk.  This is a desk made out of 4x4s and a cheap wooden door bought at Home Depot, I kid you not. Programmers use these, executives use these, and I’ll be very suprised if Jeff Bezos himself isn’t sitting behind one of these.  It’s a symbol of the frugality and ingenuity that’s made Amazon.com sucessful.

Unfortunately, it’s also a desk that works great if you’re a 6′ tall guy, not so great for a 5’6″ tall woman. I found it darned uncomfortable.  So I asked Eric if I could have the ergonomic black desk. Away it went with me to Amazon…where the offices are small and filled with people.  Another issue is that Eric is not a big believer in pilot holes, meaning that once I got the desk to work, I could only screw in 2 of the 8 screws that hold the desk to the base.  Imagine a wobbly desk where my monitor was always in jeopardy.  Imagine a large L-shape in a small room and coworkers having to practically limbo to get into a position where they could see my monitor and watch me give a demo.

This went on for about two months, then tonight I snapped. Fifteen minutes before I was due to leave work, I was under my desk with a screwdriver, wearing a business casual black dress, uninstalling the desk top. I told my coworker Gayatri, “I think you got one of the wierder office mates at Amazon.” She laughed and said that she liked it, as she never knew what I’d do next, and that she admired my initiative.  Still in business causal, I left work, carrying an enormous L-shaped desk top with me.  As luck would have it, I walked by the product manager for the technology I document. He was in the middle of a hall meeting, and actually missed a beat when he saw me walk by. I just grinned, cause seriously, what else could I do?

I brought the unsatisfactory desk top home, and after a very long and tiring day went after it with circular saw, drill, belt sander, mouse sander, hand sanding, and a final coat of Wood Beams from Goodies Unlimited. There’s power in wearing overalls.  Within a half hour I’d gone from exhausted, to having a pretty darn good time.  Watching the black varnish that Eric had put on melt away into the orginial wood grain was rewarding, as was smoothing the fimo into a glossy inlaid strip. The whole project, reshaping, sanding, and waxing took about 2-1/2 hours.  And now I have a desk top that works with my office, that I can attach firmly to the base, and looks and smells wonderful. Ironically enough, the strip of black fimo even makes it look a bit like an antique door.

I didn’t realize I was working on a blog post, so I didn’t take any before or in-process pictures.  But here’s the end result, ready to be installed when I go into work tomorrow. I wasn’t able to get off 100% of the black lacquer that Eric used with the tools and time I had available (remember, I need this desk top to get work done in the morning) so I went for an antiqued look, bringing out the natural look of the wood and letting the black highlight the grain. By going with what was there in the piece, I was able to finish quickly, and ended up with something you’d pay extra for at a store like Restoration Hardware.

Happy surprises:

• Kai helped me wax the top, and I’ll be able to think of both him and Eric as part of this desk when I’m at work.
• The Wood Beams is food safe and smells divine, I’d been saving it for a special occasion (for the past 10 years or so) and just realized that if I didn’t use this up and buy more, the artist who makes this might go out of business.
• The way the grain goes everywhich way, and is highlighted by the antiquing and the way delights me more than I thought it would.
• It’s done!  This project that had been hanging over my head for months and a daily irritation is now finis!
• I like sanding now much more than I used to. Is that a sign of maturity?
  I even like the rough-hewn nature of the cable port (below).