Fibers I passed in the night

Linda Starr is a potter who uses textiles in her work on occasion. She asked if I wove with more than the cotton I enthuse about, have I used linen, hemp, silk and knoff. The last I do not know and turned up nothing concerning. I've fooled with the first three.

Linen and hemp are bast fibers and thread from them produced in essentially the same way; linen thread comes from breaking down flax stems, extracting and processing the fibers into very long threads that can be spun into very strong thread. Hemp is processed from our friend the marijuana plant in the same way. Hemp was essential to the rope industry in this country through World War II.

Many plants produce bast fibers that earlier civilizations harvested and used for rope. The long curly fibers that separate from yucca leaves in the fall were collected and twisted and used centuries before flax and marijuana were thread crops in this country.

Linen is a less forgiving fiber for hand weaving.  It’s crabby stuff, actually. The threads of all but highly mercerized (gassed) linen yarns tend to stick together; every shed must be cleared by hand to pass the shuttle. It is a far more brittle fiber than cotton, and the threads must be kept moistened as the work advances. That involves a spray bottle of water, and on consideration I did not want to constantly subject my fine maple looms to a mist of water. I wove some linen once on a small loom I used for fun.

Hemp became available for hand weavers only in the last twenty years or so, and still must be imported as marijuana growing is in its new infancy here. Since most textile manufacturing has left the United States, and since third world manufacturers are far less regulated in the production and manufacture of yarn and fabric, I've read that much of what we purchase as linen anything actually is hemp. Hemp continues to cost far too much money for me to be interested in weaving it, but I understand it behaves just like linen.

Silk is a protein fiber, not just from silk moth cocoons. I've spun silk, to see how different it is from spinning cotton, flax or wool. I've never woven with it. Again, it is an expensive fiber that rises in the price chain according to the amount of processing. The most silk I could afford were cocoon caps, and I didn't like the feel of them, loosening the silk fiber to spin a thread. That was nineteen eighty something.

So, we explored cotton. We could source it inexpensively enough to weave fabric by hand to turn into affordable garments. People liked them and bought them, so we made more, and sold more, and made more and so it went on.

I did weave things Linda could never have asked about, though. Out of my highly engineering focused manufacturing background an old colleague appeared with carbon thread and asked me to weave it into a small square they could heat to a high temperature and turn into ash for some lab thing they were doing. I wove a two inch square of carbon fabric on an old Weave-It loom from childhood.

They didn't ask me to make another, but did send along another entrepreneur. This fellow showed up with fluorescent thread to weave fabric their company could make into fluorescent dog coats. We put it on another little loom we used for classes and demos. When we turned off the lights and left the studio at night we could look back and see the fabric glowing eerily. 

Apparently the fellow produced it at a shareholder meeting, and, Steve Job like, took center stage and held up this lemon yellow piece of fabric. No reaction. The lights went down and, I’m told, the audience oohed and aahed. I don't know if this is the stuff or not. Handsome dog!

Don't bleed on the goods--another old lesson

Emily graciously wound bobbins yesterday, and in four hours we had a hundred turn warp on the warp beam. About fifty yards, I believe. I didn't keep track last time, as I should have.

There it is, thirty eight inches of twenty ends per inch. 20 epi, in the parlance.

It's also thirty eight inches to throw the shuttle, substantially more than the twenty inch towel warp I just finished.

Across a warp with no race on the bar.

Well, I used to throw forty five inches and not think about it. Just keep the tip of the shuttle up when it's released.

Before another warp goes on that loom I will get a man in town to build me a proper spool rack.

If I knew who bought the two we sold, I'd be knocking on their door.

Another old lesson:

Don't bleed on the goods.

In the old days, when someone rushed to the bathroom, clutching a bleeding digit, the rest of us in the studio chorused after, "No bleeding on the goods."

And old skin pierces far more easily.

I did that on the thread guides, and became much more careful when I had to work around two bandages, too.

This morning, counting the ends in each bout to be sure all were there, I looked through the loom and found myself under the watchful eye of the supervisor.

The view through the heddles, ready to begin threading.

I like the curl of the cotton behind the wire heddles.

Half done. I quit about three quarters done. Tomorrow is another day.

I promise, if I encounter any more old lessons I will save them up.

Old lessons

You know I named my little Etsy Shop Everything Old is New Again.  My first thought was simply that I am weaving again, after leaving it so cleanly eleven years ago. We sold literally every loom, every pattern, every jig and tool we invented over the years, and we sure invented a lot. Production weaving on floor looms takes a good deal of ingenuity and a brother who can build anything described to him.

So, I opened a little Etsy shop and stocked it with scarves. Everyone loves scarves. Then I added my world renowned towels, for kitchens, dishes and tea. I put on a ginormous towel warp and wove blue ones and red ones and natural ones. I didn't even start the green ones. It was a lifetime supply of kitchen towels.  I finished the warp off in plain weave and reprised the old shirt.

Shortly into our weaving career I realized rugs and place mats would not work for us, we needed to make clothing. Nothing fancy; we were not fancy weavers. But, we knew cotton, the workhorse of the fiber world. We wove good cloth in great colors and turned it into shirts and jackets and the occasional skirt, that were two thirds of our sales.

This past week, I freshened up the look of the old shirt, shortened it (although I can make it longer in a heartbeat), made three shirts and started a forth. Sadly, my towel width fabric can only go to a size small shirt, so the initial stock will be small or extra small. The good news is, tomorrow I’ll ask Emily to help wind bobbins and I’ll put a new and wider warp on the loom.

I made and posted three shirts to Etsy. I put one on my Etsy link here on the blog. I went to supper. I came back and found the one I picked to show on the blog is sold, to a customer from twenty or more years ago. Tomorrow, before I even begin on the loom, I will take new photographs of the other two. I know better than to put such a light color in front of a pale background. More old lessons.

New fabric for the old shirt. I am becoming fond of the grouped thread arrangement that makes light cords. Visually, I would prefer even more cords, but then the fabric would not be stable enough to make a sturdy garment.  I don't do fiddly, an old and not to be forgotten lesson.

Monday morning left on the fast train

Monday morning was wall to wall sunshine.

The first in more weeks than I can recall.

I caught up my camera on the way to work,

intending to take pictures on the way home.

The town hall in its holiday greenery.

Before I left the lot the grey clouds moved in.

The sunshine was gone before I could move on to another subject.

Today I used my phone camera to take grumpy pictures.

On the road department lunch table.

An empty cookie jar and two cans of spray oil something.

Don't feel too sorry, the cookie fairies packed them a big tin, that I will deliver.

Pyracantha. (I looked it up.)

Despite my best effort, the camera focused on the two berries on the right,

instead of the large cluster in the middle.

A tangle of roots growing from under the rock.

Think how nice this would look with all that Monday sunshine!

And in conclusion,

a happy little stone in the conglomerate in my sidewalk.

Yes, it is wet with rain.

I would have been looking up had the sun been shining,

and completely missed it.

My Christmas memory

Twenty one of us signed on over at Janie Junebug's Women: We shall Overcome to post a Christmas memory piece today. Janie even wrote a tutorial for me, to use the linky bit. Of course, I have failed the linky test. I hope you will bail me out by going to her blog and finding the Christmas memory post links at the bottom of her post. Here's my contribution:

My Christmas memory

I could be older, but fortunately I’m not.  I was born during the war, of Depression era parents, and grew up in the halcyon time between the return of the troops and Woodstock. It was good to be a child then; our mothers put us outside after breakfast and with brief pauses for lunch and supper we were back out until the street lights came on. In winters we were put out in snow suits.

We had few expectations except those meals, baths, bedtime and that our parents took care of us. They didn't say they loved us, but we put the word to it later on, when we learned to read and encountered the word. Sometimes they would say things like “Tomorrow is your birthday!” and come tomorrow we had a cake for dessert, and a present. Socks, underwear. Once I got a much needed wastebasket for my room.

Adult excitement did mount between Thanksgiving and Christmas, The Holidays. Large gatherings of the extended families happened then, on the days, and in between. Babysitters appeared and parents passed before us, dressed in their best, going to parties. We sat in a row on the sofa and watched them leave. 

The big day would arrive, ushered in by the children at five or six in the morning. A book, a longed for blouse, the gift of Lincoln logs or an erector set for all the children. Nothing left to do but have waffles for breakfast and wait for the main event, mid-afternoon dinner at a grandparent’s home or a favorite aunt and uncle.

Oh, the arrival by back doors into the warm and steamy kitchen. Coats piled on a bed, women moving in the kitchen, men in a cloud of smoke in the living room, children shooed until they reformed into cousin clumps playing Monopoly or Parcheesi.

In spite of best efforts, eventually the kitchen table might be ringed with small children who were tided over until dinner with graham crackers and milk. Two grandmothers at the stove would be fussing over gravy while the daughters-in-law mashed sweet potatoes and refilled coffee cups for men.

Eventually we were all around the table, passing dishes, plates prepared for little ones, and meat cut. For an afternoon the hum of the grown up voices and the clink of the silver over our heads, the warmth from the kitchen, surrounding us with the comfort of care. 

Remembering, carrying our own children and grandchildren, asleep, up the stairs to be put into bed after Christmas at grandma’s.

Cookie fairies on their own

I understand more are in the refrigerator,

to be baked tomorrow.

Including certain Russian teacakes, to be rolled in a now chopped 

bag of pecans.

The Winter Band Concert and Marzipan

It has been three weeks since the great defeat put one loss in the football team's record. In that time the bands prepared their winter concert. White Band, Blue Band, Wind Symphony and Wind Symphony Percussion Ensemble. Close to two hundred youngsters.

All the bands were excellent, in my opinion, although Emily did point out they played fewer and easier songs. I have no idea. I left my hearing aids home and enjoyed myself immensely. The picture I regret not taking--the Percussion Ensemble, complete with Santa hats, except the director, who wore a grinch hat and a delightful accompanying grin.

Before.

The White Band.

Flutes are in the vicinity of the center right Poinsettia.

Emily is second row, second chair, this year.

You don't need to be blond to play flute,

except, it seems, to play

chairs one through three.

This young lady was on the other side of the podium.

Taking care of that hair must be difficult,

But isn't it magnificent!

Today the postal service brought me a package from my elf in Wisconsin. "Oh, Ann, you needn't have," I thought. I pulled several little parcels from the packing, and a big one. Little ones first, and they turned out to be marzipan. Ann knows I'd do a U-turn for marzipan. Isn't the Santa just a delight!

The big parcel was half a dozen suet cakes for my flying pigs. What a pleasant surprise.

Mysteries of a new Sony Walkman

If only I were electronically literate!

A long time ago, in the mix-up of several resident grandchildren with missing earplugs, power cords, and even I-pods and Walkmans, I lent pieces parts of my Walkman, that I had mastered for the sole purpose of taking audio books to the gym. When I reassembled all the parts returned to me, I discovered I was a power cord short, and no one had it, or had one that fit.

Such is life with children. I quit the gym anyway, and life went on without it. I put the remaining pieces in the Goodwill bag and forgot about it, for at least a year. Then I had a burning desire to own a new Walkman and listen to books through the magic connector that goes between my car radio and a Walkman—you know what I’m talking about. I don’t.

I ordered a new device. It arrived with the packaging open, but no obvious problems, so I forged ahead. Except my computer could not recognize the device, and after a couple of days of trying to find a driver out in the ether I realized my power cord had been substituted for one that did not fit the device. I returned that whole problem, and forgot about recorded books again.

Except in passing, I did learn I did not need to scotch the Walkman separated from its power cord by a grandchild; I could buy missing parts at Radio Shack. Day late, dollar short, but somehow that piece of information stuck.

When I began weaving again, and wanted recorded books I scoured the house for my MP3 CD player last lent to Hamilton. No one knew where it was, but my sister located an old CD player, sans power cord and ear phones. Off to Radio Shack, where I purchased those items for a nearly obsolete CD player for just short of the cost of a new Walkman. Since summer I've been weaving and listening to my personal collection.

It came to me this week I can recite whole passages of JRR Tolkien by heart. I finally opened the new Walkman I bought a month ago but hadn't screwed up the courage to investigate. I have a granddaughter in the next bedroom, for crying out loud.

For the record, I proceeded bravely on my own all the way to downloading a book of choice from the library. In my defense, the entire site has changed in my two year absence and I once again forgot the difference between e-books and audio books, but Emily, of course, knows. I have two books downloading as we speak.

In good conscience I can leave Frodo and Samwise with Faramir and start anew tomorrow!   

Old hippy clothes

In the olden days, when Jan and I were weavers, two thirds of our business was the clothing we made. People often asked to purchase our fabric and I would not sell it. Working with handwoven fabric is very different from goods from the fabric shop, and I wasn't about to give them lessons, too, when they stumbled on that fact. I generally suggested they buy a loom and weave their own. Some did.

I have a fond memory of a show we did for several years at Lincoln Center in New York City. The show wound around the outside of Lincoln Center, and onto the beautiful plaza. I was several paces away from my booth, smoking, and two old gentlemen stopped to look over the booth. They stood fingering a jacket (our cotton is soft and lovely to touch. Good hand, it is called), discussing the fabric and wondering if Julie would like to have this.

“It’s unstructured,” one said.

“I know, but it is soft and looks comfortable.”

“I know, but we would have to get her past being unstructured.”

“I know, but it is beautifully made.”

“I know, but the cut is unstructured.”

I smiled and let them play out their debate and wander away. Our customers loved soft and comfortable, and we found them, even in New York City.

Our clothing was “unstructured”, for the reason that our fabric did not lend itself to fiddly details. It was too soft, too few ends per inch, for a crisp edge. One haute customer, in her impeccable jeans and close cut shirts called the look “this old thing I just threw on!” She made us look really good.

I was thinking, as I wove towels, about a customer who took two towels and began demonstrating how I could sew them into a blouse for her. My imagination simply could not follow her instructions. I had a good deal of people telling me what I could weave for them, as it was. I eventually suggested she purchase two towels and give it a go, or even a loom and have at it. She certainly did not do the former.

Twenty years later it came to me, a blouse with no shaping at all. Well, minimal, as it turned out. First I needed a prototype, which I made of muslin. It’s pretty firm stuff, you could make structured garments from it. I needed to know what I was doing and had no intention of experimenting on my woven fabric!

My prototype. It has a hem only to make the muslin the same length as my woven fabric, 20". The piece for the back is 24", edge to edge (before seams), the front is 30", to make that neat drape, which was not in my instructions twenty years ago from two towel girl. But, it needs some shaping.

What do you think? This piece of fabric would not lend itself to a casing and a drawstring, so I gathered the fabric along the line of a pair of grouped threads.  Cleaner than the drawstring, too.

And, the rest of the way around. Side and back. All that's left is to research sizing. This is probably a large, but I need to find out. Otherwise, what a cool shirt for a hot summer day. Coming soon to an Etsy shop near you.

And, PS to Two Towel Girl: This is the very same towel you demonstrated to me--lengthwise. You were holding it by it's ends, and I couldn't see how to fit anyone inside two twenty inch towels. 

Martha and the Christmas Bird Watch

A couple of months ago, when the weather was completely fall like, I thumbed through a Martha Stewart Living magazine and waited in the dentist's office. It was a new dentist, and my first look at Martha's magazine.

It is a large format magazine, with pictures of life on a grander scale than, say, Time, or People magazines, that I would normally expect in a dentist's office. I flipped idly past vast interiors and precious dinners, but was stopped short by Martha's garden.

I'm not making this us. Martha does not clear out the garden growth at the end of the season. My dears, do not bring in those tall stalks to spray paint and arrange artfully in the foyer--that's paraphrasing, of course. Leave them until spring.

The two young women who schlep to the compost made no complaint, and so my garden looks like this:

I can only say, I'll never do this again. Some of these stalks I would not have spray painted in any event will not be difficult to clear out come spring, but that August lily will be one wet mess.

Recall you mother told you to wear clean underwear when leaving home, and the front room generally is tidy, against the entrance of a surprise visitor. This morning two cars stopped in front of the house and did not move on for some time. The windows were down, folks were hanging out, surveying my front yard. A woman in the recesses of one car was writing down everything they reported.

I realized it is the Great Christmas Bird Count, but not before I also thought they were assessing my flower gardens. They were counting all my flying pigs, bless them.

Since we have had no sun for thirteen days, and I am counting, and no prospect of sun for another thirteen, here is a woodpecker from last winter. The Bird Counters probably saw him again today.

Grade A

It has been grey all week, with cardinals for relief. Not gloomy, however.

Laura's last classes have been Clementines.

Next time they will mount them.

I took a picture in Mrs. P's kitchen, but it was blurry, so I went into her room for a better picture.

It's the same, without the smiling face.

Laura, in her jazz attire.

The jazz ensemble did several numbers during the concert Wednesday.

I couldn't go this year; I had to go to work.

There's another concert the end of January. Pictures will be taken.

Emily, who smiles on command.

Just waiting for Grandma to end the photo shoot so she could sit in the top row of the bleachers and listen to the concert.

I do recall last year I swore I would never again sit in the bleachers for anything.

You know who showed up to weave, just as I sat down to work on the red towels.

He is crossing the two inch wide breast beam.

You can see where he struck off cross country and got his foot out of the quicksand before I could say anything.

He did disturb the fell line a bit.

It's been a decent week.

Grade A.

Pain – A rant

   

For seven years I have lived with progressively worsening pain in my back.  I owe every bit of it to my life time of cigarettes and less than optimal eating, but I like to blame it on the carton of copy paper I swung into a shopping cart. My back exploded; the end of life as I knew it.

I took out L1 in that escapade, and over the years other vertebrae have settled and settled. Two inches worth, so far. There is a back pain protocol and I can recite it verbatim. I've been marched through it all, almost in lockstep, with a few balks along the way. I am very familiar with every inch of my spine and if some doctor’s explanation of his proposed treatment didn't stand up to questioning, it didn't happen.

There have been two surgeries on my spine, both completely successful. I am very fond of the C2/C3 fusion with a cadaver bone. It saved me from a surprise broken neck and the complication of paralysis—or worse. The other surgery freed nerves and eliminated leg pain. But the pain that seizes my back has not been controlled, worse luck. It truly limits my life; I hate it.

My back pain got me assigned to a competent arthritis doctor who has prescribed drugs that used to work better than they do now. NSAID’s and, two years ago, Lyrica. Heavy duty stuff. Expensive to the extreme. The latter is being used “off-label” I believe it’s called; it stops pain in the brain, not the back. I appreciate what they do, but not what they do to me. And, the effectiveness is diminishing. And, the cost is killing me.

One piece of protocol suggested was an “injection,” one of several nerve blocks available. I could not bear the thought, and declined. However, I did allow a cortisone injection into each knee, to block the pain of pseudo arthritis. That was eleven months ago. The pain went away and has not returned yet. That is an interesting thing about pain. It really is all in the brain, and once the connection is broken I think it takes time to reconnect. It can take forever, as far as I’m concerned.

So, I reconsidered the nerve block. There’s a protocol, I’m on the yellow brick road. But, here is the rant. My arthritis doctor did his bit with the recommendation and referred me to the pain specialist who would inject. In setting up the appointment I was asked if I had seen a pain specialist before and the answer is yes, in the very beginning.

The new specialist will not give me an appointment without the records of the previous specialist. I explained the previous specialist is in prison for sexual assault. I saw him twice and his behavior was unprofessional. Creepy. Aside from the pain drugs leaving me completely non-functional he gave me little notes as I left. I never went back. Imagine my surprise several years later finding him on the front page. I never wanted him near me again, and I don’t want his diagnostic notes, either.

But, no notes, no new appointment. I went to the office this morning so I could look people in the eye and make my request. I wanted the papers in my hand, but the charge for that is twenty dollars. They will be faxed for free. I enjoyed saying the doctor’s name to the receptionist, hearing the reception area go quiet. Small revenge for twenty dollars I will not spend.

The new scheduler is following her protocol—no notes, no appointment. I had to wait two months for the appointment with my rheumatologist to get the referral to the pain doctor. He applauded my decision to pursue this; I was so pumped up. And now another person with protocol power has to have the notes of a doctor I consider a complete fraud in order to proceed. 

I would reach through the phone and smack her, but she is not returning my phone calls about setting the appointment date prior to the new doctor reviewing the old notes.  The initial appointment, before her discovery of the other doctor was several weeks out. "I cancelled it," her only reply to my request for a provisional date.

So, that is my rant, and I do feel entitled to it.

Although I have not smoked for six and a half years, the protocol gods were not appeased.

And the gas is going down

Gas at my station was $2.55 a gallon when I passed yesterday morning. My last purchase, last Monday, was $2.74. Half a tank, I didn't stop, although after the errands and jazz band practice pick up tonight it was closer to a quarter. So, it will be lower—or higher—when I fill the tank.

Gasoline and I go way back; I remember paying twelve or fifteen cents a gallon. Its production must have been heavily subsidized; I don’t know. I do know that price inflation in the seventies was exponential. The pumps indicated cents, with hand lettered $1’s preceding.

OPEC put a strangle hold on the world economy then and the scrabble to alternative energy was on. I wonder how much the need for inexpensive energy gave rise to the alternative life style that brought Mother Earth News into mass circulation. We all read it, even if we didn't gravitate to subsistence living on an acre of land.

Many habits I developed back then are with me now. Turning off my car engine while waiting in line, for a train or at the bank, for instance. My uncle, who worked for Ford, thought it stupid. Mom, who even opened the dishwasher to “air dry” after the wash cycle, cited “saving energy.” As I waited for the jazz band practicers to leave the building last night I decided if it’s even a little colder next time, I’ll leave on my warm car.

Natural gas for heating went into short supply back in 1978, the bitter winter my dad passed away “riding this freezing cold, slow train to Siberia.” Natural gas rationing was threatened, although it did not materialize. Mom kept Dad under an electric blanket, but he never was warm enough. In hindsight a goose down comforter was in order.

My parents kept the house at sixty back then, warmer than they grew up with. It was more economical, and, “saved energy,” to quote mom.  When we all moved in together here, nothing changed. Mom simply wore more clothes than the rest of us. And so it went, until a few years ago, long after Mom left us. We were cold; Jan turned up the thermostat to 65 in the winter. Creep has set in; now it’s 66 degrees. We think back to Mom and feel bad.

When we moved here and had to renovate the entire house to move in, I toyed with installing a geo-thermal heating system under the garden that was not a garden, then. The cost was close to prohibitive and my window of opportunity passed while I dithered. I guess I regret it. When I look at power generating windmills on our skyline I think at least this opportunity is not lost.

I like the giant white turbines revolving slowly in the sky. Someday they will be obsoleted by another energy source and be smelted into electric cars or personal transportation devices. I do not agree with all the policies and devices that have brought us to falling gasoline prices, but I like the cost. And that’s the end of a complete ramble on energy in my lifetime. Except, gas was 2.47 when I filled up tonight.

Laura is a teenager today

Hard to believe the ten year old turned thirteen today. She has developed an independent and lovely sense of self and still runs up the stairs two at a time. Like all her siblings she is unremittingly cheerful.

When the walls of her room became populated entirely by her portraits of unicorns it was time to corral her direction, and the lovely Mrs. P is guiding her, through still life of squash and fried eggs. Mrs. P’s hip replacement is not progressing perfectly and she had to give up most of her teaching. Laura and one other student she kept, drawing away at the kitchen counter.

Art seems a part of Laura, like running up stairs two at a time. It is expressed in things she can control, like her drawing. Her style in clothing could not be imitated. Most of both girls’ wardrobes are either hand-me-downs or thrift store.  But as these two are at the end of the sibling and cousin line, where come the pass alongs? From adults. A friend of Jan’s is downsizing and sending the tiny clothes she wore thirty years ago. Laura selects carefully and rocks her choices.

Ann sent a backseat full of good clothing from her eighties office days. Blouses, nice tees that were outgrown, and the like. Watching Laura select what to keep was so interesting. The tees went to the donate pile. The office blouses were “keep.” Sometimes I wonder if she’s embarrassed by not looking like every other girl in class, but I don’t think so.

On my cell phone; a blouse from Ann. Look at the beautiful quill work. 

We were waiting at a nursery for our plants to be rung up;

I just took the picture.

Laura loves skirts, and probably dresses, too, but is limited to her sources, I think. I took Emily to help me find her a skirt to go with the leggin’s that flash up the stairs, two at a time. We didn’t hit pay dirt before I crapped out (my limit is thirty minutes before I seize up), but we did pass this dress, and it said “leggings and her blue jean jacket” to me.

Laura’s birthday present, on Helen, my faithful studio model of woven scarves.

Helen has no legs, or I would have found leggin's.

Helen does have perky little breasts, like the sister-in-law she was named for.

That was so long ago....

A perceived oversight

The other two at lunch yesterday said they did not remember seeing pictures posted of the finished bathroom.

Probably because pictures of a 6' x 8' bathroom are even smaller than the bathroom itself.

Once bathroom accouterments are in place

there is little room for frivolity,

and less for pictures.

Only a straight and narrow shot to the business end of the room.

The shelves just inside the door.

Wire "dorm baskets" for the girls' dental hygiene,

Baskets for cleaning supplies, wash clothes, the like.

My shower. I love it, and you can see so little. Another shower head is not visible.

Oh, well.

The window, which now has proper cottage framing and a proper window sill.

The little wall that covers the stack pipe has a trinket Aunt Flo gave me;

a little diorama she brought back from Nova Scotia.

My clock on the back wall.

The view from the toilet. My new glasses.

The mirror. I must remember to find matching light bulbs for the light fixture;

the one on the left still has construction sawdust on it.

The art on the wall; a print and an artists' proof, both by local artists.

No room to take a complete picture of anything in the room, not even the toilet.

That's what you get in a 6' x 8' bathroom.

The end.

Two treasurers-for-life and two weavers meet for lunch

And there were only three of us.

Linda was in town today, and she and Pam and I went for lunch

at Fishers, 

where a topiary is turned into a snowman.

Linda moved in for a closer look, and I smiled as Pam moved discretely out of  camera range.

She's much younger and prettier than the two old weavers.

Pam was Treasurer for Life of the Peninsula Area Chamber of Commerce

for the ten years after I held the title for ten years.

I'm thinking a bit longer for each of us, since the chamber had its beginning in 1990.

Interesting how we jump in because we have something to add,

then one day it's time for new blood.

All the sidewalks were lined with luminaries, I noticed on my way to work.

A lot of luminaries, up both sides of State Route 303, across the bridge, around corners.

Pam said at lunch tonight is the Chamber's annual 
candlelight walk, and she is a luminary lighter.

A lot of lighting.

An hour ago I asked Emily if she wanted to go look at a small town tradition.

I took my camera.

Not my tripod, not my gloves, but my heart was in the right place.

We talked about small town illusions on the way home,

And cheered for the people walking past the luminaries,

Bags in hand.

A picture from a couple of weeks ago, back from a training session,

wearing her official Boston Mills, Brandywine uniform.

The season has not begun, but when it does it often does not end until March.

Here's a cat who would tell you what to do with ski runs.