Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Getting it done...right

A problem nagging and nagging for the last several weeks seems to have imploded, no thanks to me. 

Quite unbeknownst to me, Emily and Laura sought out and consulted two family friends for advice on screwing up the courage to tell their mother, when the opportunity came, to stop telling them she was taking them back, as they would not be going. The opportunity came in just a couple of days, and they said what they had to say. Just think what cool hands they may be at breaking up with boyfriends.

We may not be out of the woods yet, but we will be.

Meanwhile, back in the studio, I took another try at a yoga/beach skirt. It required the disassembly of two entire serged seams, but, by golly, I think I got it. I see I didn't re-press the waistband seam, but the skirt's still on Helyn, and it will be done before a customer notices. I don't know about the length; it easily can be shorter, but will need customer feedback on that. The prototype probably is a few inches above the knee.

I do believe normal service is on the horizon.



Friday, March 25, 2016

Getting the rug stuff

That's how early in the morning it was.
I said "rug stuff." For shame.

By the dawn's early light we are off to buy weft for Linda to weave more rugs.
She weaves rugs from many different fibers: wool and cotton fabrics, heavy yarns,
and something called "shag."


"Shag" comes from upholstery mills.
It is the selvage edge of upholstery fabric.

In the modern high tech mills the warp no longer travels across the weaving surface on a shuttle.
The warp is laid in one row at a time by a stream of air.

Each row is held stable by a woven band of dummy warp or loom waste that is cut off at the end of the weaving process.

The black and white strip is a good illustration of the stabilizing strip with the shaggy ends of the single lines of warp hanging from each side.


Here are bags and bags of shag,


Waiting to be selected.


I realize I do not have one picture of Linda at a rug loom.
Here is a picture from the '90's, when I stopped by her studio in upstate New York to see her new 100" loom being assembled.

In the left corner one of her rug looms with the beam full of rugs, and the weaving surface used as a table for tools to assemble the big loom.

(Do note how very 5'6" tall I used to be!)


I went to Linda's web site and picked one rug.
You can go there and see a page full of rugs for sale.


Thursday, March 24, 2016

It seldom happens this way

At six this morning the most awful clangor. In time I recognized my other alarm, the one with the extraordinary noise that will get through to me at the wrong time. Six a.m. is the wrong time.

I am off with Linda to buy rug stuff. We’re leaving at seven. Her ETD’s frequently are imaginary, so I called her at seven, and left a message.

She called back at 7:10 to announce, to her great joy, she really had a phone in the bottom of the twenty pound weight she calls a purse. 

To my great joy, she’s just coming through the toll booth.

It will be a good day.


Friday, March 18, 2016

She kept the packing list, of course


School is out in ten weeks, and this summer may be the most complex yet. Emily has a job unpacking and setting up at the middle school, twelve hundred notebooks. Don’t ask. Laura has art classes, and works for Mrs. P several days a week. Emily has college orientation. Laura wants one week at camp. We all want to visit Ann.

Getting my grip was essential. I emailed the band director and said I was resigned to being chained to the band from August until the football team lost its last game; just let me know when in August it all began. The reply: the first mandatory band practice is July 20th; band camp begins July 24th; blablablablabla.

Laura, on the other hand, is so excited about learning to march!

Tonight the annual Facts about Marching Band arrived. I pushed “print” for fifteen pages, and I sent Laura to the studio to take the packet from Aunt Jan’s printer. It fluttered over her head, coming back. “The stapler, the stapler, before I lose any.” I sent her off to read it, but still had most of it read into my ear, feigning surprise at each new page.

“Oh, no, gramma, it says ‘do not staple the medical forms!’” I handed over the staple remover and Laura disappeared. She reappeared with the packet rippling in the breeze, again, and returned it, announcing “I kept the packing list.”

She may be packing right now!



Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Let’s all go to the doctor’s office and sneeze and cough together


Saturday afternoon, with Emily on a bus from Orlando to Hudson, Laura and I went to a hen party. We stayed overnight with Beth, Caroline, and Ruth, planning to go to a pancake breakfast in the morning.

It seems everyone began with great plans for the weekend. Francis intended to go to Columbus with his dad and a friend, on a very special project. When I inquired, not only had he not gone, he had missed the better part of the school week with the flu.

The hens, however, had a lovely dinner of salmon, scalloped potatoes and asparagus, plus strawberry shortcake for those with room, watched some TV and went to bed, remembering to set clocks ahead. When I woke at eight I found Laura, but no Beth. Laura was looking to see what bed Caroline might have removed to, and I poured coffee.

Soon the five foot detective returned. Aunt Beth isn’t here, Caroline isn’t here, and Aunt Beth’s car is gone. There on the other end of the counter was the note: “Caroline sick at 4 am; took her home.”  Ruth appeared and was brought up to date. On Beth’s written instructions, Grandma Ruth and Laura began wiping down doorknobs with alcohol.

Then the little hen and two grandma hens went to pancake breakfast and ate enough for five hens. We were outdone, though, by the little boy across the table, who went through seven pancakes flat out. Every time we looked up, his reorder paddle was high in the air.

And so we came home, did puddle about things, retrieved Emily at seven thirty, and called it a day.

Come Monday, I was sick. Come Tuesday, sicker. I picked up Laura from her after school job as Mrs. P’s organizer, and no doubt, a sick little girl. I found her sound asleep maybe thirty minutes after supper was finished. I called and cancelled an evening appointment.

All evening, across the hall, I listened to that kid cough that rises from the belly button. In four years Laura has barely been sick. And, at ten this morning we had to keep an appointment we’d waited on four months.

Laura got up as I was about to go to bed. Yes, she still wanted to go to the appointment. She drank a glass of water and went back to bed. I arm wrestled my conscience. Two sick people deliberately walking into a doctor’s office, how awful. On the other hand, another four month wait was an intolerable thought.

This morning I put a dose of cough suppressant down her throat. We agreed on lots of tissues, and ample hand sanitizer, and off we went, being as discreet as discreet about being sick.

This doctor’s office is in a satellite hospital building; like so many being added to the landscape. The hospital is Akron Children’s Hospital, the practice is pediatric. The waiting area is large, and empty when we went in. I felt like the pied piper; they came in a stream behind me.  Crying babies. Snotty nosed toddlers. Coughing everywhere.

I watched, astounded, as mothers wrestled with children. I watched, more astounded, fathers who did not. It seems to be a new world on that score. A diminutive princess, griping her father’s finger, crossing the room. A stout fellow perhaps up to walking, on the hip of his stocky father, just looking. Fathers with baby carriers and no mothers, in line to check in.  Not my daughters’ father, that’s for sure.

We made it through the appointment, through check out and through the first door before I felt the sneeze.  In the middle of the parking lot I was felled by the great sneeze attack; probably ten or twelve in a row. Awful.

Back in the car, a pink faced Laura waved her doctor’s pass. She had no intention of missing jazz band practice. In the olden days I would have said she was taking the cold right back where it came from. This time I decided we can just add Cleveland germs to the Hudson germ pool.

Now it is eight. Laura has been in bed since seven. I am determined to stay awake until nine.




Monday, March 14, 2016

Some kinda women!

That ATTITUDE pin made a world of difference!


A mutual friend took up the challenge.


I'm proud to be seen with either of them,
and that's a good thing,
as I often am.