Like clockwork

A few days ago I got honest with myself and admitted the new LeClerc loom will not fit in my car. I knew I could ask my sister, but her quilting business is so busy she's booked through July. However, no matter which way I measured the back of my car, I was two inches shy. I asked Jan, Tom agreed to lend his truck, and today was the road trip.

I bought this loom sort of locally, from Linda Bertanzetti, who is a nationally known historian, collector, preserver and broker. I should have taken pictures of some of what she has collected and on display, but it was a bit overwhelming, and I was intent on keeping my footing in all the old, restored farm buildings we visited. 

Jan and I set out on a road trip on a beautiful day today. Blue skies, big clouds, leafing trees, nice highway, charming country roads, and a spot on GPS that told us what drive to turn into. Linda, Hal and Jan loaded the loom into Tom's truck, and we came back from Columbiana the same way we went.

My intent was to leave the loom in our drive, for Laura and me to manhandle into the house, but Tom met Jan and me at the house and helped get it in the door and into the "loom room". Laura went in there the other night, inhaled deeply of the smell of thread and announced that now it smelled like a Loom Room in there.

I already ordered a spool rack from the rug loom company on the other side of my state, and I should have that in a week. It has to be built! I bought an electric bobbin winder from Linda today. Back home, I set about accumulating the few missing pieces. I bought forty spools to fill with warp thread with my electric bobbin winder and put on the spool rack to put onto the loom.

I added a LeClerc tension box to the pile I was accumulating at my favorite weaving supply house, and then said Nancy, the clerk, needed to help me. "I need thread guides for nineteen two inch bouts on the LeClerc, so that's nineteen times four, but my calculator is on my phone, and the phone is in my ear!"

A wonderful laugh came over the line. "But you can only fill one bout at a time! Eight thread guides!" I laughed too, and said that was one more fact a massive brain injury stole from me. Nancy knows I am weaving towels on a borrowed loom, and pointed out that all the cross median shuttle throwing already done must be paying off, as I knew exactly what else I needed.

The Loom Room looks cramped now, but I think this time next week it will be a model miniature studio. I looked up "cross median training". Cross training for short. It's like touching your left knee with your right hand. It enhances neuron paths in the brain. Just more physical therapy! Well, mental, this time.