Overwhelmed

The feeling of helplessness in the face of so much world turmoil leaves me on the whole sick in the pit of my stomach. The last time I was totally invested in change was the Women's March on Washington, 2017. Now I support so much with my money, and of course it helps, but the change? Barely perceptible. I just am overwhelmed.

Life goes on, we know. I am busy because it is all I know. I suppose I should thank the universe for my parents and grandparents, who only knew working to survive and prepare for the future. And then, my future is closer to closing than it has ever been. That's an amusing observation.

It was a busy week in the studio. Turnaround has been faster than I ever recall. Without the back and forth of changing out empty spools of warp I stayed focused on turning and wound on all eleven bouts of thread in three hours. Jan says it was two and a half hours.

I spent this week on some errands, and tying the old warp threads to new. My birthday balloons are being overwhelmed. Two have put down their heads. I wonder why they seem to be going down in order. The white was first, last weekend. Now the yellow. Blue next?

The warp is ready for weaving. One of the most uniform in some time. I spent an hour or more last night, retying each bout to the apron rod. I'm weaving the first set of towels in garnet, on the shelf back there.

Let's end the insanity!

Half and more of the population of this country is subjugated to the will of others. 

A woman in Texas was charged with murder following a miscarriage. The hospital where she had the miscarriage turned her in, when she said she had induced the miscarriage. 

This all happened according to Texas law. 

Everyone involved followed the Texas law. The hospital turned her in.  The grand jury indicted her. A sheriff arrested her. The woman went to jail. The county prosecutor dropped charges; the woman is freed. The prosecutor said he could find no Texas law under which to prosecute her.

This is insane. That any of it happened is insane. As insane as Republican gerrymandering maps still be thrown out for gerrymandering. As insane as voter suppression laws.

What will be made illegal next? Oh, wait. Being gay. Talking about human sexuality. Reading about it in books that have been in print for half a century. "Don't say gay" legislation has just been introduced in my state. In Ohio! 

The oppressors on the whole are white men, and some men of color who seem to enjoy the power of oppression. They are holding women in this country to their will. Progressive voters must clear higher and higher hurdles.  Children who know from the day they can tell a parent they want a ballerina costume, not cowboy, that they are in the wrong body.

The only solution I know is to convince all eligible voters to vote. Erasing the bigotry of powerful men will not happen over night; it will take time. But it's time for the rolling tide of enlightenment to overtake, sweep away the lawmakers whose laws punish most everyone except themselves.

2 1/2 hours--just normal, not a record

I set out to tell you about warping a loom. My sister came to help, switching out new tubes of thread for empty tubes, so I could keep on turning the crank and not have to attend to that end of the business. A friend of hers called, and when Jan mentioned what was going on, she heard "Oh, can I come watch?" People sat that a lot. Jan sent her some pictures, so I'll use them.

When Jan arrived, I'd just finished weaving to the end of the warp. My arms and back were pretty tired. On my own I might have called it a day, at eleven in the morning. But, my little sister had given over part of her day to helping me, and it wasn't her fault I didn't go back after supper last night and finish the weaving. So, we ate lunch and started in.

There are maybe twenty half pound tubes of 8/2 cotton thread on the shelf. To start, some of them must go on the empty pegs on the rack to the right. There are 40 pegs, some of which you can't even see.

OK, all thread loaded and pulled to the tension box. Three full spools are visible here and probably will make it through the process. All the rest probably will be replaced. Birthday balloons in the background.

Here is all the thread, from the rack, through the tension box and being wound onto a bout. The threads go through two reeds, and over a peg in the tension box. The reeds control the threads to 2", the width of each bout. The peg adds tension to the thread. You also can see thread guides on the bout edges. These keep the threads from inadvertently slipping into the bout on either side.

Now for the real work. There is a crank that fits one end of the beam, and there is a weaver, turning the crank to turn the beam and draw the warp through the tension box and into the 2" bout. There are 125 turns of thread on each bout. I have calculated the yardage and the shrink and know my material costs. All that calculation is in a little notebook in the other room. Someday I may think about it and share the information.

Here are all 11 bouts wound on and ready to tie to the old warp. Everything is easy after the beam is loaded, and I'll probably take some sweet time getting to tying. On the arm of the chair is the medium grey I just took off, and under that some more cream, to finish the warp.

Done! Left on the shelf: seven tubes of warp. Had I needed even one more turn, six of those tubes would now be on the spool rack and only one tube left on the shelf.

Looking forward to graupel

I've been busy this week, with doctor appointments I can't seem to shake loose of and a warp that has stretched. I would like to empty my loom of the current warp by Saturday so my sister can help me on Sunday, replacing spools of warp thread when they run out.

There is my spool rack, top to bottom. Some pegs are empty; I'm using the smaller spools to weave off the remnant of my warp. They will be filled with new spools when we begin. Most of the other spools will need replacing, and that will be Jan's job. There is nothing worse than walking around the loom to get to the rack to tie on a new spool of thread!

I guess spring is coming; there is a mass of green bulb leaves in the garden. And, the garden needs raked so badly; a job I still cannot tackle. Out in the back, near the woods, I see a single yellow daffodil, and several stands of daffodil leaves scattered about. I see the squirrels have been very busy these last several years.

The weather remains very unpredictable, swinging wildly from highs of sixty to highs of thirty. Today was mid fifties and then mid forties through the weekend. Those are the highs. Overnight lows still warrant an extra blanket. Therein comes the graupel. 

April showers bring May flowers, says the old adage. The falling overnight temps in the rain can bring snow. Graupel is not hail, it is not sleet. It forms when water droplets freeze on falling snow.

Over for another year

Ann asked how my birthday went and I said "It's over for another year!" Of course it's generally fun to celebrate another trip around the sun. This year, this las six months, have been a bit of a bummer. I need to be off this walker, but I'm still three weeks from a new physical therapy evaluation. My cane hangs on the walker and I execute short walks on it, when my hip isn't hurting too much. It's snowing at the moment, another less than stellar event.

Nevertheless, Beth and Ruth took me to lunch today. We went to Burntwood Tavern, a good central meeting place for the three of us. I had fish, Beth had salmon and Ruth had sliders.

The rest of my lunch went home with Beth to become a fish sammy.

Beth's lunch became history.

And those last two sliders went home with Ruth. We could just phone it in and meet the servers at the table. We each have the same every time.

My birthday present was marzipan. After some unkind soul at UPS scarfed down my Wisconsin marzipan, Beth sent Bill on a marzipan mission. We're talking serious marzipan, here. I opened the marzipan potatoes and thought I'd work through a row. By the end of the afternoon, every potato had crossed my lips. The rest of the haul is on a table across the room. It's probably safe for a while.