One more thing…

Sometimes it seems like there is never enough time! Always one more thing to do, BUT, at least it all seems to be getting done. Most of the time it is a reasonable facsimile of wha I hoped to accomplish.  I am only a couple days late with doing my blog every two weeks. It feels almost magical when I get to cross off a line of my to do list.   I told myself I would do it-keep up the blog and chart my weaving progress  when I created my resolutions and goals for the year. One can see how little I have done on the Kona Pink sunset(definitely doesn’t have the same flair as Kona Orange-needs a renaming!) and/or that I haven’t started the piece for the connections show next to it-yet. In two weeks I will have until August to see how much weaving I can get done. I am really excited about doing an exhibit at Village Wools, but need some new work for it. I am also really looking forward to teaching and have programmed in time to actually do some research and visit people.   I did finish the sampler for my something -new something old class I am teaching at CNCH. Best News Yet!! I haven’t crashed into a corner-yet- in a despondent suicidal heap-Okay, Okay, so that is a little over the edge, but so is staring at several hundred, thousand, million slides and trying to put .them into a coherent useful thought pattern and scanning them into the computer. Okay-so digital images beats masking slides and remembering which is the front of the slide and is it upside down in the projector and will the order be scrambled before I reach my destiny. Best of all No more upset slide trays! I can wear the lecture around my neck on a stick. I can still remember teaching colour theory and tapestry in Atlanta, when someone decided an already crowded elevator could stand one more person if they got a running start to the crowd in already pact elevator. Slide trays flipping into the air and wafting not so slowly over all of  the inhabitants of the elevator and everyone helping me pick them up as the jerk ran off to is so important meeting. Perhaps he thought he was going to be facing a lynch mob for his rudeness. I was so grateful to Marti Fleisher for helping me get my slides back into the trays while I gave my lecture. Changing technology from old to new is always s-o-o much fun. I still thing that there is something to be said  for the old ways. I have spent the last several days converting slide lectures-mostly technical and adding new slides that I have done in the past into PowerPoint presentations. I love the process and enjoy creating the pages, but it takes time. Time that could be spent weaving I can understand why instructors are printing out the presentations in little booklets and selling them or using them for handouts. I had never thought about doing this until I was at Small Expressions in Grinnell and saw a couple that Daryl Lancaster had done. What a great idea!

I still have the great philosophical debate in my psyche as to whether I would rather be a Luddite or an Albertinian Monk. Wonder if Miller ever knew how influential is story would become to some after his death. I think it’s the only thing he ever wrote-maybe maybe not. I should go to the internet and look it up-how funny. How ironic! How repurposed. 

      Could I live my Grandmother’s life? I would miss my music and my IPOD, but as long as I had my loom, books and journals I think I would be happy or at least content. The more the world increases the technology I need to keep up with and the instant -rarely deep conversations of the internet the more tempting it becomes. Everything seems to be getting into smaller and smaller bytes.  There is never enough quiet. Even at night one can hear the buzz of electrical circuits that power our life’s. AND, YES, young family members, there really were typewriters and now they are being repurposed in to jewellery.

So what have I been doing for last two weeks? Very little weaving and a lot of “paper” work. Pat and I met our deadline to have the So Warped  book ready for the printer so that we could have a final galley to take to CNCH with us. I basically finished my Power Point stuff Soumack, Old Believer lectures and updated my 101 with images from the SO Warped book. I have perhaps 5 inches woven on my soumack sampler for my soumack class. Tomorrow I will speed weave and hopefully finish it Saturday, which is wha I was able to do.YEH!!! No more bits and pieces of disorganized soumack samples floating in and out of the suitcase. Sunday I will make a dozen tassels as samples for OB Tassel class. And then I am ready to pack. Pat and I will leave Thursday morning. It will take 9 and ¾ hours from here to there. As long as we miss the traffic slow downs in the bay area. One just has to love GPS’s. We will be home early Monday. No site seeing, no museums, no side trips etc. etc. A week later I leave for Las Vegas, which is looking like it’s going to be a great class. Their looms are warped and ready to weave. That is so cool.   Hopefully, I’ll get to see something besides the airport. All of the above stuff is so  worth it when one finally gets a chance to teach it and someone “get it.”

Last night I received an e-mail of the Fantastic Fibers 2010 show. I received-I am not sure if you would call it an award-a special Jurors Choice recognition. Pretty cool! I am directly under Maximo Lauras second prize award on the page.

“Sic transit mundus” (“Thus passes the world”).