Weaving Class

Because I need yet another craft to keep me busy, I’ve really wanted to try weaving for a while now.  Unfortunately, a decent loom costs a fair bit, and I hated to spend the money on it and risk finding out that I didn’t really enjoy it.  After looking around, I found a place that offers classes.  I had my first class Tuesday night, and I think that I’m really going to enjoy this.

Class wasn’t quite what I had expected.  I signed up for a beginners class (obviously), so I expected that there would be a group of us learning at the same time/pace.  Turns out that while there were several people there, everyone else was already working on projects and I was the only beginner.  That actually works better for me – I can learn at my own pace without having to wait for everyone else to catch up, or holding them back.

The teacher, who is also a Sherri, showed me how to use the warp board to prepare the warp threads and then how to thread the reed.  I finished that part before running out of time.  Next week I get to finish attaching the warp threads (don’t know what this next part is called) and then I assume that I’ll get to start actually weaving!

My only complaint so far is that while Sherri is showing me how to do stuff, she’s not really explaining anything, and I really want the explanation.  For example she wrapped a guide on the warp board, but didn’t explain how she knew how long it needed to be and how many threads were needed.  So of course first thing Wednesday am I ordered a weaving book, it’s supposed to arrive Friday.

I’m looking forward to the next class, and already picturing my own loom set up.  This could get really expensive!!

Injured Boo Boo

Rascal, our Australian Cattle Dog or Red Heeler (blues are more common), has always been a very active dog.  For about the first year and a half we had her, we literally had to take her to the park for at least 2 hours a day to get rid of all that excess energy.  That didn’t get rid of ALL the energy – just the excess.  And boy-howdy, the days we weren’t able to take her to the park…well, we still don’t talk about THOSE days very often!

Now that she’s almost 9 years old she still loves to play and has absolutely no care for what injuries she might have – or incur!  I’ve only ever heard her yelp in pain twice:  the first time she managed to burn her nose on the muffler of a car; the second time was when she cornered a porcupine…you can imagine how that one turned out.

Over the last several months (longer really, but more noticeably lately) Rascal began to favor her back right leg.  We took her to the vet where he x-rayed her and discovered an injury to her spinal cord near her hips.  The result is similar to a pinched nerve, so it flares up when she’s too active (which is always).  While there’s a surgery we could attempt, our awesome vet says that there’s only a 50/50 chance it would help her and that because she’s so active he doesn’t think that she would heal well from the surgery itself, and so he doesn’t recommend the surgery for her.  (Talk about a run-on sentence!)

So we’ve got some medicine for when it’s too bad, and in the meantime we’re to keep her from jumping around as much as possible.  Unfortunately, this means that she can no longer play her favorite game which is chase the tennis ball while leaping around and ricocheting the ball as long as she can.

Looks like we’re going to be doing a lot of walking this summer.

Boring

I have  a two day accounting conference on Monday and Tuesday.  I’ve prepped some easy knitting to take with me – straight stockinette stitch so I don’t have to remember any patterns.

We have to do this conference every year for CPE.  There’s a couple other much shorter ones we do as well, but this one has always offered food and snacks over both days and you got breaks where you got to actually go outside.  Unfortunately this one is at the Cox Convention Center this year.  Downtown.  On the first day of the round two basketball playoffs.  Downtown.  Right across the street from the arena.  Downtown with half the parking garages closed.  And depending on where we are located in the convention center we may or may not have time to go outside during breaks.

If you can’t tell, I’m not really looking forward to this one.  They will definitely get a big fat zero on venue for this years conference.

But I should get a lot of knitting done!

Frustrated Knitting

I’m working on Imagine When and I absolutely love the pattern, and I really love my yarn:  Malabrigo Sock in #855 Aquas (sorry, I haven’t taken any pictures yet).  But I’ve dropped the needles TWICE now.  The first time I finished 7 of 11 repeats for section 2 before dropping the needle.  I was unable to figure out how to fix the little picot edge, kept dropping more stitches, got frustrated, and ripped the whole thing out.  After waiting a few days, I cast on again and got all the way to the final repeat of section 2 – only 6 rows remaining – and dropped that stupid picot edge.

I was getting tired and I knew I should stop, but I really wanted to finish that section and decided to just push through.  Damn it!

This time I put it aside, and when I get home this evening I’ll try to figure out how to fix that picot.  If I can’t, I’ve got to figure out how to do an after-the-fact lifeline because I don’t want to rip the whole thing out again and those stitches are slippery little things.

Poor Chris took the brunt of my frustration after the first mishap.  He saw me drop the needle last night and his eyes got really big and I could see his whole body tense up, ready to run for his life.  I had to laugh as I set it aside and told him it would wait until tomorrow.

Now I’m wondering if I shouldn’t pick up some wooden needles, just to be on the safe side.