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Packing & weaving

About 2 years ago my middle sister moved after decades in her house. She’s given me lots of cool tips about how to make the move go more smoothly. One is to do color coding. Put a colored piece of paper on each box, and key it to a piece of colored paper on the door of the room it goes in. That way movers don’t have to stop & read a handwritten label, nor do I need to be in 1,000 places at once giving detailed directions for every single box.

I think it’s brilliant. Although I don’t know if she did this, for my brain I needed to also write the room name on each piece of paper. That way I didn’t need to keep the color code in my head as I packed. This is, of course, in addition to writing the contents on the outside of the box.

color coded labels

I’ve color coded each box as I packed it, plus the many boxes of my yarn stash and finished products that were already in clear plastic bins.

I think there’s some kind of formula that I haven’t exactly worked out yet, but it goes something like this: for every box packed there will be at least 1 small bag of garbage and 1 small bag of items to be donated. I just keep making trip after trip with these things. I’m so glad I’m doing this work now…it should save me lots of time at the unpacking end. Although I’m certain I will open more than one box in my new house and say, “Why the heck did I save this?”

Even with all the packing, I’m still making good progress on weaving those baby wraps. Here’s what the warp looks like in my favorite position as I’m beaming it. These colors are pretty accurate.

RD's warp on the back beam

Starting Monday I got the warp measured, beamed, and threaded through heddles and reed. I’ve already got more than half of RD’s wrap woven. She requested a handpainted weft of a cotton-hemp blend, and Susan over at Iowaweaver did a terrific job. I couldn’t capture the feel of the wrap in one shot, so you get one from each edge. The colors are more realistic near the edges; as it approaches the center, the colors appear much more yellowed than in real life.

RD's wrap, left selvedge

RD's wrap, right end

I find it interesting that the heart pattern shows up well in the ivory, brown, and olive, but disappears almost completely in the pale lime. Huh. Another learning experience for me.

Tomorrow – guess what? More packing & more weaving.

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