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Truth be told, I could have posted as early as Tuesday, but as you might imagine, I’ve been a tad busy. 🙂
The movers transported all (most, really) of my belongings on Saturday. I can’t say enough good things about them — Interior Moving — use them if you have the chance.
I also can’t say enough good things about my kids. My daughter was here for at least 6 hours on Saturday and got my kitchen completely put away, set up, and organized. Terrific job. My son had to work, but came by immediately after work to save us. There was a…problem.
I had taken careful measurements to make sure the Macomber could get into the new weaving studio. Knew it’d be tight through doorways, but it’d work. It never occurred to me to take measurements of the little counterbalance loom. Hah! That’s where the problem was. This loom doesn’t fold and was too wide for all my doorways. Something had to be taken apart. That’s where my son stepped up to the plate. He removed one of the sliding glass doors & the loom slid through. Then, obviously, replaced it.
My couch is short but puffy…just like me. The movers had to remove its stubby legs, the front door, and the hallway overhead light fixture to get it in.
But all went well. I am really pleasantly surprised by a few facts:
- I did a very good job of getting rid of unnecessary things. My little house doesn’t look crowded, and in fact I need to buy a few things.
- The unpacking is speeding along. Only 1.5 boxes left on this floor to unpack & put away, none in the basement, none in the garage. Yes, I have many boxes in the attic, but they won’t get unpacked. Christmas stuff, craft stuff, winter clothes, and things I may end up getting rid of a year from now (that’s the time frame I gave myself to re-look at those boxes).
Other really great things:
- After several technical glitches, my new iPhone is now working fine. Never having had a smart phone before, using the keypad takes some getting used to…I’m remarkably S…L…O…W right now. My internet & TV are also now both functioning well.
- I have terrific neighbors. Steve & Barb are very friendly, sociable, and just plain swell. Bella, their dog, will get to know me. Since I’m on a corner, they’re my only immediately-next-door neighbors.
- My son is a really handy guy. He’s helped me with several things already…today I hope to hang the eye hooks for the warping valet so I can get a warp wound this weekend!
- My daughter has helped with what seems like hundreds of things. I can call on her almost any time and get a speedy answer or extra set of hands.
- As I type, my car is at a wonderful local garage getting an oil change, inspection, and heat shield rattle fixed.
- In an hour or so the guy will be here to replace my old garage door opener with one that has an electric eye and auto-stop function.
- Monday afternoon the landscaper guy will come to talk to me about my plans for removing some things and planting others.
- I can easily walk to all of these places, and lots more: the library, the car repair place, the local hardware store, several restaurants, the bank (I have yet to change banks from my southern tier option), and my kids’ houses.
Best good thing: I LOVE MY NEW HOUSE!!! When I went back to Friendship to do the final car load/clean thing, I expected it’d be pretty emotional for me. After all, my husband & I built that home beam by beam, nail by nail, with our own two hands, and I’d lived there for 30+ years. But you know what? It wasn’t. It didn’t feel like home. My new house already felt like home, even though I’d been here for less than 48 hours at that point.
So while I’d love to give you more info, more news, the reality is I still have many things to take care of, like cancelling my old cell service, changing my business address, researching doctors, carrying all that cardboard out to the garage for recycling, finding area rugs for the living room and spare room…you get the idea.
Just a quick post…as of this morning I have no TV or internet at old house…cancelled my service. Not exactly sure when I’ll have it live at my new house. So don’t expect to see any posts from me, or get an email response, for the next few (several?) days.
Brought my laptop to the library to post this while I’m on my way to the dump. Again!
I thought it might be enlightening for both baby wrap moms and weavers to see what’s involved in preparing a yarn order for my baby wraps. To make the yarn purchases most cost effective and to get a decent supply on hand, I always order the yarn for 2 warps (usually 4 baby wraps) at one time.
The first page starts with the first 2 moms to go on the loom, in this case JMC & AF.
Step 1: go to my records and get the finished length JMC wants. That’s always given to me in meters (4.2M). I convert that to inches, (181″), then add on to that for the length I need to weave to allow for shrinkage (215″).
Step 2: do the same thing with mom #2.
Step 3: add those two lengths together, then add on the take up & loom waste (non-weavers: you have to put more on the loom than you need; it’s all about the weaving process).
Step 4: go to my records and get the color names & color order of the warp. Calculate the number of threads of each color needed to achieve the design. (This is actually a double-check; I already did it when planning with mom.)
Step 5: take those thread counts and determine how many yards of each color are needed for the warp. Then figure out the number of ounces of each color.
Step 6: calculate the number of yards and ounces needed for each of the wefts.
Now do the same thing for the other 2 baby wraps.
Now that you know the number of ounces needed of each color, get another piece of paper. Record each color name & number, by warp, and the number of ounces needed. Add these columns together to get a total amount needed.
Go to the shelves and weigh each of the colors of yarn on hand. Subtract that amount from the total need to determine the amount to order. The last thing you want to happen is to run out of a color when you’re warping or weaving, so BE SURE TO HAVE A CUSHION – ORDER EXTRA!
Now you can finally go to The Woolery and place your order. I always do my ordering online, and I do it by starting at my Guild’s Facebook page. Why? The Woolery has a Guild support program, with the Guild getting credit for a portion of each order placed this way. Since I order a lot of yarn in a year for my baby wraps, I’m happy to help out the Guild…it’s a win-win!
Of course, this can only happen after 4 moms have completed all their planning — warp colors and layout, weft colors, weave pattern, and length. So there are hours to get to this point.
I placed the order for the yarn for these 4 wraps on Wednesday afternoon. It will be the first yarn order to arrive at my new house – a milestone!
I’ve learned many new things in the past several days. Here are some of them.
- I will close on my new house on Thursday, August 6.
- On that day I’ll go to Lowes to buy a frig (not included in my new house) and Sleep City to buy a mattress (not moving my old one-I’ve bought an air mattress to use temporarily).
- The mover is already booked solid on Friday, so I’ll be moving on Saturday, August 8.
- Lowes will do Sunday deliveries, BUT they are already booked that far out. In fact, when I buy my refrigerator on Thursday they’ll give me a delivery date, which will likely be about a week away.
- Fortunately my daughter, who lives just a few blocks away, has a dorm-sized frig I can borrow and use in the interim. And she has plenty of space for my currently meager freezer stuff. (I’ve been hard at work emptying freezer and pantry.)
- Although not confirmed yet, I’ll likely close on my current/old house on Monday or Tuesday of next week. That’ll give me a chance to get back down here and do whatever last minute sweeping/vacuuming/etc. is needed, as well as picking up anything I forgot or otherwise left behind. I may even decide to dig up a few of my perennials to bring with me. Or not.
- After opening 5-count-em-5 boxes, I found the box with my knitting pattern books in it. Remarkably, I’d written ‘patterns’ on the outside of it. If only I’d remembered I’d done that, I wouldn’t have had to open the first 4!
- I pored over knitting baby blanket patterns and couldn’t make a decision – too many lovely choices. I looked at free patterns online, which only made the decision harder. So I wrote down the yardages needed for the 3 patterns I liked most. I’d just buy enough yarn for the one that used the most yarn and would have some left. Maybe.
- Then I started looking at the colors of the yarn I’d purchased for my niece. I didn’t want to use the same yellow I’d used for her blanket, and most of their other neutrals didn’t send me. So I spent more time online looking for a nice, soft, organic cotton in the size I wanted — sport/DK. Not baby, not worsted, sport weight. I found a really lovely yarn. Hope, by Kollage. It’s organic, grown & spun in the USA. And 10% of their profits support local charities!
- The best price I found was from CarolsCabin on Etsy, and the seller just couldn’t have been easier to work with. I had the yarn mailed to my daughter’s house. No point shipping it here for me to move, and without a clear sense of when I’d be official at my new house, that’s what I’ve done with several things I’ve ordered in the last week or so. Although the yarn apparently comes in a variety of colors, I couldn’t find any, and thought that natural was a good choice for a baby, anyway.
- You know that saying about tasks taking up as much time as you allot to them? I’ve never spent so much time being so unproductive. Thinking, online research, planning, but very little doing. I’m pretty good with being a temporary slug, knowing that it’ll all be over and I’ll be a busy beaver again soon. On many fronts.
If you’ve ever bought a house and moved, you know there’s plenty of hurry up & wait that goes on. I’ve been packing a bit at a time for weeks, and am down to not being able to do much more till I have an firm close date and move date. I’ve already been in the position of having to open a few boxes to get things out that I packed too soon – grrr!
Meanwhile I can’t weave, so as planned, I’ve been working on a complete re-design of my website. Needless to say, web design is a language unto itself, and like any other language it’s a use-it-or-lose-it thing. Since it’s been years since I’ve done it, I had two false starts, a couple hours each, before I got myself going in the right direction. Technically, that is. I’m not sure that the design will be what I want, but I had to start somewhere.
What do you think of the design? Of course, you’re seeing an image of a sample page. Few of the links are built yet. A page like this one, that’s mostly text, is the easy part. Designing the product pages will be much more time consuming to make them look good, I think. Plus I’ll have to figure out just what I can show…will my website ever be such that people can order directly from the web, or it will be more of a gallery, showing examples of my work? The latter is certainly easier and doesn’t require constant updating, but….I don’t know.
Please give me your constructive criticism of the design and the gallery-vs.-product order pages.
Need for feedback aside, I can do just so much of this technical stuff, which requires lots of sitting on my butt and tons of mental energy, in a day. Then I need to do something else. As noted, I’ve got most of the packing done. It’s been way too hot to work in the garden. I’m learning just how much the weaving calms me, fills my time with happiness, makes me feel productive.
Since I can’t weave, I am working with a few moms to plan their baby wrap warps so I can order yarn and get going quickly in my new studio. (I assume that I’ll choose to unpack a bit at a time, too, just like the packing.) Some moms work faster than others and I’m currently at a standstill, so I’ve been thinking about baby blankets, since there will be a new baby in the family late this year.
I knit a baby blanket for my niece (South Carolina) from organic cotton last year. Should I use the same yarn and knit one for my nephew (Dallas)? That makes sense and it’s definitely not too early to get started, but I can’t order the yarn yet. Why? All my knitting books are…packed, of course! Should I weave him one out of the really soft cotton flannel I like so much? It’s my absolute favorite for baby blankets. Or maybe I should make him one of bamboo? Or the cotton I use for my wraps, but sett much more loosely?
I think knit is the way to go. Should I try to figure out which box the knitting books are in? Should I??
I’m at loose ends.
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