Weaving A Gem Of A Life

I got the last 3 Friendship-made wraps woven, hemmed, washed, dried, pressed, and labeled. One was mailed yesterday, the other 2 will be today or tomorrow. They are very earthy colors of mostly greens, brown, and tans. The impact on the brown isn’t so noticeable, but isn’t it amazing how different the greens look with the different wefts? From left to right those wefts are hand painted, natural, and honey.

Meanwhile, I have continued to meet my goal of packing 2-3 boxes per day. Monday was a struggle, since I also had to mow the lawn & wack weeds. I’m thinking I’ll only have to do this almost-4-hour job one more time before I move. I hope I’m right about that.

Truth be told, one day I only got 1 box packed, but I did make 2 bags of garbage that day, AND got 2 drawers packed. What?! You’re packing drawers???

Yep. Another great hint from my recently-moved sister. This wouldn’t necessarily be something you’d want to do if you were doing the move yourself, but when you hire movers, it’s brilliant, just like her color coding hint.

You buy a roll of stretch wrap – in the stationery section of the discount store. It sticks only to itself…not just their advertising slogan but the actual truth. Then you go through your dresser drawer and get rid of the clothes you no longer wear. Fill the drawer with only things you really should move.

Then, with the drawer pulled out, wrap all the way around it a few times (from side to side) with the stretch wrap. Nothing will fall out in the move. If you want to be double-safe, go around the whole dresser (from front to back). I can’t move my dressers enough to do that without gouging the floor, plus couldn’t get underneath them well, but depending on your dresser you might be able to do so.

That’s a drawer from my lovely, old secretary. And it’s not wrapped fully to the front because of those curves, but it was the one I hadn’t yet pushed back in so I could photograph it. (Once the drawer is wrapped & pushed back in, you probably don’t want to pull it out again till it’s in its new location. I’m guessing it would have to be re-wrapped if you did.)

Since I’m doing a definite downsizing with the move, I need to go from something like 16 drawers in my kitchen down to something rational like 5. So I have to seriously think about what’s in all my current drawers, what should I throw out or donate, and what could/should live somewhere other than the kitchen.

Gee, I have office supplies in at least 2 kitchen drawers. They sure don’t need to be there; they should go in the secretary. Which used to be filled with mostly junk. Ergo the 2 bags of garbage. So now my office supplies are in 1 drawer in the secretary, another drawer (the one shown above) is filled with photographs, kids’ report cards, collectible stamps and the like. The last drawer…still empty waiting for me to decide what rightly belongs there.

I’ve used that stretch wrap for lots of things….like around the old wooden box filled with things like extension cords & hand tools. Around my bookcase’s removeable shelves. Around the extra reeds for my looms. Around pickup sticks, lease sticks, temples, and other weave-y tools. And as of this morning, around the loom itself!

This is my Macomber. If you own one, you know that one of its good features is that it’s really heavy so it doesn’t move at all when you’re weaving. When you’re moving, that’s also one of its bad features. Again, because I’m hiring movers I’m not concerned that they’ll have a problem with its weight, but I did want to make the move go as smoothly as possible, since I’m quite sure they will be unfamiliar with moving a weaving loom. So first I wrapped the apron cloth around the front beam and back beam, separately, of course. Then I took out the harnesses, removing both quite a bit of weight and the jiggling/swinging/moving parts that could potentially cause a problem during the move. Finally, I folded in both the breast & warp beams, wrapping around them and the beater bar many times to keep everything held together.

I’m so fortunate that my very organized sister moved so recently and came up with all these great tricks she happily passed on to me. Now I’m passing them on to you. Do share them freely!

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.

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.

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.

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.