Inspirations

First of all, I finally got my scarf finished with the fringe twisted and the whole thing thrown into my washing machine to wash!

The color's not the greatest here but the real colors are rich and vibrant. I like how one is able to change layers to bring the other color up and the top color down. With the 2 squares next to each other you had to change the shed each time you wanted another color to appear. That takes time and concentration but so worth the effort.
I plan to wear this scarf this Saturday evening at a function. I don't like to wear black but I will this time just to show off the color of the scarf. I really wish I had more time to weave because there are so many possibilities for scarves done in 2 warps like this. I did pick up the perle cotton color card from Yarn Barn at Midwest!! With the colors I already got, just adding a few would bring the possibilities for warp combinations pretty endless! Then deciding on what pattern to develop as you weave, hmmmm.....

The other class that I took as a full day class was making a scissor sheath using birch bark as the base and decorating it with porcupine quills and attaching sea grass to the edge. That was beyond fun and I did buy enough birch bark to make another scissor sheath. I have some porcupine quills already and found them a few days ago. There are more than I remembered there and some already dyed so I can make an interesting sheath for another pair of scissors. This one is fairly small and my little scissors are too fat for it so I will just have to buy another pair of scissors to store in it!

So, the inspiration. Well, this past weekend Knoxville hosted the Wing Ding convention. That's the convention for owners of Honda Gold Wing motorcycles. We had about 15,000 of them all over town. I think that Friday evening they closed Kingston Pike and some other roads for their parade through town over to Chilhowee Park. I wish I could have been on the side of the road watching them go by. As it was, I did have to drive around some just in my regular errands and I made some observations.
First of all, these are pretty incredible machines. I don't ride on a motorcycle. Growing up in Canada, we didn't have alot of summer and something like that would have been a bit frivolous. These were often 3 wheel machines. Most of the time the double wheels were in the back, kind of like a tricycle, but also I saw several that had the double wheels in front. I"m sure there's a term for that but I have no idea! When you would pull up next to them, every one of them was driven by someone our age. These people aren't letting their age keep them from doing what they love, riding with their face in the wind! Usually they were couples. Many of them had little trailers behind them. It was just so cool to see.
I pulled up to a stop light and saw a motorcycle with a little trailer about to go on their light. I'd noticed the driver did not have his feet on the ground. Then saw that he had a little side car on there as well. There were 3 people riding that motorcycle!! Nothing was stopping them from all going!! I just made me smile to see them.
Yesterday while driving by a motorcycle I saw that the lady was driving and her guy was behind her. Normally it's the other way but, hey, let us have fun too. Didn't seem to bother him any!
The best tho, was as we were driving down Alcoa Hwy and the motorcycle had a small trailer behind them. What was on the trailer was the kicker. They had a motorized wheel chair on it!!!
People like that inspire me. They're not going to let age get them down.
We're all crazy about weaving and I like to think of us kind of like those guys on the motorcycles. We're going to weave as long as we possibly can. We're collecting enough yarn and looms to keep us busy for many years.  We'll just keep on going, doing what we love. Take classes, bug each other and just learn as much as we can about the weave structures to weave neat things and just watch the fabric develop as we change sheds and throw shuttles.
Now, how cool is that!!
Carol