The Day After..

Christmas always flies by!! We had a wonderful few days of family and friends, eating too much, opening gifts and wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas!! You've not lived til you've had prime rib and sides made by a really good Greek cook...

The past week just flew by. I did somehow manage to get 4 more rugs woven on the new warp. These are all ready to go, hemmed and just waiting to be given or shipped off to friends. The next rugs I weave will be ones that I'll save for May when I'm featured artist at The Art Market Gallery here in Knoxville. I have to figure out how to display them yet but I think a variety of rugs will be a nice change there from what I usually have when it's my turn to be featured artist! 

The next rug I'm weaving on the loom will be using only 4 colors of loopers, 3 of them shades of purple and the other that hot pink. Surely there'll be some Grandma who has to get it for her granddaughter's bedroom, right?! Here's hoping anyway.

Inbetween, I also found time to check the Singer website to see how old my little featherweight sewing machine is. It's hard to tell from the numbers but the letters AL before the numbers indicate that my machine was made in 1954, just 2 years younger than I am! Makes me feel old when we talk about the featherweights being wonderful antiques that still continue to sew well.  I suspect that as time goes by these will become harder and harder to find. I've found them at the quilt conference vendor areas. There's a guy that always comes to the conference in Pigeon Forge in March. He's getting older and has a helper now that comes with him. I hope that someone will take over for him when he no longer does the shows. I think it takes a real tinkerer to keep the machines going and to repair the ones that haven't been loved in awhile.

I had a short list of wishes for my Christmas gifts. I wanted DVDs to watch while I weave. Here are most of the ones I got. Bones, NCIS and NCIS LA are on their way so once I finish watching the last 3 seasons of LOST, I'll be digging into these. It'll probably take me til next winter before I get through them all but it certainly will make the time fly as I throw the shuttle!!

My DH got himself a new TV for his studio recently so I got the old 32" flat screen TV he'd had in there. It's nice to have a bigger screen to watch but the sound isn't as loud as my old smaller TV. He's such a sweetie, tho, he found some speakers and connected them to the TV and I can turn them on and have sound coming from behind me while I weave. I just need it louder when I'm weaving the production warps. That's when the shuttle flies and it gets pretty loud with that and you can't hear the voices (I listen more than watch the shows). When I do rugs, it's slower and I can hear it fine. It'll be sometime in January before I get back into the normal production.

I hope that each of you had a wonderful weekend and look forward to a great New Year!! I don't do any kind of resolutions, just plan to continue to make things. I'm behind on baby blankets for friends (a boy is due by summer and I know there are others) so will try to get a few quilts made as well plus the projects that are sitting there waiting to be sewn.....plus the weaving, that 20/2 I bought at Midwest just because the colors were so pretty and the cottolin (same reason, different projects) or the 10/2 cotton that will be scarves inspired by Sheila O'Hara's class....so here's to just keeping going and making things that are pretty for people to enjoy!!
Til next week.
Carol