Snow!!

Hooray! It's snowing! How beautiful!

I know a lot of you will think I'm crazy for saying that, but the url for this blog isn't skiingweaver.blogspot.com for nothing... I love winter. I love to ski. I love, love, love snow. I'm a New Englander through and through, I love each season, though winter just might be my favorite (I like summer, but it doesn't like me - the sun is my Irish skin's nemesis). It took me a while to realize this - that and living in Texas for five years, where there are no seasons, despite what the natives will tell you. There's hot and hotter and maybe, if you're lucky, some rain in March. At least we lived in Austin, an all-around cool town, but I could never, ever live there again, I had to hide from the sun 11 months out of the year. Even my Latino hubby thought it was just too darn sunny (going to college in Boston made him fall in love with seasons, too, I think). Sun every day gets really boring, in my opinion.

Anyway, if we get enough snow maybe we'll get Bella's (toddler daughter) cute little mini-sized cross-country skis out later in the afternoon and let her stomp around the yard in them. Living vicariously - I can't exactly ski while I'm the size of a whale, though, who knows, maybe Conall (son-to-be-at-any-minute) was just waiting for a good snowstorm to be born.

Yikes.

Hopefully not, my poor mother will be driving down Route 2 in the snow if I do manage to go into labor while this is happening. On the bright side, the in-laws (who do not like snow - understandable, they're Puerto Rican) left yesterday to visit my brother-in-law and his wife in Brooklyn, so they're not having to drive through this.

But, at any rate, it's snowing, and it finally looks like Christmas, a few days late...

Weaving? Oh yeah, this is a weaving blog, mostly, right? Well, the red/gold chenille scarf is off the loom, the fringe is twisted, it's washed and dried and just waiting for it's close-up. Hmm, it might look very nice photographed against snow if I can figure out how to do that without getting it all wet/snowy (though that wouldn't hurt it any)...

And the next zephyr/bamboo scarf is wound and sleyed (meaning, I have wound the warp and threaded the ends through the reed) and is waiting for me to thread it through the heddles. Usually I really enjoy threading the heddles, but that's another thing that's gotten awkward with the big ole pregnant belly. It's a time-consuming process and I get pretty stiff sitting on the floor while I do it - normally I'd kneel or sit on the bench behind the loom but that's not working for me at all at the moment, harumph.

It is interesting, though, how much time goes into dressing the loom - getting the warp all ready to weave - as opposed to the actual weaving/shuttle throwing. Generally, for me at least, about 50% of the time to create any given project is spent winding the warp, sleying the reed, threading the heddles, beaming the warp and then tying it on (I warp from front to back, normally, maybe some time I'll do a detailed entry about warping). As my wonderful teacher, Rita Steinbach, at the Worcester Center for Crafts always pointed out to the newbie weavers - dressing the loom is just as much a part of weaving as the time you spend actually sitting at the loom weaving in the weft... If you don't like the dressing part, you won't like weaving very much.

Well, speaking of which, I should go thread some heddles. An inch here, an inch there, and before you know you're ready to beam the warp. And it's always fun to have a chance to handle the fiber you're working with, especially when it's the yummy fibers currently on my loom!