Best Quote I Heard All Day
Do Lipton employees take coffee breaks?--Stephen Wright

I admit publicly that I cannot function without a cup of coffee immediately upon rising.

Nor can I write anything without the second cup.

These days, I'm completely enamored with my Melitta One:One coffeemaker. I drink "Buzzworthy," an Arabica that's made for the Melitta. Killer stuff.

Some people are wine connoissieurs. I am a coffee connoissieuse. Or at least, to a very minor degree. If the coffee has sparks, I'll drink it.

The Weaving Novitiate
It's been a long, long time since I really felt like a rank beginner. Setting up the loom has been an interesting experience and Loopy has been holding my hand throughout the whole deal. But I'm finding that I don't mind being a newbie at all. In fact, it's been great learning something new.

Heddles. 992 of them. They separate the warp thread. One thread through one heddle. Obviously, you don't use all the heddles at the same time. But they're there on the loom. As my sister says, "What the fuck kind of word is 'heddles'"? You can't explain these obtuse Olde English spinning and weaving terms, like "Mother of All" and "heddles" to someone whose medium is paper.

They're the wires hanging down. Actually, it wasn't hard to put them on the shafts. Just a bit tedious. I don't mind tedious if the results are worth it. Next step: Warping the loom. Warp drive, Mr. Scott.

What I don't know about weaving would fill volumes. But I'm excited at what I will be able to do, when I understand what the fuck I need to do.

This is why I really do have infinite patience with new knitters. Not KnitDweebs. Newbies don't know enough to be KnitDweebs. There's a big difference between the two.

Obligatory Knitting Crap
I thought I would have been finished with the Field of Flowers shawl, but I have yet a few more edging points to make before I'm done. The shawl is about two hours knitting time away from being finished. That's today's goal--get it done and get it on blocking wires tomorrow. So no pictures right now. However, I will post the blocking process in the next entry. In the meanwhile, I have my own lace design project that I'm swatching. More on that next week.

Busy-ness
You'd think, being at home now, that I have loads of leisure time. In fact, I'm up very early spinning, then writing from 8 to about noon, then screwing around with the loom from 1 until 3:30 or so, then knitting from 4 on. I've found this to be the optimum method of getting things done.

Of course, there are days when I need to do other shit, like run to the supermarket, go pick up Liz from cross-country, go to the dentist, and so on. But I try to stick to a fairly organized schedule.

Working at home takes discipline. I have always found that I tend to work harder and longer at home than I ever did in an office environment, something that employers don't seem to understand. No annoying interrruptions from co-workers who love to run their mouths, no irritating phone calls. No moronic meetings where everyone sits around jerking off and nothing gets done. No "telecons" for three hours (same as moronic meetings, except they seem to take longer).

So what's the point of what I'm doing? You'll see. If you haven't already.

It's a rare and handy thing to be mistress of your own life. And that's where I am now.