The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of working, weaving, and life changes. My daughter and her boyfriend of 2+ years are officially engaged and I would be lying if I said that I was thrilled. I have no objection to her choice of companion, but I do feel that they are way too young to be moving towards marriage at almost 19 and 20 years old. For the past year, I’ve been trying to hammer the realities of married life into my daughter’s beautiful (but stubborn) head. “Why rush? Where’s the fire?” I keep asking them both. Why not enjoy their youth while they have it? The boy I dated from 17-20 years old (who I was technically engaged to) ended up not being “the one” and we ended things after our 3rd year together. We’re still friends, but we weren’t right for each other, marriage-wise. We thought, however, that we were going to last forever in the years we were together.

To add insult to injury, my daughter’s fiance decided to buy a brand new house and they closed on their new home last week. She will live at home until after they marry (I have at least convinced her to wait until she’s 19 on November 30th before they marry and move in together). She literally just graduated high school and all I can do is sigh and hold my tongue (barely). My comfort in all of it is that they both have good jobs and her intended spouse is a hard worker with a strong work ethic. They have no debt (other than the new house), so that’s something, I guess.

We finally got to shear our sheep between heavy storms. I left my studio early on Friday so we could meet our shearer before the next round of storms hit. We finished the last sheep just as the heavens opened. Heavy lightning and electric shears don’t go together in the best of times and I was starting to get a little nervous as the thunder boomed overhead for a good ten minutes before we finished. The good news is that the weather has cooled down almost 20 degrees and will be cooler over the next few days, giving us a reprieve from the 80+ degree weather.

I’m sampling on a triangle loom in preparation for a triangle loom weaving class I’ll be teaching at the Burritt Folk School at the end of August. Since I don’t do this form of weaving much compared to my other forms, I decided to do lots of sampling beforehand with a variety of yarns. So far, I’ve completed three sample mini-shawls and I currently have a fourth on the loom.

For my own projects, I’ve been weaving on my rigid heddle loom at my studio. I finished a “handspun from raw fleece” project using wool from last year’s shearing of three of my sheep. Since I don’t make many items for myself, I decided this would be one of the few that I kept for myself.

On Saturday, I decided to weave more kitchen towels using a 100% organic cotton yarn from Blue Heron. I finished hemstitching the final towel, but decided not to cut it off my loom since it was time for me to leave when I had just finished. It can wait until this coming week.

I also managed to finish spinning some of the Border Leicester wool that I brought home from the Burritt. It was part of a 2019 fleece of a now-deceased sheep named Buttercup (who died of old age last year).

This week, I’m working several field trips at the Burritt and giving a textiles talk/demo for our “Women’s Work” event this Saturday. May is a somewhat busy month.