Happy Monday!

I love Mondays after a productive weekend. Everything is ready for the workshop in Toronto this weekend--patterns are drawn, handouts are printed, wool is in baskets, demonstrations are packed and ready to go...all that is left to do is to pack it all in the car ;-) Here are the results from the dyeing on Saturday....


I also finished Wyatt's birthday sweater--a full week ahead of schedule! I am starting on Christmas presents this week....and hoping to make quite a few of them.

Lucky Seven!

We had our final throwing class at pottery last night. Most of the night was spent finishing our pieces and narrowing our week's work down to seven that will be bisque fired sometime between now and Wednesday (glaze night). I took a couple of pictures of the chosen few...and just tried adding them to the post, but silly dial-up at my folks seems to be making this impossible. I will add them as soon as I can.

Preparations for my upcoming workshop in Etobicoke are well underway. I spent several hours dyeing wool today and the last of the patterns will be drawn tomorrow. I really enjoy the dyeing process--sometimes I think that I like it even better than the hooking ;-)

While I was reorganizing my wool a few weeks ago, I was noticing that I have a lot of dark, duller colours and not too many light or brights. I really tried to focus on dyeing some new values and shades today....and the results will be in soon (the wool is all in the dryer as I type...)

The new Rug Hooking Magazine arrived yesterday...and on first glance it looks like a really good issue. I also received my copy of the new Celebrations today from AJ....so there will be some reading happening tonight. I know what I'll be doing with my extra hour....

Hubris...

Sorry...no pottery pictures today--I forgot to bring my camera with me last night. It's just as well. I was off to a poor start yesterday--unable to create anything worth saving until the last third of the class, when I did three round bowls in a row.

Sometimes we have such high expectations of ourselves that it can result in an inability to create anything. It is so easy to get focused on the finished product and miss out on the experience of the process. We must remind ourselves of this often. When I'm working on my rugs and this happens, I usually just stop, relax for a bit--sometimes days--and then get back at it. In a class atmosphere though, you don't always have (or feel that you can have) that luxury--expecially when it's a project that you can only work on in that class. Maybe I should just start heeding my Mum's advice and take up meditation... Not today, I'm too tired.

+ + + + + + + + +

I picked up the newsletters yesterday afternoon and stuffed them into envelopes after pottery until one in the morning....so hopefully Canada Post will be speedy in their delivery of the R.U.G. Sack to your doorsteps and some of you might even receive them before the weekend. Enjoy!

Pottery is fun!

I finally finished the Fall/Winter 2006 issue of "the R.U.G. sack", after spending most of the weekend making up articles to fill all of the white pages... I took it to the printers first thing on Monday morning, so hopefully it will be ready for pick-up some time today and out by the end of the week (fingers crossed!)

In the meantime, I started a pottery class on Monday night and it will run every evening until Friday. On Friday we will choose our 7 best pieces to be bisque fired and return next Wednesday to glaze 5. It is pretty messy work, but a lot of fun. I am hoping that the momentum will continue between now and Friday--I produced only 2 bowls worth keeping on Monday, and 6 yesterday! Here is a picture of my keepers to date....



I know that my sisters are hoping that some will be worthy of gift-giving--we will have to wait and see... ;-)

Sadly, no hooking until the weekend at least....

Day One...

Okay, so I know that I had finally commited to having a web-site....but do you know how much time it takes to set one up? It really doesn't fit with my compulsive need for instant gratification. And, as an added bonus, maybe I can take back the $74.95 book I just bought at Chapters!

Being new to blogging, I'm not really sure what is expected...so please bear with me as I go through the early stages of getting set up. In the coming days I will post some pictures of what I am working on now....

Happy Thanksgiving!