What I Do and What I Actually Did Sept 28/09/13

I have an AMAZING announcement! Yesterday I purchased an antique original Millville Loom and a Spinning Wheel! But that is not all! They were both given to me for.......wait for it.........$150!
I learned about the loom for sale from my wonderful Weaving Teacher, Jackie Bourque at NBCCD. While I was at school all day weaving I had my husband call her and negotiate. Later to my surprise she had offered to throw in the spinning wheel with the loom for $150. My husband rented a moving truck for the day and picked them up yesterday. She also threw in old weaving books, shuttles, threads, a warping bard and extra parts, including a picture of herself at the loom. I love that my loom is original and made of Bird's Eye Maple which is a rare and precious wood. I love that it was made in Millville NB carrying a lot of history within it's bones. And I also love the fact that the lady named Margery Acheson who sold it to me was one of the first graduates from my school NBCCD! WOW! I am so honored! Now my storage room which had everything in it and was a mess is pretty much put together and much tidier with my loom and spinning wheel set up. My husband also put it together with a few pointers from me about what should go where. I think I have my very own studio tech! I'm still not very familiar with looms and this one is a little different from the one I have been working on. For example it has a top beater rather than one that slides forward from the bottom. And instead of a peddle to roll up the back apron there is a metal handle at hand height to move forward and back to release and tighten. She also threw in a bobbin winder and a warping board!

On the warping board is an old sample scarf with sample patters that was in the bag of threads.

Here is the picture of Margery when she was young at the Millville Loom at the top. I think the bottom picture is of her also.

 And here is my new spinning wheel which is missing a few parts and in the future will be receiving a coat of varnish.

 Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!!!

  While Brennan worked with the loom I had a lot of re-organizing to do with multiple closets and I'm still not finished! It''s always the way that everything always takes longer than you think it will! For me it is the most stressful, time consuming and tiring thing to do which is to organize and find places for those odds and ends. But my philosophy is that an organized space is essential if there are a lot of things you want to do. I don't like struggling to find things or to shove things back in a closet when I have a place to be. Normally I have everything organized except a drawer and one room.

In between running around and finding places for millions of things I took a break with a plate of aged white cheddar cheese, vinta crackers and a thick berry smoothie! While I munched I watched a dvd I got from the NBCCD library called Art & Design.

I loved that there were so many different kinds of artists who talked about their approach to making art and how they personally apply materials, not in a technical since, but emotively. This dvd fed my artistic soul and was just what I needed to escape the frustration of organizing all my crap!

I also took a reading break with The Music Lesson by Victor L. Wooten

I'm only 53 pages in being so busy with school but already I am trying to change my mind about how I approach guitar practice and music. Over time I have absorbed a belief that the best musicians learn music theory and endlessly practice scales. Yet the musicians that reach me the most are the ones that never learned music theory such as The Beatles, who learned chords by watching other bands play in Liverpool! The best songs are felt out and listened to by the creator because that is how the best songs are made. It is the same as a write that holds the pen and the writer listens to the words to be written. The force is strong enough that even if you question those words and try to think of something else, more often than not the original passage of words will stick in your mind until you write them down. When I was 17, which was 16 years ago now, my musical playing style was simple but approached and played in heartfelt manner. Since then my writing poetry and song lyrics has improved from absorbing the wisdom in song writing and poetry writing books. But also over the years evolving musically has been frustrating in comparison to everything else I do. I am hoping that having a freer approach to my guitar and discovering melodies again that I will see the unfolding of myself musically. Creating music is something I always loved and something I can't ever give up. I'm looking for the dry period to end and for it to move into a lush and vibrant summer!