Letting Go

I can't believe it has been so long since I blogged. My only defense is that I have SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) and this winter was a doozy. I didn't get anything accomplished at all and felt like doing nothing. I worked here and there on the transparency, but I found I really didn't like weaving it, so there it sat. My loom looked forlorn and lonely. Last week, I cut off what I had done, resleyed the linen to 24epi and decided to weave a couple of linen towels with that warp.

I have never worked with linen before and I found that I really like it. The first towel was just plain weave and I used the same 20/2 half bleached linen for weft as I had for warp. I found a tube of blue linen in my stash that was a little slubby, and wove a stripe at the beginning and end of the towel for a little color.

The second towel is a little shorter than I like, but I really just wanted to play around, so there is some plain weave at first, then I switched over to twill. I used some rust colored cotton for the stripe. I find it fascinating that they were both so stiff when they came off the loom, but so wonderfully soft after washing.

I ordered some natural colored linen in the same size to use as an accent color and will do a run or two of towels, maybe doing some huck lace. That should be here by the middle of the week, so I can start winding that warp.

A couple of weeks ago with the days getting a little longer, and warmer (not much, but some!), I have had a burst of energy and creativity and I am cleaning, decluttering and destashing, weaving, sewing, and handing things down to the next generation. We would like to move south in a couple of years when I retire, so as I go through all of the things I've held onto, I ask myself if I want to move it, or if it's time to sell it on eBay, a garage sale, give it away or throw it away. It feels great to let go of so much! I'm looking forward to devoting more time to creative pursuits. And as I typed that sentence, I realized that "looking forward to" is a phrase we use all the time without thinking that it means looking forward, ahead and for me that means letting go of things that are no longer important to me. Woohoo!