for loom the bell tolls

{{Insert groan here}}}

That really IS the best title I could come up with for this post. My extraordinary lack of linguistic creativity is a direct result of having acquired the loom of my life last Wednesday. So, of course I’ve been up late and up early to get acquainted and spend some quality time with her, which has left me a little dull witted.

Here she is

Isn’t she a beaut??? Here are her specs. She is an elegant older gal, a LeClerc NilArt loom with a 60 inch weaving width and 8 harnesses. All that means she can do a whole lot of weaving, but I gotta figure out how to make her do it. I bought her from from Sue of knit night. Fortunately, through the efforts of Sue, her hub--Victor, and my brother Matt (who, by the grace of high school marching band, even happened to know Victor) she made the trip to her new home safely and was correctly assembled here in an orderly fashion.

Sue gave me this bunch of yarn for practice.

Since these shades do not appear elsewhere in my stash (or perhaps in nature), I am suffering no anxiety about wasting the yarn on the mess I’m making trying to learn to weave. Actually, in the photograph the colors aren't really so bad--it usually works the other way for me.

AND, in other news:

I attended the K.N.I.T. (Knitting Needles In Tulsa) Guild workshop on Saturday which was taught by Sally Melville. Although I’ve attended a number of knitting programs, I had not taken a workshop. I’ll definitely take more. I’m told that others don’t quite compare to Sally’s. I don’t know if that is so, but I do know that the entire day passed quickly. I was entertained and inspired.

The workshop subject was creative use of your yarn collection or some such title. So far the creative use of the two lovely stash yarns I chose to begin this journey required the expenditure of over $75 at Loops for . . . more yarn. It's all good though because after I knit this project my stash will be down a net 3 1/2 balls. Lets see, I had to buy 7 balls of yarn to reduce the stash by nearly 4 balls of yarn. Now THAT'S stash busting. I bet, given enough yarn, I could get the country out of the financial mess it's in . . . Tell Obama I should be appointed Secretary of Treasury.

And, that brings us to my favorite part of the program . . . the "what now" story . . .

I was to bring a dish to a luncheon at work. I made a BIG deal of the fact that since I am now (since Sunday, at least) 50 years old, I can, entirely without embarrassment or apology, bring a jello dish to share. So, I mixed up a BIG bunch o'jello and stuff . . . AND, you guessed it--

LEFT IT IN THE FRIDGE. So not only was I completely empty-handed at the luncheon, but I now have a fridge full of fairly useless jello.