Trials - and books

Last week was mostly full of trying to get into England across the Severn. For 24 hours even the M50 motorway bridge was closed which left all of us living on the West side marooned!! Even more annoying on Saturday when I had to be in Newbury for a Guild Committee meeting, all the traffic websites said my nearest bridge was open - they ought to have  consulted with the police because it was very closed and I had to turn round and drive West and then South to pick up a dry bit of the motorway. The floods have been very bad this time. I cannot remember the motorway ever being closed for floods before. Fortunately being of a suspicious nature, I had allowed an extra 30 minutes 'in case of problems'. 

The Guild Christmas party went with a swing. We had three trophies to present , two for weaving and one, the Hawkridge Challenge Cup, for some thing made from Jacob's fleece only. The standard was very high. The weavers' trophy was for a monotone bag (white through grey to black) with one accent colour. Again a very high standard  with lots of inventiveness.

Today is my first free day in the house since last Sunday! Last night I started sorting out books. They have never been properly organised since the new book cases were installed. Apart from finding some things which had gone to ground, a file full of stencils belonging to ,my sister, a lovely copy of an old map of Virginia which was given to me to use as endpapers and has been missing for six years!!! Not to mention a lot of interesting books. Anyway I got into a mess with these. I went off to bed leaving a mess of books everywhere and got up thinking 'Right, first I must -- ' Only when I walked into a stack of books on the floor, did I realise that I had to clear that up, but that, before I did that, I had to do the shelves in the studio and before I did that, -- - You get the idea. By elevenses, the books were all organised, I had wrapped a load of Christmas presents and made a list of present shopping to do. 

 I even made a paperbag for my grandson's present which is too awkward a shape to wrap. I learnt how to make these at the Bournville class last Friday. One thing I do have a lot of is paper! And this is stout paper (actually printed cotton amalgamated with paper and  from Peter Hoes in Kuala Lumpur)  which has made up quite nicely.

I have put on a large pot of beef rendang which is cooking away quite nicely. After lunch, I shall make up some more Christmas cards and then (I hope) I will tie on the Megado's warp and start weaving. I have had a number of good ideas about this warp lately. I always put on more warp than I need and this one is going to be used up to the last millimeter! They are all hanging pieces. This is because the Midlands Textile Forum is having a travelling exhibition (!!!)  and there is a limit on width of 8 inches which I can do with the current Megado warp. They are a bit difficult to describe except that it is a triple cloth with  warp and weft interchange.