Who would be a Guild Course Secretary? Last night, the people doing a halfday course and a talk at the Guild next Saturday cancelled their visit. The rest of the evening was spent in a rescue operation and two Guild members have gallantly undertaken on the course which is on Spindle Spinning. The talk is being replaced by a member, Meg Crowther, talking about the History of Spinning which, I am told, is very good and very professional.

The other bit of Course Secretary work which I have been doing all this week is the arrangements for the Guild's residential weekend near Reading on 7th-9th May 2010, culminating in this morning spent creating a huge spread sheet. So I now have a spreadsheet which tells me who has signed up for what and how much each person paid so far. We let members pay in installments but it does mean keeping track of all the payments. Oddly enough I feel a lot happier. Take up is good but then we have four first class tutors Margaret Roach Wheeler (Designing the Mahotan Way), Pat Johns (Tapestry), Lorraine McClean (Experimental Knitting) and Shirley Berlin (Fixings and Fastening for Braids).

In the 2008 residential weekend, I attended Lorraine's course which was about designing textiles, not specifically knitting. Story-boards and so on.  It was great but I remain unconvinced that Storyboards are a good idea for weavers.  Do other weavers use Storyboards? I am not sure where my ideas come from. I find I have an idea or see things and chew it over. Currently I am mentally designing donsu (polychrome damask) and I know that shortly I will settle down to Fibreworks to try things out. I also have an idea for rooks. Yes, I did say no more woven pictures but you know how it is. That really meant 'No more woven pictures  until I have another idea that refuses to be sat on'. This one about rooks is a real nagger. I have started working through Alice Schlein's book 'The Woven Pixel' using Photoshop and find it is much more difficult that I thought when I read the book. But I will plugging.

The decoration was completed yesterday and today, the builders put all the book shelves back. The room is 20 by 13 feet and there are bookcases to the ceiling  (10 ft) on one long wall and on part of a short wall.  A lot of the shelves are kit-like (Ladderax) but the upper ones are Spur shelving. The builders pencilled notes on everything and have spent the morning trying to work out what their notes meant. Why might you ask do we have a model of Whitby lifeboat circa 1935- three foot long and lives on one of the shelves? Because it was made for Michael whose grandfather was instrumental in raising money for Whitby lifeboat. I can't help feeling it should be in Whitby museum.

The builders ended up with 2 spare brackets and they have just (triumphantly) found out where they go.  Now all I have to do is to put all the books back. But actually I am going out to lunch with friends first.