Thursday deferred

I wrote this post on Thursday evening, but somehow it wasn’t published so there will be a two-fer today.

My mind these days is becoming more focused on getting my WIPs done and planning for my retirement, both at home and at work.

The biggest WIP for six years has been “Cathedral,” the tapestry based on gazing up into the bald cypress tree at the lake on a sunny day. I made some progress on it last week, enough that I feel like I might actually get it finished and off the loom soon. By finished, I mean that I have decided to finish it smaller than I originally planned. The tension all over this loom is horrible and I don’t know how long than I can keep weaving. However, I think that the design will be fine if I don’t go on for another 12 inches. Here’s a turned photo so you can see it as it will hang. I’ve been weaving it sideways.

So now it will be longer than it is wide.  That’s okay, if I can block the tension issues once I get it off the loom. I’ll try to weave another two inches and a hem of about an inch.

Then I will have to decide whether to tie the remaining warp to the bottom and weave another tapestry, this time with much bigger yarns and a simpler design, and sell this Shannock loom, or just go ahead and sell it. Either way, I want to sell it. I need more space in my studio, and my body prefers weaving on small looms.

I love the details of this tapestry. The ePic yarns are a dream for combining colors for a painterly approach to tapestry. Eventually I will wind off a lot of these yarns and sell them through my Etsy store and this blog, because I have so much of it that I will never use half of it. I just have to figure that part out, but when the time comes, I’ll set up a payment process and announce it all over the place.

When I do the yarn purge, I will also go through my huge stash of old dictionaries and books and maps and make collage packets for sale.

Gotta get rid of this stuff before we move to Portugal! That’s still in the aspirational stage, but with this much stuff it’s better to start early so that the only problem we’ll have to deal with at the end is Sandy’s hoard. He is hard to move toward that goal.

At work it means that I’ve put a lot of paper in the shredder box, and I’m also deleting files that are no longer useful or out-dated. Considering that I’m heading for my 18th year in this job, I figured I’d better start now. By the time I retire, I will have worked for the state of North Carolina twenty years.

We finally have a state budget after three years of unreasonable GOP demands and Democrat governor vetoes. This means that I will get a small raise over the next two years and a bonus this year. The bonus will probably go toward repair on the 2008 Honda, since it has some deferred maintenance problems. We are lucky that we can get by with only one car these days, since I walk to work. But there may come a time, especially with my foot issue, that I may need to drive to work. Or travel on my own and so Sandy will need a car. He might have to get used to the idea of using Lyft or Uber or a taxi. That makes sense to me, financially. I’d be willing to do that for trips around town rather than put money into another car, especially if we decide to move to Portugal.

My feelings about the budget are very mixed. It has a lot of really bad stuff in it, including more dilution of the governor’s power. But the state of public education on all levels in NC is really awful. Employees needs raises, schools need repairs, broadband needs to be improved and accessible. So I guess I’m somewhat happy about it.