Red Cedar

This week has been all over the place in terms of time and routine. A bit of time off, some (more) dental appointments, and then full days of online union convention yesterday, today and tomorrow. While I am glad I took a day and half off at the beginning of the week, the rest of the changed schedule reminds me just how much of a creature of habit I am. I’ve been eating at weird times and working out in the morning instead of the afternoons. I’ve been having difficulty finding the energy to write and play music in the last couple of days especially.

And yet, it’s been a fairly productive week all round. I did manage to record three violin tracks on Saturday and Sunday for my husband Brian’s new album, and listening back to them, I feel pretty good about what I did – both in terms of how I divided the recordings up for a more professional approach, and also the parts I picked out to go with the tracks already laid down. I have been playing my violin steadily now since December, 3 or 4 times per week, the longest run of regular practice I have had in fifteen years.

I had almost forgotten what it’s like to play freely, without hesitation and stiffness – but it’s coming back to me now as my joints become more fluid and the instrument more of an extension of my feeling-self again. I’m not sure I will ever get back the dexterity I had when younger, but can tell you that the nascent arthritis in my hands has completely disappeared since January. At the very least, playing will keep my hands flexible longer. Sometimes the issue with dexterity isn’t so much the joints themselves, but the connection between my brain and body, and that’s something I know has gotten slower with age. The muscle memory doesn’t lock in quite as quickly as it once did.

Besides that productivity, I finished weaving and hemming the hand towels that were on the loom last week, and warped again with what I think will be a table runner (pictured at the top). Having Monday and Tuesday morning off work really put a dent in a number of small projects around the studio, and I even got started on a bit of sewing for the first time in awhile. Studio time has been mostly flow-state lately, with one project morphing into the next, and tidying going on simultaneously so that things really keep moving. I wish it was always so easy!

I’m looking forward to my next projects which include experiments in weaving linen, some more tea towel gifts, getting the big loom up and running with shawls (treadle cords retied and we’re a go), and an overshot project in silk.

I think I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I’ve returned to running – just a couple of times per week, but I’m enjoying the bit I’ve been fitting in. I’ve also made some new fitness goals for the spring/summer – to push my power-lifts up in density, to get additional outdoor activity in every week, and to stretch for at least five minutes aftder every strength workout. My strength training the last couple of weeks has been fairly intense, but I am very satisfied to complete the workouts. Ever since I started doing Stronger by the Day about five months ago, I’ve really noticed big differences in my body composition. I look the same to folks on the outside, but my muscles are much more present and defined. I find it hard to show this stuff off because I’m not much of a muscle-flexer, but its real and I can link my growth in muscle over the last eighteen months to better posture, better metabolic rate, and more stamina overall. I just finished reading the book Exercised by David Lieberman and it was one of the best books I’ve read about why we resist exercise (evolution, obviously), but what it does for us – especially as we age. It’s some of the best work I’ve read about fitness and evolution, science-based and not at all faddish.

Union convention continues through the weekend so I am definitely tied to my desk when I’m not playing for the next few days – but then next week is back to my regularly scheduled life.

According to the forecast, the weather is about to turn to rain – but what a glorious ten days it has been. Even though I’ve had to work, I’ve managed to get outside for a kayak, a run, and a bike ride in addition to getting some solid gardening (read: weeding) time in this week.

Until Tuesday, I hadn’t been for a run in six weeks. Even though my Doctor cleared me for running a month ago (no bone deterioration, nothing to worry about around the embedded plate), I wasn’t really feeling it. But in the last couple of weeks, the pull has returned and so I’m going to start fitting runs into my workout schedule again. In particular, I miss covering long distances on my own propulsion and seeing my island-world at that pace. As the weather warms and the mornings lighten, I hope to fit runs in before work to escape the heat, but for now anytime is a good time to get the runners back on.

I’ve continued at the loom this week with some sampling. At the start of the year I set an intention to use as much “stash” yarn, fabric, and weaving material as possible. I have several projects worth of stuff in my cupboards, and before purchasing more, I’d like to use at least some of what I have. Case in point, I have some beautiful lace weight alpaca yarn in three colours, as well as some tencel yarn (also in three colourways) that I bought for some project that never happened. In the world of making fabric, it’s always a bit of a crapshoot how things are going to work when you put them together, and it’s a lot of work (and wasted material) if you get it wrong – which is why weavers create samples and sample books. My samples this week included using the tencel fibre as a warp (it’s quite strong) with the alpaca fibre as weft, woven at two different setts (densities). I’m quite happy with the result of the less-dense sett woven in a herringbone twill. It has excellent drape and after washing/fulling it is very soft. Once I get the big loom cleared off (it’s got a bathmat on it that I’ve been hung up on weaving due to a problem with how I tied up the treadles) I will be putting the first of the three shawl projects on. In the meantime, I’m warping the small loom with some spring-coloured hand towels this weekend.

Writing continues every day, whether I feel like it or not. Somewhere this week I ran into this quote which sums up my approach to essays and book ideas and the craft in general. For all the good writing I do, there is a ton that gets thrown away and though it sometimes feels like a bit of a churn, it is necessary to anything good getting done.

If you want to have good ideas you must have many ideas. Most of them will be wrong, and what you have to learn is which ones to throw away.

Linus Pauling

Relatedly, music practice requires that one must sound awful a great deal of the time in order to eventually sound good. I am working on some violin pieces currently that make me feel bad because I play them so poorly, but there is no way to play them better without going through this awfulness (which can go on for weeks and months). Just this morning I sent an inquiry form to the Victoria Conservatory of Music to see if I could find an appropriate teacher to meet with online and eventually in person in order to get some help overcoming my technical limitations. While poking around the site it was hard not to notice that the director of the strings program there is one of my contemporaries – someone who studied with the same teacher as me, and who I sat beside in youth orchestra when we were thirteen (I was second chair to his first chair, first violin – he was a much better player even then). Though I have no aspirations to great playing at this point in my life, I would like to return to playing classical music with other people at some point and that requires a greater skillset than I currently have. I’ll see if the Conservatory matches me with someone; I don’t know how many folks they have there teaching adults or how many of them are teaching virtually.

Beyond that, it’s been a week of regular work, decent food, and finishing a bunch of books that I’ve been reading (plus starting new ones). I’ll be glad when the warmer weather is here to stay, but for now we could use some spring rain to get the plants and trees really going before we are plunged into the summer dry season.