debor049

Orders are starting to taper off and I had no appointments today so I determined to finish setting up the AVL and at least weave one towel. It's been ages since I've woven and as a result, I've lost muscle tone.  As with any physical activity, the best strategy is to begin slowly and re-build the strength I've lost over the past couple of months. These towels are destined for the shows in 2019.  The first show is the Hospital Auxiliary conference in April.  Next is the ANWG conference .  Since I am taking a booth at the conference to sell The Book I figured I might as well have some tea towels.  These are in the Snail's Trails and Cat's Paws design, a perennial favourite of weavers. I put 30 turns/yards on the beam with the goal of using up the cottolin in my stash.  And then I (ahem) acquired 5 kilos of single 16s linen.  The colours aren't great, but they will do for tea towels.  So whatever warp is left once the cottolin is used up will be wove...

What a roller coaster ride! Poor Ruth finally managed to wrestle the website to the ground and get the PDF version of the book up and running and lo!  Here 'tis! Both versions are now officially available from blurb.ca .  You can also get Magic in the Water - just scroll all the way down the page.  The introductory offer is only available from me personally.  There has been some confusion so let me run through it one more time: Purchase the print version of the book - from me directly - and you will receive in the new year a signed copy of the book.  You will also, upon payment, receive a link to collect the PDF from Dropbox.  Yes, the entire file, not just a sample.  Yes, I am actually giving it away, free, with the purchase of the print book.  Truly.  BUT!  The introductory offer is just that - an introductory offer that will end on the winter solstice, Dec. 21, 2018.  (I am making this entirely clear because many of my blog post...

I was born and raised here near the 54th parallel and as such I have spent my life watching the sun come and go in the sky.  Over the years the winter solstice has become a much more important day in the year to me than any other.  The winter solstice is when the sun stops its slow slide to the horizon and begins its gentle journey back up, bringing with it our longer daylight hours. Humans seem to be bound to the sun and the moon in ways that we can't really articulate.  Fire no doubt felt magical to early humans.  It brought heat but also...light. Recently I had a conversation with someone about being supportive.  My life has benefited in so many ways by others helping and being supportive of me.  At one point I was feeling guilty after picking the brains of another weaver and apologized because I had no money to pay for her time. She looked at me - hard - and said "Pass it on." Her words sounded prophetic to me, as though I had suddenly found my calling....

The sample print copy of the book should be ready tomorrow (be still my heart!) and hopefully it will arrive in a few days. In the meantime, members of the weaving community are beginning to read their PDF files and write reviews, sharing on their social media (cockles of my heart most definitely warmed!) Tien Chiu did a blog post this morning reviewing the book I have now prepared an ad for the book and if anyone is interested in placing the ad in their guild newsletters, email me and I will send a Word document that can be used as is, or the information can be used as appropriate. The PDF that is being shared as part of the introductory offer includes the back cover of the book with two cover blurbs - one from Janet Dawson, the other from Syne Mitchell. On the technology front - the introductory offer PDF is available through Dropbox but two people have not been able to access the file that way so I have a work around.  If this is the case for you, email me. In this age of the in...

Confession time. I'm a wee bit of a Luddite and don't really know or understand the technology, even though I think it's great - it's still a bit 'magical' to me! However I have been told that some people have not downloaded the complimentary PDF for the introductory offer of The Intentional Weaver but have been reading it on line. Which is all well and good, but that file will go away after the introductory offer closes so people really need to download the file to their desktop or whatever platform they want it on. Last night I went back to Dropbox and there is a 'download' button and when I poked it (again - I'd done it a couple of days ago but I wanted to make sure of it) the file downloaded in about 1 minute. Yes, it's a large file - about 39 mb. Thank you to all who have expressed interest. It was a bit nerve wracking to complete this project because one never really knows how it will go! The printer should be shipping my 'proof...

After being stuck in technology 'hell' for the better part of a week, we seem to have battled our way through the 'worst' of it.  This quote from Churchill helped me carry on, because there was simply no point to flinging myself to the ground and flailing.  The only way was forward, even if it felt at times more like a 'creep' than a 'march'. Talked with Ruth today who is still up to her ears helping Tien get her on-line class up and running but she promises to go poke at the PDF file on blurb by Monday.  I wanted to offer a PDF version for those people overseas who would be faced with a huge shipping charge for a print book but could maybe just work with the cheaper option of downloading the PDF.  So - I promise - it's coming! Over the week I've worked out a system to deal with the fact that the print copies won't get mailed out for a while.  I needed a fool-proof system to make sure everyone who has paid gets a copy sent whenever I get them...