Warp
Today we learned how to thread a loom. It took all day for a roomful of us to get the knack. I have the impression this part of the job is not particularly popular among weavers. It takes a long time. The weaving itself is almost an afterthought.
For me it is like foreplay, meditative, compassionate and tactile. I don't mind delayed gratification. I can hardly wait to get home and thread my own loom.
The rest of the class is middle-aged ladies, mostly good-humoured. The instructor is a gay man, roughly my age, high-energy, bumbling, cheerful and playfully flirtatious. Once when he asked me to help demonstrate something, I handily slipped a bolt into the correct hole, so he complimented me and twinkled brilliantly for everyone. I was too amused to notice how they reacted.
At noon en route to the cafeteria, someone called my name and I turned to see my friends Greg and Lee. We were utterly surprised and delighted. He is taking Jewellery Casting and she is taking Sketchbook Journal. They are a pair of really fun characters. Greg sings in the Rainbow Chorus, literally not figuratively. I had brought a bag lunch, so they invited me to join them in their camper. They said this is the second year they have come to Haliburton School of the Arts for their summer vacation. We're all here for a mixture of solitude and getting to know knew people, so we won't latch on for the duration, but their companionship has made the whole experience more enjoyable.
Sometimes when you expect things to be good, they turn out much better.
The knitting boutique in Haliburton sells all kinds of Berocco, one of my favourite yarn manufacturers.
I'm renting a nice, bright apartment over a garage deep in the woods. There's free wifi, but I can only reach the signal from the front porch, occupied by a big white wicker rocker and occasionally a laid back collie wanting her rump scratched. At the moment it's pouring rain, one of those deep, gentle, serene, white-noise forest rains that makes me want to be nowhere else.