slowly she turned

Well, I got way behind on my “special event” postings. I’ve actually been to the Tapestry Weavers South retreat since and finished writing my Mexico travel blogs from Lake Waccamaw over a month later. So I have some catching up to do, which leaves me to wonder – why am I doing it at all if I procrastinate about it?

The best thing about blogging is that it leaves me a record of my life which I can revisit later, if needed or wanted. I used to keep a diary, now I blog. It’s much easier to type than to write. The photo editing is a bit of a pain, but I could upload my photos straight from my phone. I don’t do that because of the size. This blog is almost 20 years old and although I lost a lot of it in transitions from platform to platform and in a virus attack in the 00s, I have a lot of photos and I don’t want to pay more money for storage space, so I reduce the size before I upload. It is also helpful as far as getting my photos stolen for commercial use if I upload in a low-res, smaller format.

You’d be surprised how many photos get filched from artists by unscrupulous companies and for use in magazines or catalogs. I’ve given permission a couple of times for this use, but they never want to pay other than sending me a copy of the magazine (not even a subscription, really?) or a coupon for their product. But I’ve been lucky – I’ve seen other artist work get absolutely ripped off the Internet and copied and sold with nary a thank you, even.

Speaking of Internet theft and corruption, just found out that my old Facebook account, which was active between 2009-2016, was hacked and all my old posts and photos and comments from dearly departed friends are GONE. So I deleted the account. It seems that I put out to the universe the question of why I blog, and here’s the answer. My photos are here, but those priceless comments are gone forever. And this blog, as I’ve found in the past, is not a permanent solution. Nothing is, really.

Today I am focusing on getting my weaving practice going. At least for the month of July, I plan to join Mirrix Looms’ Weave Every Day in July Challenge. https://mirrixlooms.com/pages/weave-every-day-in-july-challenge I’ve got my Jorge the Beautiful Mexican Beetle tapestries to finish, and I’m going to prepare my other travel loom and my floor loom for switching off to when I need a change. I do not lack for looms! So that’s my priority this weekend.

My other priority for the month is to move forward on some house repairs and improvements that are sorely needed. Hopefully I’ll get an estimate for three small projects, including replacing my front door, today. Then I’ll go to the credit union and revive my home equity loan. The front door will not be cheap. It has to be a wood Craftsmen style door, and I have to get it approved by the city staff in the historic preservation office. They’ve worked with me before on this, though, and are very helpful. The prices of these doors are shocking. However, since before we bought this house in 2001, the front door has been a hollow three step window 50s ranch style door, and it is ugly as sin and doesn’t provide much insulation. I could probably kick a hole in it even with my messed up feet. I can’t imagine the reason that the former owner of this house chose this door, or why it was replaced. Our house is 101 years old.

The main thing is to get this dryer vent situation resolved. It is creating a fire hazard and I’m done tiptoeing around it. For the past year we’ve been drying our clothes on racks and finally bought a new dryer, only to have the same problem crop up again. It has to be the vent. I’m getting it fixed.