The apprentice has surpassed the master, so to speak. Tower is learning the ropes of weaving from me. His first project has been to learn, set up, teach, and oversee a community weaving fundraiser. He is doing amazingly well at every part of it!

He has taken a few simple suggestions on potential techniques and turned them into beautiful rugs. If he chose to, I think he could make a decent living just weaving these from old clothes left around the land. He's now knows more about rag rug weaving than I do.

Enough blather, take a look!




[Clasped weft for a stunning effect]



[Understated inlay on velvet. Gorgeous!]


[The whole setup at night. Thanks for the lights, TJ!]

[Pile of clothes turning into strips]


[8 rugs, waiting to be cut off]

The gathering is going well. People are having a great time. The last few days involved lots of little tasks: finishing and distributing our newsletter, managing the finances, collecting registration forms, working on proposals for our semi-annual meeting next week and most exciting, distributing fly parasites.

This was actually the funniest thing. We do two things here that encourage flies: use composting pit toilets, and compost our kitchen scraps. When we have large numbers of people on the land, our fly population explodes. We use many hanging bags of fly attractant to keep the numbers down, but it doesn't seem to do much good.
This year, we're trying a new technique: parasitic wasps. These tiny wasps lay their eggs in fly maggots and kill them before they mature. Here's the funny part... Word got out that I was waiting for them to arrive in the mail. In the rumor mill, tiny wasps turned into giant hornets. I introduced myself to a new visitor and he blanched. I asked what was wrong. He said, "are you the one who's going to release a swarm of hornets in the middle of the gathering?" When I stopped laughing, I told him that it was already done and they were harmless wasps the size of a fruitfly. Then at dinner circle I brought the bag with a couple tiny wasps still in it so people could see how small and harmless they are. It's funny how rumors work.



[Bag of parasitic wasps and larvae. See the tiny specks at the top? That's them.]



[Stunning Sunset]

[Rug weaving demonstration and silent auction]

Today has been slow and pretty lazy. After yesterday's ridiculous stress I really needed to take it slow.

I woke up late and took a long time to find people to help move the rug weaving operation down the hill. We loaded it onto a cart and hauled it all down, getting it set up by about noon.

Then I strung a new necklace. It's funny. This happens about once a year, usually mid-Summer. The strand of beads I've worn all year just doesn't feel right and a new one appears. This year was awesome! I gave a gorgeous strand of iolite to a friend about 10 years ago. She has loved the stones all these years and gave them back to me a few weeks ago. Tower let me choose some spacer stones from his collection so now I have a choker with two colors of iolite accented with tiny, sparkly light blue topaz. This necklace looks like a starry night. It's perfect for my life at this time.



[Iolite and blue topaz. Yum!]

The instant I slipped it around my neck there was a knock on my door. It was the president of our organization come to have a chat. I wish I could trust anything he has to say.

After that was done I balanced the books, counted the cash and wrote up paperwork for donations of food.

Then I took a quick nap and cooled off in the infinity pool. It was so nice to have that kind of time for once. I don't really, but it's nice to pretend sometimes.

Dinner was a delightful Indian-inspired affair after which I sat around chatting with friends until the temperature dropped. Now it's 11:30 and I don't want to sleep because the air is cool and lovely. The moon is up and people are wandering around having fun.

I think I'll make afternoon naps a habit until the weather cools down a bit.

[Infinity pool, Wolf Creek style. Fed by the spring, it makes hot days bearable if you can find the time to use it.]

This day turned out nothing like I planned. I woke up ready to hold my Purse Queen office hours, set up the registration scene and move the rug weaving operation down to where people can see it for our fundraiser.

I got down the hill and didn't even have a chance to drink my tea before the world came crashing down. It turned out that we have nowhere near the amount of money we needed to buy all of the food, the treasurer was on an airplane and unable to transfer more, and the gathering starts tomorrow.

Sooooo, I updated the accounting records so I'd have perfect numbers to work from, performed some fancy (and well-documented) flim-flam, and wrote out detailed instructions so the kitchen crew would know how to perform the rest of the shopping. It took 5 hours of hair-splitting work. I'll reconcile again tomorrow, but I think I was able to pay for
enough food for half of the week.

And what will the participants in the gathering notice? Nothing at all with any luck. They'll be eating lovely food and having a great time without a care in the world, just as it should be. (According to recent customs. I'm old enough to remember when the gathering did much of the work of preparing for itself.)

Then I got the registration scene set and retired to the shade to process timesheets from the rug weaving project. When the rugs sell, part of the money is going toward our utilities, but the rest will be distributed among the people who worked on them. I like things to be fair and clearly communicated.

Then I worked for a few hours on our organization's newsletter before dinner. Tonight was leftovers, but they were delicious and exactly what we needed: salty, meaty pot pie. I had signed up for dishes so I did them, thankfully with a few volunteers to help. Then it was off with my Princess to collect donations and get back to the newsletter for a few hours before bed.

Notice that I never did get the weaving booth or rug auction set up say nothing of my own work. First thing tomorrow, before the heat arrives.