Totally hijacking here I have a 40" 8 shaft Toika Eeva countermarche floor loom from Finland. A 27" Louet, Jane, 8 shaft table loom on a stand, from Holland. I just resently brought home 60" counter balance LeClerc, Canadian, floor loom, Mira, with 4 shafts. I have woven lots of family gifts. I wove a wool and mohair blanket double width weaving for my DS2 and DIL2. It came out 100"x70" and fits on a queen bed. I also wove a smaller wool blanket that DD1 uses as work to keep warm in her cold office. I don't have a picture of my DD1 blanket, but i submitted it to the Iowa State Fair and got 2nd place in the blanket division. The blanket below wasn't done in time to submit. But it was done for the wedding. Wedding Blanket, fuzzy mohair: ETA this closeup of the tassels: Wedding Shawl out of silk and merino wool: Closeup of the random tassles in silk and wool. In this pic the tassles still need trimming at the ends. This picture makes me want to just scrunch it up to my face, lol

I agree with Zalco, that was my first thought too.

We did a major remodel and addition over the last year and a half and had two rooms we hadn’t touched cause we just couldn’t move everything around at the same time. We are finishing them up right now and it’s so nice to not have a part of the house that makes me depressed to see. One room used to be my daughter’s-it will now be TV/guest room as we turned old TV room into kitchen. The other is my son’s bedroom-he had awful carpet in it that the cats had peed on and he never spent time there-wants to theme it to Ravenclaw, and picked the paint colors himself (blue ceiling). I hope we have these pretty dialed in when it’s all over, and finish painting all the doors and trim throughout the house-last fiddly bits from remodel.

Well, I say "sort of" meaning it was about 17 years ago and that was the "mental note" I made of the experience, like "Oh that was not a very pleasant response to my telling you how much I admired your work . . . " but I did not make note of the exact expression he had on his face, for posterity. Perhaps because it sort of surprised me. But who knows why he treated me that way. Like I said, I was surprised that such a well known poet was wandering around a building looking on his own for the lecture hall where he would be presenting . . . so something might have been up even before I ran into him. I have no context for what a person like him has to put up with from fans on a daily basis or how uncomfortable he might have been given modern American culture is vastly different than Native American culture. In fact, Trudell writes extensively on that, which is why I was surprised when he didn't much touch on that in his talk . . . . also again, who knows maybe he just had indigestion or a headache . . . Funkyart, I have watched several movies and/or tv shows and really broke out laughing when someone leaves the rat race to take a job teaching at a college, or says they are going into teaching as a respite from the personal stress and greed of the business or professional world of some other field . . . One of the most egregious examples is the movie "The Last Time" about the machinations of salesmen trying to get ahead, starring Michael Keaton and Brendan Fraser. Good movie, but laughable ending . . . people need to rewatch "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?" as a cautionary tale . . . Speaking of reading people, somewhat OT, but years ago I was at a BAD training for adventure based counseling, and we were being constantly "debriefed" by a woman who thought she knew it all, but often grossly misread the personal and group dynamics. She was so judgemental and NOT insightful that the group of professionals started making fun of her when she was not around. Not just because of that, because of the way the people running the sessions were treating everyone, won't go into all the details, but it was one of the worst and most unprofessional experiences I have had in my field and it amazed me that these folks could even be in business after I finished the weekend course. But anyway, we were having a required debriefing session around a campfire in the evening, people were talking about things that bugged them, and one guy turned to me and said, "You look like you have a headache. Can I get you something for it?" That was the most spot-on diagnosis and counseling I got over the whole weekend!! I had a terrible headache and had run out of painkillers! At the end of the training we were gathered into a circle and we had to go around and tell about the most helpful experience we had over the training. And despite hours of sessions, I chose that as the most helpful by far. It also both bugged and mildly amused me that some of the people (and these were all counseling professionals) made up stories just to play along with the facilitator, telling her what she wanted to hear, so to speak. I knew that because they talked about doing it ahead of time, they so despised her behavior. Of course this bugged other folks too, because that was also unprofessional. But it was a great learning experience for me. As a teacher, I have to remember that sometimes, the student is just constipated or has menstrual cramps, not regressing back to some abusive event . . . and also, if you are running a training for a group of professionals who work with adjudicated youth, where you can't mess around and you have to stare down some very stressful situations to be successful, and you don't treat them like professionals and with respect, well they are going to start acting out, and they learned from the best . . . it was also bad that some of these folks were forced to go by their supervisor who was there, and they believed that their job security would depend on the outcomes of the trainings. Such a very bad set up to begin with. Really taught me how important context and prior information and real relationship is to educational and counseling outcomes . . .