Friday, August 21, 2009

Preparing For The Trip

Tomorrow I leave for Wolf Creek, Oregon, to weave at a spiritual retreat center for two months. Until today I have done absolutely nothing to prepare. Well, that's not totally true because knowing my inclination to procrastinate I have kept a packing list in my pocket for the last few weeks.

When the van arrives tomorrow morning I need to have everything in the garage:
- five sectional beams
- a few hundred pounds of yarn
- a few hundred yards of cloth
- all of my personal weaving tools
- all of my sewing supplies
- everything I need to live for two months

Before I pack, though, I still need to weave 12 yards on the beam I finished sleying yesterday. The shafts and reed will get bundled up with that beam, ready to drop into the loom I'll be setting up in a cabin in the woods.

Oh, yeah, and today is the drop-dead date for office work and bookkeeping. And editing a YouTube video. You just can't post video files through glitchy dialup.

This trip is very exciting for me. I don't get out the city much. I grew up in the country and find that the constant presence of noise makes me uneasy. It's not a big deal, just a low-level, chronic psychic intrusion. In my neighborhood, the noises aren't always nice, either: car alarms, arguments, fire sirens. It'll be nice to get away.

In the woods I'll be weaving for my contract job, designing and weaving a line of products for myself, learning about yurt design and repair, and crafting a proposal for a longterm stay at Wolf Creek.

This whole trip is part of a bigger plan to find other people who are living a similar vision and create a sustainable business-based monastery together.

Related Posts:
Vision For A Crafts Monastery

No comments: