Now that I've decided what color combinations I'm going to use, it's time to ply them up. I'll need 200 cones plied altogether, but today I'm starting with the first 40. That should fill between 4 and 6 sections on the beam while someone else in the group plies up the next 40.
It's like the step in painting where the artist is squeezing colors from the tube and blending them to get just the right shades. It's actually JUST like that. I'm mixing my base thread colors to fill my palette shelf with cones of thread colors before I start applying them to my beam, which is the weaver's version of a blank canvas.
While the cones are filling, I'm able to catch up on some more office work in the background - designing new time sheets and production tracking calendars. These are intended to make sure that we meet our production requirements and keep meeting them. When it's dark outside and the production time is only an hour or two per person per day, it's easy to let it drop for a few days and pretty soon full time work is required to catch back up.
The new calendar lets us easily see our goals for each week, including the work carried over from the previous week. If we somehow get ahead, the new calendar will show that, too.
And the most important part of the new calendar is that anyone in the group can read it. They don't have to hear from me that we're falling behind. They can see it for themselves and easily understand why it's happening. Cause and effect are written on the wall for all to see.
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