Arty farty thready nonsense

My art class is going well! It's continued to be very basic, but we've only done drawing so far, and we're starting painting next week, which I know much less about. Plus, painting is our teacher's focus (he's a grad student in his final year) so I expect he'll have more to say, just as I'll have a lot more to learn. I'm going to invest in some oil paints -- I've only worked with acrylics before, but I like the finished product that comes with using oils better -- there's a certain luster you simply cannot achieve with acrylics no matter how much gloss medium you add. Plus, there's a romance and a sense of continuity with the past that I like about using the same kind of paint (basically) that Michelangelo, DaVinci, Picasso, and hundreds of other artists have been using down through the centuries. Also, I like the smell.

At the end of class yesterday, one of my classmates, a particularly chatty and effusive retired school teacher, was babbling to our teacher about something or other, and I'm not quite sure how it came up, but she mentioned she weaves. Immediately, my head snapped up, because I, and I don't know if I've ever mentioned this, really want to learn how to weave. It's always seemed kinda neat -- it's beautiful and old fashioned and looks peaceful to do; Anna's mom had that huge loom in the basement (which always looked like a giant contraption for creating magic to me), and it was hinted that the dorans in Wise Child used looms to weave tapestries for some undefined mystical purpose. Also, the concept of actually creating cloth by hand (and not just by knitting) is pretty amazing. (Like, seriously, it's a flat surface. Made of individual strands. One dimensions adding up to create two dimensions. TRIPPY.) Then at the Fallsburg festival last fall, I watched a woman demonstrating how to weave and was thoroughly captivated. I probably stood there for ten minutes while my poor mother waited for me, bored (but inside where it was warm, and with cider, so she couldn't complain). It was at that point that I actually started to think about learning how to do it myself, and not even a week ago I spent some time googling our city's name plus "weaving lessons," trying to come up with some options that didn't require you take four days in a row off work and pay them $250.

Anyway, I mentioned to my classmate that I'd been wanting to learn how to weave, and she got very excited and next week will be bringing me the phone number of a friend of hers who gives private lessons for $15 an hour, and Y'all, ...I'm going to learn to weave. And it is going to be sweet.

The only problem with the Holly Learns to Weave plan is that if I really get into it, at some point I'd conceivably have to buy a loom. And that is ...not cheap. And would make moving considerably more difficult. So, in the meantime, I'll have to go visit Anna's mom a lot or something, which I'm sure she'd actually be pretty thrilled about.