100 Percent, Doc

Between the ages of 10 and 14 I learned to weave. On a full four-pedal floor loom. My weaving teacher lived down the road from our weekend house/barn, and in the summer every Wednesday morning I would amble down for my lessons. Hazel Warren was an Eisenhower-era =Lady= (she would have fit right in with the Helen Hokinson cartoons that appeared in the New Yorker) with enormous skill, and considerable patience (we actually warped the loom together. The math alone should have killed me).

When we moved up to Massachusetts full time, my mother decided she was going to weave fabric for curtains for the living room. This would have required (educated guess) 200 yards of 30" fabric): Mom managed just shy of 2 yards, and the warp stayed on the loom for decades, until I cut it off, disassembled the loom, and shipped it out west when I sold the barn.

I have decided that someone should get the good of it, so yesterday I unearthed the various component bits, and today I brought them down to the garage and unwrapped them (we will not speak of the volume of geriatric bubble wrap, brown paper, and styrofoam peanuts that are now bundled into garbage bags).
In the process of decanting the loom I found a paper-wrapped box, at a guess 40" x 5" x 5". In my father's scrawl was the word LOOM? In fact, when I opened it, it turned out to be a "Bliss" Adjustable Rug Frame, left over from my mother's brief phase of rug hooking. As near as I can tell, it's in the manufacturer's box and everything. If anyone wants it, contact me. Otherwise I suspect it will be donated to SCRAP (thank you, Ellen Klages, for the suggestion).

As for the loom itself? It is in approximately 30 pieces, like a massive 3-D jigsaw puzzle. Alas, that I did not document the taking apart of the thing when I did it. This is going to be interesting.

I am unspeakably sweaty and grimy. Crawling around in the attic is messy work. Who knew?

Sitting the back yard yesterday I heard... seagulls.

This is not unusual in San Francisco, but we are about as far inland as you can get in a city that is surrounded on three sides by water. Seagulls in Glen Park (our neighborhood) are seagulls that have gone seriously off the usual flight path.

Wonder what this portends. Or if it's just one bird who had a little too much to drink and missed his turnoff.

I AM EXCITED.

I know, I'm not around here much; life and distractions and stuff. But I have a bit of news.

This month I'm reissuing the first three Sarah Tolerance mysteries: Point of Honour, Petty Treason,, and The Sleeping Partner. That's the lead-up to the publication in October of The Doxies Penalty, the fourth in the series!

All four books will be available as e-books and print books. The link for ordering ebooks is available here: https://books2read.com/ap/8pAJyv/Madeleine-E-Robins.

I will have the link for ordering the print books shortly.

And I've started the fifth-and-final installment of the Sarah Tolerance mysteries. Of course, having started writing before I knew what was what, I find I need to do a good deal of research. When will this book be done? Answer unclear, but it should take much less time than it's taken me to finish number 4.

I live in San Francisco, which has a notoriously... odd climate. From microclimates that can be so micro that crossing the street can change the temperature by 10 degrees, to "the coldest winter I ever spent was summer in San Francisco" (NOT Mark Twain. Dunno who it was, but it wasn't Twain), San Francisco is weird. Winter here means rain and cold (for local values of cold--but it's a damp cold). San Francisco is also in a years-long drought. But this year... oh, this has been the year of atmospheric rivers and days of bucketing rain. And actual thunder and lightning, which is breathtakingly rare in San Francisco. Because of the aforementioned drought, we grit our teeth and repeat, again, the mantra "we need the rain." We do.

It's another soggy day, rain sheeting down the windows and the occasional grumble of thunder. It's a day off, so I'm sitting in my bathrobe, finishing my coffee, and muttering "we need the rain." I'm plotting stew for dinner, or some other simple, warm, comforting food that will chase the damp chill out of my toes...

... that over the three days when we're having the furnace replaced the Bay Area would be experiencing a cold snap. Of course, San Francisco cold is not like, say, Minneapolis cold. But my blood has grown thin my fingers and toes are a little blueish.

39° this morning. In other parts of the country this is laughable--I know, I've lived in some of them. But... in the Bay Area it's startling. And I've lost my chops, cold weather-wise. At least it's sunny.

I suck at the whole "self-promotion" thing. That being said: I'm one of a great lineup of readers tonight at the Fogcon reading series. Featured readers are Nancy Jane Moore and Claire Light, and there are shorter readings by Marion Deeds, Wendy Van Camp, Gillian Polack, Lisbet Beryl Weir, Alanna McFall and... me. Afterward there's a chance to chat with the readers, too. All for the low-low price of no price!

To get the all-important Zoom link, register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/authors-read-featuring-claire-light-and-nancy-jane-moore-and-you-tickets-156274034845

A lady asked Dr. Franklin, "Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy?"

"A republic," replied the Doctor, "if you can keep it.”

We're working on it, Ben. Still.

I got my second Pfizer shot three weeks ago. My older daughter and her husband both have theirs (because of the sectors they work in). But my husband, who is six months too young for the 65+ cutoff, has finally been lasso'ed in to eligibility. After five days of compulsively refreshing the various sign-up sites, he has an appointment this coming Friday.

And the US hit a record of 4 million shots in a day this week. Hot damn.

I realize that for some of my fellow citizens the results of the election were not what they wanted--some seem to view it as tragic. I am celebrating the possibility that my nation may not be edging toward failure--we're still an experiment, after all.

So I'm not gloating. But I am, by God, happy and relieved and very happy.