LEARN CHINESE IN 3 HOURS

It was so nice to hear from other weavers that blog, yesterday 3 of them encouraged me to keep at it, I plan to keep abreast of their weaving also! I've decided to use my first weavings as dishtowels since I plan to use cotton on my experimental pieces which should be the first 50 or so I imagine.

So much to do, so little time, the less spent on my computer the better. I forget that I want to treat it like a tool and less of a toy. The lure is like a siren song beckoning me to come turn it on and look up odd bits of useless trivia.

I HAD TO LEARN CHINESE TO PLAY MAHJONG YESTERDAY!!!!!!!

I registered at the tournament desk and my friend kt showed up to do the same, I sat her down and pleaded for help, I looked at all of the mahjong sets, they did not have English on them anywhere. My set has both chinese and english. I look at the pretty Chinese designs on my set and utterly disregard them as to being useful as far as play is concerned. These people played mahjong like the room was on fire. In fact I think we would have had to finish the game before anyone bothered to put out any fires....

kt wrote down the numbers 1-9 and the winds, N,S,E and W so I had my cheat sheet. The play started and I thought, well, I will just save the bamboo and circle tiles and last for as long as I can. Yeah, I drew a handful of characters (numbers); to me it looked like scribbled tiles, not so pretty anymore. And they weren't the easy ones to remember either, the 1,2 or 3. Since it would be considered impolite to vomit on the table or cry or even whine I just kept faking it. If I had a wind that didn't match another - out it went, who cared if it was my wind? I looked at a 7 bamboo and my head said 5 bamboo. Ha, I had mahjong only I didn't have mahjong. OMG, there was no place to run or hide. I thought about the books I'd read where silly people do things among other cultures and the thoughts that run through the mind of them - were they thinking, "Stupid Caucasian woman thinks she can play Hong Kong mahjong?" Or, "Why is she here ruining our fun?" Things like that. Well, during the bathroom break I thought about hiding in the bathroom for a very long time to eat up tournament time so I could go home but I returned to finish up the last hour or so.

By the time I went home I had nearly all of the 9 Chinese numbers burnt into my brain; the winds...not so much. Well, I went for an adventure and I sure got one. I better stick to learning how to weave!

Weaving My First Sampler

My first sampler! I was beginning to wonder if I'd ever get this far. My yarn seemed like it was always tangled, the threads crossed, too short to fit the warp, I secretly wanted to just cut some of them out and forget they existed.

I know it is very crude, but I am new at this! It is my hope that someday I'll look at this and wish I'd never put it in my blog because I will be such a wonderful weaver eventually! For now, I am totally thrilled. I am playing with the treadles and seeing what kind of patterns emerge as I use different sequences. I have noticed where I changed the order of treadling that the pattern looks odd; that will help me I guess, I can see where I changed. I'm writing it down to keep track too.

The warp was measured out and given to me to start, it is cotton, something a bit fatter than 5/2 cotton. It isn't the fault of the generous giver that I had such trouble with the warping, but my own fumbling! The weft is 5/2, that I know since I purchased it myself.

Today I am going to play in a mahjong (mah jongg - it is spelled differently all over the place) tournament in Millbrae. The city is hosting some fun things for Chinese New Year. This is the year of the Ox in case you were wondering. So, my friend kt and I are going to go see what this is all about and hopefully we will have a good time playing Asian or Hong Kong style mah jong with the 13 tile game style! It's a new experience if nothing else.