Row, row, row your boat...

Argh! Or should I say "Ark!"? I had very good intentions of weaving all day or until I finished my warp but Ron came down after I'd gotten a yard or so done and said, "omg, there's water on the floor!" Needless to say, this announcement heralded a change in plans.

We've had a fair bit of snow since Christmas and then frigid weather and now it's above freezing and simply gushing rain... or was until late this afternoon anyway. Looks like the snow and ice on the roof have worked the flashing round the chimney loose and now there's water seeping out from under the subfloor in my weaving room. He noticed it right away before it damaged anything (except for the subfloor itself, maybe - gah!) but we've spent the afternoon sopping it up as it appears so that it won't overflow its banks and spread across the wood floor.

Still, there's always a bright side! In this case, it's an exciting one, too. We moved a bunch of stuff out of the way of the rising tide, including a truly decrepit old rocker we've had for years and years¹:


We've talked off and on about having it reupholstered or getting rid of it but have never done anything about either one... until now! I finally just bit the bullet and googled "furniture repair" for our area and - lo and behold! - there's a place just around the corner. Considering that we live in a residential area, this probably means that it's a home based business like mine, which always makes me happy. So I called her up, and then I took a whole whack of pictures and measurements and sent them off, and now I'm anxiously awaiting a rough estimate of what it'll cost to completely restore it.

So what's the fibre angle here, you're thinking... the angle is this: we're talking about recovering it in handwoven fabric, OF COURSE. Ron and I have talked for years about covering a couple of rockers with handwoven fabric and I even wove some samples ages ago that we thought would do nicely. Now it looks like it might actually become a reality, which would be Oh, So Cool.

I'm already envisioning submitting the covered chair for a show at the Centre for Craft and Design at some point and maybe taking orders for custom upholstery fabrics, too... Mmmm!

1. We didn't do that to the rocker, you understand. It was in that shape when we got it. Really.