[farmfriend]

Crotching an afghan right now for son. Older son quilts as do I.

[Lil'freeper]

Some of the biggest movers and shakers in the quilting world right now are men. Their work is stunning.

[GailA]

Men quilt, one of the nicest quilts I saw at a quilt show was of bi-planes, WW2 planes it was mad by a man. Simply Quilts this morning featured a quiter who painted HIS own fabrics then quilted applique quilts with it. They were fantastic.

I've been teaching myself to quilt for the past 4 years. LOVE it.

[Quix]

Have just been wraphing some fringe ends of a wool and mohair shawl I wove years ago. Going the first time to the 4 Corner's Weaving Guild meeting tomorrow morning. Have never found anyone who wanted it that I thought worth having it. And Taiwan was not really the weather for it.

But weaving is a good prayerful, meditative thing to do. Good therapy for me during several long dark nights of the soul and fun at other times.

Am now working on a 3' X 3' X 6.5' loom attachment on wheels to enable me to weave straight from balls of yarn or spools of thread for much longer warps instead of having to wrap a limited warp around the warp beam. Am about 8-24 hours of work from being able to weave some mug rug samples for my aunt's requested curtains.

Anyway--my reputation as a bird of rare plumage is certainly not diminished by my weaving hobby. Pottery is fairly conventional for men. Weaving is in some countries and not in others. In Mainland China--the huge traditional loom that requires 3 men to operate it to make brocade--is operated only by men.

In that loom, there can be sequences more than 83 steps long in a pattern--pulling complex combinations of strings over the standing weavers' heads. And those weavers know more than a hundred patterns of such sequences by memory. No small feat.

Have done hooked rugs and crocheted a massive king sized rainbow bed cover out of Rug Crafters acrylic yarn. It has seemed to take moderately complicated creative crafts to occupy my mind enough to distract from troublesome things while being creative and easy enough to be fun and relaxing. And then for the repetative steps--meditation and prayer really fits well.