a good bubble bath can cure a lot of ills

the upstairs bathroom is shaping up. i told husband that what i most wanted for christmas was to be able to take a bath in that bathtub. he worked his tail off in every spare minute for about a month up to christmas and on christmas day, i did indeed get to have my first bubble bath. sabin brought me some lush bubble bombs from lisbon. i lit some candles and it was absolute bliss. 

there's still some painting to be done around the edges and husband wants to finish the window sills with some epoxy to protect from the water, but it's completely usable and wonderful. the floor looks amazing together with the shiny green tiles. 

the shower, which is separate and not in these photos, isn't finished yet, but i don't mind. i'd rather have a bath anyway. the little bench in the corner covers up some pipes, but we turned it into a cozy little corner with some cushions. i'm not sure it's actually logical to sit there and relax, but i love how cozy it looks. 

after husband left for ukraine yesterday, i wandered around the house, feeling at loose ends and like i couldn't settle down to anything. so i ran a hot bath with plenty of bubbles, lit some candles and tried to quiet my worries. there's a lot of madness in the world today, but a good bubblebath can at least give a moment or two of peace and comfort. 

the emerald jade bathroom

remember that cool floor we got in what's now my weaving studio? now there's one in our upstairs bathroom as well! we're thinking of it as the emerald jade room now! it just went in this morning, so it's not even dry yet. i'll share more photos when it is dry. we're going to leave this one high gloss (we think). soon we'll have a full bathroom that we can use! i can't wait! the never-ending house project marches forward. 

weaving secret messages

i'm not sure if i've mentioned this here, but husband is the kind of guy who is utterly unafraid to rethink things. so after we added the new roof a few years ago, he decided to move the stairs to get to the second floor from where he had originally thought they would be. this involved building a couple of extra meters onto the back of the house. as one does. but it being a rather large undertaking and him being a one-man show, he has discovered that they don't match up 100% as accurately as he would have liked. he thinks this can be hidden by covering that portion of the ceiling with a really cool weaving. 

as one has the weaving bug, i am on board with this, so i am very deep in planning what said weaving should look like. it's not a tiny undertaking, as it's 166cm wide and about 6 meters long. times two. so needless to say, i am looking for inspiration, as i'm still a baby weaver. i know that my loom can handle whatever i throw its way, as it's much more experienced and wise than i am. 

i have this idea that whatever i weave, needs to contain a secret, meaningful message. and since i've been spending a lot of time in the studio, working on a podcast for work, it hit me that it would be possible to weave sound waves. they would look like a cool pattern and if you knew what it represented, it would also contain a message. since that occurred to me, i can't shake the idea. i recorded a meaningful message in the studio the other day and took a photo of the sound wave. i think it has potential.

i ordered up a bunch of weaving books from the library. this one about danish weaver bodil bødtker-næss had some very interesting inspiration in it. it was all i could do not to write and underline everywhere in the book, but i did restrain. i've definitely got to order this one so that i can write in my own copy.

and fold down a bunch of pages, like this one. she wove panels to divide a big open office space for danske bank back in the 70s. they don't look entirely unlike sound waves, eh?

this one could also have a sound wave vibe.

and this one definitely does. i don't think i will directly copy any of these, but they do give me some ideas for how i could approach this. combined with the idea of mounting a weaving on a wooden frame, which i saw at hanne vedel's workshop, i think an idea is forming. but i've yet to settle on a color scheme. i'm doing a few watercolor sketches to try to work out some ideas. i think husband will even build a tiny miniature version of the frames we might want to mount the weavings on, so we can create a paper version. 

i made a test sheet with all of my potential colors. i got some cool gansai tambi japanese watercolors to play with. 

the planning is half the fun. but husband is impatient for me to get started. i'm not even sure yet what kind of yarn to use - linen? wool? cotton? it's quite the adventure.

the brewery is now a weaving studio

my friend's husband died in february and she has sold her house in the countryside and bought a new apartment. that means that it was time for her loom to come home to me. we decided that the beautiful new floor in the brewery made it a perfect room for it, so now it's not a brewery, but a weaving studio! on saturday, we dismantled it and brought it over to our place.

husband is going to build some shelves and storage areas for all those sticks. weaving requires a lot of sticks. 

i also got that beautiful piece of olmer cloth that's hanging over the chair from emmy. i'm going to use it to make a new cover for the pillow that's underneath all those sticks in the previous picture. the one i'm using there belongs in our outdoor lounge area. 

i wanted to assemble it immediately, but we had to go back over to have dinner and sit around the fire and make pancakes for dessert. it was absolutely glorious weather all of the long weekend. i do love the many spring holidays in denmark.

husband and i waited until monday to assemble it, since we had guests over for a barbeque on sunday. we had it assembled in no time. it's actually not that difficult, even though it looks quite complicated. of course, it helped that we had just disassembled it the day before.

we glued some felt on the bottom of the legs to protect the floor, hence the newspaper. i'm going to make a colorful warp and do some tea towels to get acquainted with it. then, i will embark on rugs for our bedroom. i've waited for this moment for more than a decade - my own loom, set up so that i can weave at home!

marching in under the wire

i almost let march go without writing here. not sure how that happened. time flies when you're having fun! over my birthday weekend, we had so much fun, creating an amazing floor in our brewery. here are the photos of it. it's a decorative polyurethane floor. which is related to, but not epoxy. it wears better and looks amazing! what do you think?