Next Step

I'd forgotten that there are fewer shafts lifted in this draft when woven "wrong" side up. This morning the sample is dry and seen from the "right" side the design is livelier than the the pic from last night.

Better?

Trying to think what I can make out of this warp, Ben and I concluded the cloth is a tad too thin for place mats and too coarse for cushion covers, so I decided to go for a hangy thingie. The parents' house has been cleaned out substantially and some old, decaying decorations tossed out, so there should be room for one thingie roughly 35cm wide and, oh, 180cm-2m long there. And because there are a  lot of browns and natural colors/materials in their house, I think I'll go with a bit of browns, lots of yellows and perhaps a pale green, to lighten the room. Whichever one Mom decides to hang it in.

I'm also thinking of cushion covers and/or place mats using other wools from the stash for better hand/texture/suitability, but that's for later.

And I'm going to tie a cotton warp on this to weave one or two of the commission pieces on the list.

Yup, moving on.

50th Brithfday Eve

This is what the warp looks like. I didn't have a mind-picture so it's nice to be able to see it. (It's more vibrant under natural light and when dry - yes, just out of a spin cycle, as usual.) I also did what I now think was some unnecessary editing while threading.

I didn't like the yellow bits (orange arrow) squeezed into the green bits so I replaced them with light browns, (I know, hard to tell here;) I'm still unsure of a few more but I think I'm going ahead with what I've got.

These are the weft options. And you can see the same sample piece looking very bright; the truth is somewhere in between. I like the gold/brown for the weft the best, but I only have one ball of it so I may have to combine it with other browns. Or go ahead with mellow yellows.

A small problem I'm having is I don't know what I'm making. These are harsh, shiny wool and  my scribbled note says "about 6m" so there is plenty though I don't think quite 6 meters. So, I guess something to go on the wall or in front of a window. Or under a plate?

Bottom left is an old sample I made for the Ribbon; widening the warp and using sympathetic colors in the weft have taken the zing out of the warp, but I think this is what I want to do to make the pattern more visible. (And this warp was never going to be completely suitable anyway.)

This one.

* * * * *

Silly me. I tried a couple of Google Reader alternatives and settled on Feedly, then proceeded to delete all Reader subscriptions, (but I can't delete the Reader account from Google?) unaware Feedly was reading my Reader subs. So I've tried to re/build my Feedly sub and think, hope, I got most of the weaving blogs back, but a whole bunch of design, art and history blogs are gone. Less time on the computer, more on the loom, then. 

* * * * *

I've been looking at lovely handwoven scarves online, (such as Lynn's Loom on the Lake, Tisserande, and Juanita Jirardin,) as I've been struggling to think of what to do next merchandise- and commission-wise. While studying the scarves I like, I began to see how mine are... unfinished. Yes, that's the word. I've started to feel more comfortable when the unexplainable "whole" happens when colors, fibers, dimensions and structures are matched well, even if I can't make it happen all the time. The next thing to focus on should be this "finished-ness". Now, how should I do that?   

* * * * *

Ben is going to be 50 tomorrow. I asked him this morning what he wanted to do, (he's had his pressie for about a month,) and he said, "veggie shop and supermarket".  Typical! We'll see how the day goes, but he's in the thick of a prolonged busy period so I bet he'll just be happy not to have to work. Life, eh.

On My Mark

It's been two weeks since I left Japan. First week back I was tired, and the second, not so tired but unmotivated and unable to get back into the NZ time zone. Then, daylight savings ended on the weekend and things have started to look up. I'm thankful to that because the plan was to get back into the swing of things work-wise as soon as I got back, as I had been uncharacteristically swinging before I left.

For about ten weeks now, either or both of my middle finger nails have been peeling/cracking/splintering and breaking; I can't tell you how this started, but you know when they are splitting and thin they so easily get caught in clothes, yarns and other unexpected material? I had plasters on both nails for a while until the skin on my right middle finger became red, itchy and oversensitive to heat, so I took them off. Big mistake; just when I thought they were both coming right, my right one broke again big time. Ouch! So I have another plaster. This is my legitimate excuse why I haven't been working as much as I had planned, which I suspect only other weavers would knot to be legitimate. And I try not to dwell on the significance of the choice of fingers; LOL.

Towards the end of my stay in Japan, there were two drafts I wanted to reuse, with or without editing. One was the networked twill I made for Mom, though the success of this one lies not only on the draft but the combination and proportion of the colors, and the season and colors right outside our windows as we worked. And because we were having a jolly good time working together. I was going to do something with it until Mom told me she'd like to weave something similar again but wider. So I've put this one on hold; when she decides on her sett and width I'll make another draft and we'll weave it simultaneously. Or close to it.

The other draft is from a series I worked on in late 2008, and in particular, the top right one in the fourth pic  here. It's fine enough but not fussy or blurry and for now I prefer it to any of the options in the fifth pic.

I've also I wanted to practice weaving with silk, and slinky flat silk in particular, so I thought to combine silk with said draft and took out some cones Pat had inherited from Nola but were given to me last year. Lovely colors. So the tops of the cones are a bit bleached, but good enough for practice, right? Wrong!

When silk is left out too long, they not only bleach but deteriorate pretty badly. I don't know if you can tell but they kept breaking while I made the warp so this is going to be really only practice, i.e. I'd better not even expect tiny pieces of nice bits lest I'd be disheartened. Eight meters of practice. Yikes. Maybe a bit later, then?

Yesterday I just wanted to weave, so I finished my purple piece. I found a threading mistake halfway through, and the selvedge is pretty horrible, but there is a sense of OK-ness, if not of achievement, just to weave and get a warp off the loom. And the piece is heavy, so when we sit on the couch and put this on our laps, I hope it'll feel like a large dog leaning, or even sitting, on us. I have some yarns leftover, so I'm going to add one more yarn (bottom two balls) to weave two leftover-yarn cushion covers. Mom and I had so much fun with her red leftover project, and though she said I could take one, (and I knew which one I wanted,) I didn't have the heart to separate the two. So I'll have my own pair. Mine won't have the variety of yarns that went into hers so it'll be more somber but they are purple, so need I say more?

With the probable small piece exhibition in mind, I wanted to revisit Summer & Winter because I've had one picture on my mind for a while and it can be done in S&W. It just so happens that I've had a S&W warp on a table loom since I got excited about S&W. A. While. Ago. So, on to it. But wait, where are all my recycled paper bobbins? Sure, there are some with this project, and oh, I used a bit on that project but will need them soon. And oh, I did use them to wind leftovers from that other project. So, what, none left? I have to make some or buy drinking straws? Grrrr... I want to weave.

Where to next? I shall make paper bobbins in due course. And then experiment with S&W. (This warp can be seen in the New Year's Loom pics of 2011, 2012 and 2013; it's the purple one.) Meanwhile, I am going to put this warp on the Big Loom and try the aforementioned fine-but-unfussy draft, probably unedited. Just for fun. 

Small Piece Exhibition: Guidelines

I'm editing/augmenting the previous proposal and going ahead. I'll be asking those taking part to get in touch with me mid-June-ish to, among other things, decide on the name of the exhibition. Please stay in touch. 

* * * * * 

What I'm proposing is an online exhibition of small woven works, inspired by Sampling's success last year. You post photos of the finished small woven work/s and a master link/TOC is posted here.

Plan something small, between postcard-sized to roughly A4/Letter.

Weave pieces whose main purpose is to be shown, e.g. on the wall, objet d'art, textile postcards, etc., but if you'd like to incorporate them into utilitarian pieces, e.g. bags/cases, book/notebook covers, jewelry or a portion of a garment, that's fine, too. Show us at least one close-up, though. 

Works, in the first instance, must be woven on looms, by you, but additional/subsequent treatment is also welcome.

Works can be 2D or 3D, (though cloths are, you know, never really 2D.) They can be framed with/without glass, but do take care photographing to avoid reflections. (In other words, do a better job than I, please.)

Works must be woven/completed between now and Sunday, June 30, 2013; final photographs/posts/folders ready to be published at the end of that day your time so I can publish the master link some time on Monday, July 1, 2013 my time. If you happen to have a perfect warp on your loom already, you can of course use that.

It's an exhibition; all photos must show the completed works only; no progress shots, no tutorials, but a particularly interesting detail is welcome. Let's put process talks in separate blog posts or photo folders and let's not reveal the finished look until the exhibition. (If you post your process, you may want to tag/label your posts for your fans.)

There are now so many ways of putting our work online and I'm familiar with only a few. So for now, I'm thinking of three options:
1) Blogs: one final, exhibition post with all the pics and info, or,
2) Photo blogs: one dedicated folder with multiple photos and info, or
3) Social networks sites: one dedicated photo folder with multiple photos and info.
Do make sure your exhibition area is publicly visible only after July 1.

In the exhibition post/folder, an artist's statement, piece labels/blurb, and an artist profile pic are encouraged but not required. As long as your hosts allow, you are free to put a price on your piece/s and ask interested parties to contact you.

If you don't blog and don't post photos online and remain a relatively private citizen, good on you!! We can post your work and blurbs here. 

Let's limit the number of pieces to max six per person, but, say, a triptych counting as three.

Let's limit the number of photos to around three per piece.

Any question, please post in the comments. Ta. 

Underlined portions amended on June 11 to clarify, if, for no one else, me. 

April Spools Day

My oldest set come from two sources, the first from the manufacturer of my heaviest shuttle, the second from a local man who wanted to start a woodworking business over a decade ago. Not sure what happened to him.

This is the hardest working set, naked for now.

And just a small portion of my handmade, recycled paper set.

And a set of tiny Japanese bamboo ones Sampling gave me a year ago for my tiny Japanese silk shuttles. I wanted to show these next to a set Mom gave me last week. I can't find them today, meaning, they are in the last box I packed for Mom to post after I left, the very box I asked her not to post this morning, because she was right and the box is not sturdy enough for the size/weight. So for the time being, they sit in Mom's closet. Silly me, I knew she was right Wednesday morning, but was too tired to repack even though a perfect box sat inches away waiting to be thrown away.

Coincidentally, Mom couldn't find her own set of slightly bigger bobbins. I eventually found them right where she reorganized and put them, but meanwhile I bought her a cheap set of plastic drinking straws. At first I didn't like that the straws came in five colors, but it turns out Mom has half a dozen boat shuttles that are almost the same size but not quite, requiring slightly different sizes of straw bobbins, so voilà, color-coded bobbins in a bag!

Here are Kaz's spools.

And Sampling's.

And Kerstin's.

And Desirée's.

And Sandra's.

And Laura's.

And Jeanette's here, here, here and here.

And Rose's.

 And Zeni's.

Missing Dad / What Next? / April Spools Day

I've been back in #44 a little over 48 hours, and in that time, and in the preceding 12 hours, I've gone from hysterical to demented to detached and started writing about this gazillion times in my head, but have not come up with anything readable. So I'll work on it a little later. Suffice it to say, I have so much regrets and can only hope I get another shot at it.

As regards work, I finished and wrapped my water-motif scarf, but didn't take a picture; suffice it to say, I had great tension problems and though I came up with a ingenious way to combat it, there were two different cloth in one piece of scarf. Mom's project was finished the night before I left so I wet-finished it a few hours before I left. Again, no photos of it, sorry, but this one looked so spring/cherry/wind-inspired we both love it. This warp is long enough to weave two pieces, and she's going to weave another, possibly with a different weft.

I dressed a small 8-shaft loom with a 4-shaft sampler warp for Mom and her students and prepared tutorial sheets. The aim is for them to see (and keep) samples of different threading and lifting of simple twills. For Mom, this will be something of a toolkit or vocabulary for her first few 8-shaft-two-block twill projects; for her students I hope they will see they do not have to follow a formula/recipe, but that they can easily make up their own to suit their taste and the purpose of the pieces. And eventually move on to two blocks if they so desire.

Here are the drafts they have been given, (theirs in a lift plan since they will weave on table looms;) I asked them to weave twice the number of picks for each pattern and the threading is ever so slightly different from these sheets, designed to give Mom a chance to explain the anatomy of weaving drafts.

I asked them to pay attention to the fact the reverse of 1:3 twill is a 3:1 twill as I personally like two-faced twills. Mom is excited with the idea and wants to weave a two-faced check piece.

I also managed to plan and discuss with Mom a small tapestry she is going to weave for me. The shapes symbolize members of my family pre-Ben and though I explained to her the basic idea, there is plenty of room for her to experiment, innovate and express, so I don't know what the final work is going to look like. Bliss.

As regards work, my mind is blank at the moment. I'm thankful I didn't finish the purple piece before I left so I can go downstairs and weave right away. But I'm not sure what to do with the blue piece intended for Dad as he cannot wear anything as heavy as that. I also have a mini blanket to wash.

I know it's already March 30, but would you like to have another crack at April Spools Day? Let's! Here are the guidelines.

Day 47/51

Hey, it's worth complaining on the blog! On Wednesday after I posted, for the first time ever, Mom and I wove together, in the afternoon, in the same room but on different looms, on separate projects but both weaving 3/3/1/1 twills on network.

This is Mom taking a break and saying hi to y'all!

While Dad did what he does every day.

That evening we had to have a very humble almost-vegetarian supper because we overdid breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea, which may have included... cake! I think we had tofu and possibly some fish besides the veggies, but just a wee bit.

Cherry blossoms all over this weekend, which is a tie for the earliest on record, apparently. This tree is just down the hill from the house, about 75% open. Tomorrow is supposed to be the best flower day this year, but we're expecting rain also. 

My water-based piece is finished and is drying upstairs. Nothing to write home about; most disappointed about the weird tension problem I can't excuse just because I used an unfamiliar "soft" loom. Boo hoo.

Mom got a tiny picture of a lovely diamond-shaped twill for which she would like me to figure out the draft! I don't think it's overly complicated, but the old mind is not working. Besides, the spring high school baseball tournament started yesterday and I am distracted from 8.30AM to around 6PM shouting, screaming and cheering. There are a few good exhibition happening in Tokyo, two of which I have wanted to catch before I leave, but still much to do around the house and with the baseball going on, I'm not sure if I'll make it.

Day 44/51: One does What One Can

This is an edited excerpt (is there such a thing?) from an email I sent Cally this morning:

"When we were younger, we, Dad included, thought “dying naturally”, “of old age” sounded so pleasant, easy and graceful. It turns out that's not always the case. Dad is not “ill” per se so the hospitals can’t keep him for “treatment”, nor do we want him stuck there for too long. I would have never used quotation marks around these words before my previous visit, but I now know these are social constructs! For whatever reasons, (much drinking/smoking, bad food choices, and most notably, his age of 85.5 years,) have worn his organs out and they are struggling to do what they were designed to;

"So, not sick, just organs exhausted, whether he feels it on the day/moment or not. This frustrates him and puzzles us. Among his complaints is that doctors concentrate only on medical issues but not on the person or quality of life, but in Japan there are no geriatrics as a discipline, so as a consumer of medical care, he and gazillion other oldies must rush from one specialist to another, often from institution to another, to have specific symptoms seen to. Unless/untill they are so disabled/feeble/far gone they must be institutionalized in "geriatric care" facilities;

"I keep trying to imagine what it’s like for Dad and rather disturbingly this is what I can related to: say I have a five-year-old laptop that works great for me; I’ve got everything I need loaded and nothing I don’t need; hard drive has been cleaned to the best of my ability though over a year ago; and a tiny part starts to fail and it is no longer manufactured. I learn to work around it but it annoys me, worries me on bad days, and ad-ends work from time to time. Gradually I learn to live with the diminished capacity, but still can't do without the laptop. Then goes another part. In Dad’s case, there are several glitches on the motherboard, a few parts that fell off, and corrupt segments on the hard drive, but on the whole, it works more than fails;

"I had to give up my five-year-old laptop a few years ago; the one I'm using now is faster with a much bigger hard drive, but for e.g. DVD viewing on the old one was much nicer."

It’s Wed morning here and I leave next Wed afternoon. On the day I extended my stay, Mom wrote the number of days I had left with her. She also asked me how I make my ragù and to tutor her on moving from 4- to 8-shafts. I was thrilled with the prospect of Mom & Meg time! I wrote down the former (hard, eh; I don't think much when I cook,) and we got the ingredients, but she was going to give the lot to the home helper, so I cooked instead. As for the latter, I don't teach and I don't write things down so I had to do some prepping but we did a couple of shortish (to me) sessions. She would most definitely shout out I'm being paranoid, again, but I can't help receiving mixed messages because she keeps going out, shopping, English lessons, doctors' appointments. There is no doubt life is getting in the way; her life has been dedicated to keeping us alive and the household going for... nearly 65 years. But I can't help thinking there is an element of her thinking she should want to do things with me, but for whatever reasons, (she gets tired, I'm annoying, she needs physical exercises,) can't be bothered or these are not as important as other things.

Donno. It's futile trying to figure out what the oldies are thinking at this point; I'm better off concentrating on what I can do to stop their environment from further deterioration, if not exactly improve it.

I bought the magnolia tree just before I got married or left for New Zealand, along with violet and pansy babies. Mom remembers me lugging home "lumber" though I thought it was more like a broom stick. It's been pruned several times over the years, I'm told.

For five weeks since I've got home we watched the buds come out and then grow bigger, but because of the weather they all came to flower in the last three days and already this morning started to drop petals.

* * * * *

The weather here has been positively crazy. When I came there was the longer-than-usual winter with hail and late but heavy snow. Then came March when one day the expected high was 6C, the next 14C. Yesterday it was 19C first thing in the morning and 28C in the sun room a couple of hours later and 26C elsewhere in the house, which is May-early-July temperatures. I had the window open until 11.30 at night. We've had very strong winds, Chinese yellow sand and pollutants making their way here; the forecast "severe" hay fever season has been bad, but will not last long as half the pollen have been blown in the strong wind in two weeks. And the airports have had a variety of reasons to cancel flights.

I don't need floods or locusts, but have most definitely requested a thunder-and-lightening show.

* * * * *

On "my" loom; a scarf for a gardener who wears almost only blue: a water-inspired networked twill threading, variegated wool/mohair in the warp, knitting wool in the weft, 20EPI, 3/3/1/1 twill. 

Speaking of looms, Mom found what we think are heddles from pre-texolve Ashford table looms. There are roughly 21.5cm long, and at a glance there are more than 30. She would like to gift them to a weaver currently weaving on looms that take these heddles in the first instance, and if not, someone who restores looms and have one that will take these. Please email me for more details.

* * * * *

There have been so much noise in my head I had to do something to calm down and prepare to go home to lead my usual, easy life. I don't know why, but I bought several Salman Rushdie audio books yesterday and am enjoying his memoir. Any of you know much about his writing? 

Day 41/51

As you know, I was originally scheduled to go home on Friday but gave myself 12 extra days here; I now leave in 11 days. Which has come to mean I will probably have 11 days left with my Dad in his lifetime. And goodness me, I'd been objective/detached about death in general all my life, it has been thus in my family as long as I can remember, but I'm not ready for him to go. And yet I don't want this stage to last too long, as the quality of his life is, for me and Mom, unfathomably low. It doesn't mean I'm doing anything much differently; &deity knows I'm not talking to him about anything important/emotional. I keep focusing on things I can do around the house to relieve work in the short-to-mid term, because that's easier. He doesn't (always) help in being approachable, either.

It's been surprisingly turbulent.

That's Dad reading newspaper in the sun, his most enjoyable activity these days and among only a few he can do completely by himself. When he has his maroon cardy and straw hat on, he looks a smidgen like Vincent.

I have felt as though I've been shoving my version of kindness down Mom's throat, and we even started picking on each other, but here, too, I try to focus on the tasks at hand. In a couple of instances, she thought I was being a Royal Pain but in the end these were jobs that needed to be done for decades and I know Mom feels better for having them gotten out of the way without too much involvement. We need to stop taking snipes at each other.

* * * * *

Mom's red cushions have been completed and much admired.

Mom's next project is well under way; it's a cashmere and silk scarf, but we won't tell her she has two picks in one shed, will we?

Mine's been waiting to be threaded for ages but "life" has higher priority at the moment...

Mom's draft:

I did go to one exhibition with my sister; it was a the National Art Museum's craft annex and there were ceramics, textiles, wood, glass and metal work with floral motifs.

Sis had to rush home on account of her kids, but I went to a yarn shop Mom described as "uninspiring" a month ago. Uninspiring it may have been for her, but I came home with a small sample of 2/44 wool that feels as though it contains New Zealand or Australian merino, and fingers cross, hope to revisit before their 20% sale is over.

Day 32/51: Living with Oldies

I extended my stay a bit, so now I'm going home just before Easter. I'm starting to get the hang of living in this busy part of the planet with two grumpy/hilarious oldies, but life is most definitely choppy and I also developed a serious hankering for quiet, solo, making time. I suspect my parents would like their quite life back too, but for them the convenience and the entertainment won out, and for me, being able to research care facilities with my sister was the deal breaker; she thinks we can visit half a dozen before I leave, which would be helpful when I go home and one or another has to leave home, I know what folks would be talking about.

It also gives me a few more afternoons of sitting in the sun and sharing the same space with Dad. For the last several years, when I came home or when the parents visited me, I always had this foreboding that it would be the last time I'll ever see Dad; unless I return here rather soon, chances are this time this will be true. I need to stop rushing around the house trying to make things right and just sit with him more.  

My parents are funny. Speaking on cross purposes is the norm. It's not always because of their hearing; Dad doesn't care and Mom thinks she knows what we want to say. Sometimes I can't help playing cute tricks to confuse them ever so slightly.

Dad is a news freak, and here it appears possible to watch news programs on one channel or another from, oh, five in the morning to at least midnight, in addition to the bulletins. So he does, almost his every waking hour. And then shouts at the main 7PM that they have no new information. Likewise Mom watches the weather forecast diligently and complains when what they say this hour is different from the last!

It's been wonderfully warm and spring like this week, which I had hoped would make her happier, but not exactly; it's too bright, too hot already, and understandably, too much pollen.

Life hasn't been easy nor hopeful for the oldies. In addition to their individual ailments, inflation this side of the quake has been silly-stupid-high, laws concerning pension is looking to change soon; sales tax went up and will again; and all this on top of the the recession since around 1990/2.  There seems to be no solution to the Fukushima nuclear disaster; a day or so after I arrived the Chinese Navy (??) did something or rather to challenge the Jaqpanese territorial waters; they say they didn't, our government say it was a blatant challenge; North Korea is playing with nuclear weapons. The house seems to be newly under the American military flight path, and some days fighter plans roar and howl above us. (I'm so glad both are sufficiently deaf they don't hear the planes all the time.) We continue to have territorial disputes with China and South Korea and relations with them have deteriorated noticable, not to mention the dispute with Russia way up north since the end of WWII. It's the hay fever season, which also means yellow sand come flying from China, this year with the additional gift of PM2.5, the cancerous pollutant you may have seen footage of from China.

And the grandkids are growing up and they are so busy! So it wasn't hard for me to decide to entertain them for a couple of weeks longer. And time with both are precious. Even though I'm not finding Japan a particularly attractive place to live at the moment. I shall appreciate my easy, fun life with Ben all the more when I get home. 

On Mom front, I failed to inspire her very much with the buntings in the way I thought she ought to be inspired. While cleaning the room I'm staying, I found two empty picture frames and made collages of some of her past works, which finally seemed to have done the trick.

I assembled photos I took in 2010, 2011 and this trip; there are heaps more she wove, but many have been gifted, many have been used and discarded, and some weren't as photogenic as others. And I didn't even think of her "current scarves" in her closet room, but even from a limited pool, Mom got her mojo back realizing she has woven not only many pieces but of many varieties and techniques. A couple of days ago she even cleaned/reorged her samples chest of drawers, (the big one in the back of the room in the second last pic here,) and selected projects and techniques she'd like to revisit. Weaving-wise, that's one big item off my To Do list for the trip.

We walked around the house looking for the best positions for the two frames - the larger one would have been nice in the work room, but that room is so crowded and in older homes like ours we can't put nails into the wall, so this one lives in the room  where I'm staying, but where Mom uses when she needs a large space or better light.

The small one, we put a nail in the side of a bookcase in the work room.

One of the techniques Mom wants to try again is tapestry, so I requested a piece. I shall design something based on an abstraction of something I will draw, no bigger than a sheet of A4/Letter paper, but more likely smaller. Here are the colors I can work with:

In addition, Mom is going to weave a networked twill on the wider 8-shaft, I on the narrower; Mom is going to make a networked twill winter scarves for Mom's home helper who comes three mornings a week using pale blues and greens and some pink, and I her gardener, (sounds luxurious, doesn't it? He's meant to cut dangerous branches and tidy the exterior of the house, but it turns out he's very knowledgeable in veggie gardening!) After some observation, Mom and I noticed he only ever wears blues, so here are my options:

Last week I suggested my sister and brother consider visiting the oldies, without their families perhaps, just to sit in the same room as Mom and Dad and and enjoy each others' company. It seems I need to take heed that advice, too. Precious times.