Back in the Studio

Christmas was wonderful.  I think all the kids and grand-kids had a great time - I know I did!  The presents have all been opened and the food has all been enjoyed.  We don't need to discuss the fact that the herring and the bread somehow didn't make it to the table or the stocking stuffers I found in my purse the day after Christmas.  My advancing age might be responsible but I would prefer not to think that.  Christmas was great but I'm glad all the chaos has died down, the kids have all gone home and we can get back to normal.  The Christmas tree and the lights are still up at least for a while longer but pretty much everything else is back to normal.

I finally made it back to the studio this afternoon.  I waited most of the day for it to stop raining all the while weaving a scarf on my Cricket loom in the house.  When the rain finally stopped I grabbed the dog and headed out to the barn.  It's been a cold rain today - temperatures hovering around 40 degrees and wind along with the rain.  I pulled the goats, llamas and alpacas into the barn to eat and munch on dry hay while I put hay out in the shelters and hay racks.  The ground was too wet to take the mule out into the pastures so I walked one bale of hay into each of the horses' shelters while they were eating.  Then back to the barn to throw the goats, llamas and alpacas back outside.  Now all the animals have dry hay and snug hay filled shelters for tonight which promises to be a bit colder than today but without rain.

Finally!  Now I get to go back to the studio and do some weaving... or contemplating... or planning on the next project.  But no.  I found water, water everywhere.  A pinhole leak in the flex line going into my water heater in the cabinet up in the loft was spraying water all over the place.   I don't know how long it had been leaking - a small leak can look pretty big if it goes on long enough.   It leaked out onto the floor of the loft saturating various cardboard boxes, a couple of manequins and the bottoms of quite a few plastic tubs.  Bless plastic for not being permeable to water!  The water came down into the bathroom downstairs through a ceiling vent and left a nice shallow lake that saturated my rug and drenched all the bags of fiber piled up in the shower.  Fortunately, the fiber is all fine since it was in plastic bags.  What a mess!

I got the water line going into the water heater turned off so the leak has stopped.  I've mopped up the floors.  All the cabinet doors up in the loft are open to let the equipment air out and dry out.  I'll get a plumber in here tomorrow to fix the leak.

In the meantime I'm sorting through the debris from up in the loft.  Clearly it's time for me to weed out all the stuff up there.  It shouldn't take this much work to get all those cabinet doors open.