Finally. It's put together thanks for the work of M, my weaving teacher, and the faithful J. Obviously it is not fully tied up but one of the main reasons I wanted it put together was to see how much of the floor it took up. It is now evident that some furniture rearrangement is called for. M suggested turning the loom around so my back was to the wall and the light would fall on the weaving in process. Whatever I do there isn't enough room at the side of the loom to get past easily. I'm not going to do it before the trip, but I will have to do some re-adjustment, perhaps moving some things into the spare bedroom (like bags of fibre) or even back into the computer room. I have a book somewhere that describes the tie-up of countermarch looms so that adventure also lies in the future.

Everything that could possibly go wrong with booking my trip has, but I think everything is now done. There were too many cases of not being able to make connections in the times allotted, airline screwups, hotel rates jumping 300% over a period of days. My sister's situation has changed at the last minute which required some inner debate as well.

Swans news: They won the elimination final! J and I got together with takeaway and a bottle of wine and were about ready to call it a night after a dismal first quarter, but they managed to pull their socks up (figuratively if not literally) and win by 35 points. Much screaming and yelling and singing the team song at Chateau Swanknitter. Roosy was bagging (in jest) those who preferred to stay home next to the heater with a cup of chicken soup, but I really would have liked to have gone but I just couldn't afford the expense or the time (not could J). I don't mind sitting in the rain watching my Swannies win, but I do NOT like the Homebush stadium and had the match been at the SCG I might have gone. This weekend they play the Bulldogs who beat us so badly here in Canberra a few months ago. But Goodes is on song, and maybe Mick will be back and some of the youngsters are growing confidence. Much has been made of Kieran Jack who is the son of a rugby league legend, and his father was ecstatic when young Jack kicked 3 goals.

Book report: I finished Measuring America and it was well worth the read although the real underlying theme was the rise of uniform measurements worldwide, culminating in metric. So it was very interesting both from the standpoint of how America got laid out in a grid, right up to its refusal to adopt metric measurement today. I live in a metric world and I rarely convert from one measurement to another, but a box of cereal is a box of cereal whether it's metric or oz. I am now reading Out of Mao's Shadow, the struggle for the soul of a new China by Philip Pan. He was a writer for the Washington Post and while I've read several books about post-Mao China, this one writes it from the inside, what the people actually think, not what has changed to Western eyes. We know about the Cultural Revolution but there is a generation of young Chinese who have never been taught about it. We know about the hot new industrial climate in southern China, but not the unemployed steel workers in the north who, in the land of worker's paradise, cannot even form a union or protest when their pension funds are embezzled. It's a weird feeling when the evil West knows more about China's past than the Chinese do. We know about sweat shops and pollution and shoddy products, but not about the horrific rate of deaths in coal mines and the careful cover-ups done by the one party system. Protesters at the Olympics should have been asking about the unemployed and starving ordinary Chinese who have no public spokesperson to shine a light on their plight. I recommend this book highly to those who are interested in what goes on behind the red curtain.