August 29, 2002. Could someone please explain to me why I'm getting so many hits from the official Little League website? It's my second-most-frequent referrer this week, after Google.

August 28, 2002. Why don't post offices have drive through windows? It seems to me that it would make a lot of sense. Sometimes when I go to the post office, I have several large or awkwardly shaped packages, and it's not easy to balance them all from my car, through the several doors into the post office, while waiting in line, and then up to the counter. It would be much easier to pass them through my car window to the postal worker. A lot of the time I see parents who have to wrestle packages and carry children at the same time. That can't be easy. And sometimes it's raining, and I don't want to get my packages wet. These are all good reasons for a post office drive through, I think. Plus, aren't they looking to increase post office usage? This could be just the thing. I just thought I'd put it out there on the off chance Jack Potter reads World of Julie.

August 26, 2002. Loom! Loom! I got a loom! This is very exciting. I actually bought the loom about two months ago, but wasn't able to go pick it up until this past weekend. It's huge. I forgot how big it is. It's beautiful though. It's a 36-inch 8-shaft 12-treadle jack-type floor loom, all gleaming wood.

What's that? Oh, um, no, I don't really have any place to put it. Well, I didn't have a place to put it; I do now, since I made space for it. It's in our guest room, since we don't really get that many guests. The guests will just have to deal with sleeping around the loom.

It was quite an adventure putting the loom together. I had to disassemble it to fit it into the car. Putting it back together was actually a really good way to get to know the loom, but it ended up taking hours yesterday. I would think I had it almost all put together, and then I'd realize that there was a part left over, and I'd have to take it all apart to put that one part on. But each time it got a little easier.

What's actually taking up the most space right now is all the stuff that I got with the loom. This loom came fully equipped. I got a warping board, several shuttles, a bench, a manual bobbin winder, an electric bobbin winder, hundreds of replacement heddles, three reeds, approximately 150 cones of yarn, and all of the design notebooks of the previous loom owner. The notebooks and papers included four years (1967-1971) of monthly issues of a newsletter called Warp and Weft. Each issue discusses a book and goes over the technique for a specific weave, and there's a sample of the weave actually taped into each newsletter. A real, live, actual sample. I think these will be incredibly useful as I'm learning how to weave, and I am so grateful that these survived intact and have made their way to me.

What's that? Yes, you read correctly. I bought a giant loom and I don't know how to weave. Well, not really. I did take loom weaving (and advanced loom weaving!) in high school, but that was a long time ago. All I know is that I am passionately in love with fiber arts, and the opportunity to buy this loom practically fell into my lap, so I couldn't pass it up. Plus, it was extremely well priced. You can bet that I'll be bugging my weaver friend Martha for help, though.

Look for pictures in the future, as well as, I'm sure, a separate page just for weaving. Ok, no more hobbies! I have enough!