A Loom with a View

I've been thinking of this all winter:



Jane enjoying the view



The "Captain Gillette".

From the wharf.  "Rat Shack" is on the left;
"Captain Gillette" in the middle; and "Lower
Lab" on the right.

Threading the heddles -- yes, it's June and I'm dressed for winter!

Everything I need to weave (we hope).  Note the Ipod;
I'm listening to old episodes of Weavecast!

The Captain Gillette must be a hundred years old.  The timber is all hand hewn; and it's post and beam construction by a real craftsman.  At one time this must have simply been a storage shed for nets and boating equipment; now we store things on the bottom floor and have 2 bunks up top.  The plank floor isn't nailed down, because in winter, when the tides run extra high, the Gillette floods.  This was a common strategy in the old days -- rather than losing the building they'd just have a wreck of boards to lay back down.

When our caretaker first started on the island (20+ years ago) the building had been abandoned and was full of birds and guano.  He got a power washer and went at it; it's perfectly inhabitable now and hard to believe it was once so rough.  I'm sharing the space with construction equipment and, well, garbage (note the bins of old shingles waiting to go off island and the stacks of new shingles waiting to go on the side of a building).  Despite the garbage, it's a great place to work, with plenty of light.

And a million dollar view.