I’ve missed you dear readers, but the marathon is coming to a close, and I look forward to a bit more of a routine and some time to actually grow some grass under my feet…
It has been a whirlwind 10 days, 14 workshops, completely unrelated, in five different venues. Overwhelming at times, but totally wonderful experiences all the way around.
Last weekend I debuted my new two day workshop, Weave a Memory, sort of a beta test with a volunteer guild, the lovely ladies at Jockey Hollow Weavers in NJ. They all came in with warped looms, using a Theo Moorman inlay technique, the one I’ve written about incessantly, and armed with a printer/scanner, and some wonderful images, everyone had a blast weaving some pretty terrific stuff. We experimented with silk, cotton sateen/percale, and even some artist canvas. Images were stripped and rewoven back together. We spent a lot of time learning what could be done with Photoshop, lots of mending of old photographs. A big thank you to the Jockey Hollow Guild for allowing me to beta test this, I learned a lot about what could and could not be accomplished during the time frame, and what kinds of images students might bring in. I started everyone with an image I had pre-printed so they could jump right in!
In between there I taught an online class through Weavolution, and started an eight week garment construction class at the Newark Museum.
Then came the NY Sheep and Wool Festival. My only regret teaching 10 seminars/workshops over four days was not being able to get to the vendors and spend money. 
I have to say that this was probably the most complex packing job I ever did, and because I could drive there, I was able to bring lots of stuff. Each of the 10 classes had a huge suitcase or trunk filled with all the necessary equipment, samples, handouts, and supplies, so I could seamlessly move from one to the next. I took a few photos, but sadly I didn’t have a minute to breathe in most classes, so there are only a few highlights.
The most colorful was of course the Microwave dyeing class using Kool-Aid and other edible confections. I had an eager class that took direction well, and we all divided up the samples at the end so everyone, including me, got to take home the makings for a great notebook. The only grumbling was having to write the individual formulas 10 times for each of the participants!
I have to take a minute to thank the program chairs for the NY Sheep and Wool festival, they did a terrific job organizing all this, and assigned me a wonderful space, with carpeting, a private bathroom, space to set up multiple workshops simultaneously so I could seamlessly move from weaving to bobbin lace to garment construction without missing a beat. Best of all, we had heat. A rare commodity on a fair grounds.
I taught two inkle weaving classes, one for beginners, followed by an advanced technique class, where students came with a prewarped loom and learned 2:1 pickup, 1:1 name draft, and supplemental warps. It was a lot to cover in three hours but they all did magnificently. Of course I failed to get photos of some pretty terrific warps. 
Then there was the speed tapestry weaving class. This sort of evolved out of my Fiber Boot Camp class, but I was sweating the time frame, could students actually weave a tapestry in three hours? I prewarped the frame looms, and gave them some instructions, and away they went. One of the students kept exclaiming, “This is so freeing!” I think they did a great job!
And there was the presentation on bobbin lace. I don’t normally teach this, but have a special fondness for the medium, since my mother in law, many of you know, was a master bobbin lace maker in her day, and taught me well during college breaks back in the 70′s. I have lots to show, and of course all of her pillows and samples as well as many of my own. I think I enjoyed that lecture most since I could feel her presence in the room, cheering on the students as they all got a chance to try making a simple straight lace on my small travel pillow. They were all surprised at how easy it was, and I was surprised at how quickly they recognized the relationship between the bobbins and the pricking (design).
And probably my favorite part of the NY Sheep and Wool Festival is the tradition of housing many of the instructors in a great big old Victorian bed and breakfast, The Grand Duchess, just north of the fairgrounds in Red Hook, NY. It is within walking distance of some terrific restaurants, and the hospitality of the proprietress Beth, and the camaraderie of the other instructors is something I look forward to and and am thrilled to be part of. I teach at a lot of conferences, and I spend time with a lot of teachers, but this is a different group, they are the knitting and spinning instructors, and the configuration of the third floor bedrooms in this B&B, which opens out into a common area, made for some great knitting, story telling, note comparing, and some wicked beer! A huge thanks to one of Abby Franquemont‘s students who gifted her with some fabulous craft beers from the Flying Dog Brewery, Frederick, MD. I’m drinking my new favorite, “Raging Bitch”, a Belgian Style IPA, and I couldn’t believe it when my son brought home a six pack tonight after I sent him out to see if it was carried by our local liquor store. I’m not sure which I love the most, the taste or the label! I hadn’t met Abby before, you may know, if you are a spinner, that she has authored a remarkable book called “Respect the Spindle” which of course I own and love, and it was a privilege to spend a wonderful dinner with her at the Flatiron Restaurant, sharing beer, lamb, and boar paté.
So my adventures for the year are winding down, tomorrow I have another garment construction class at the Newark Museum, and then Friday I fly to Huntsville, Alabama. I’m all unpacked, laundry done, and my house is clean (thank you a million times Jenny!) and I had a lovely dinner tonight with my son. My husband is off again to golf, and then return to Saudi for another few weeks, and my daughter is thriving up in Massachusetts. The only one needing some TLC is of course the dog, who left me a few presents in the studio (thanks for cleaning it all up Cody). Note to self, buy a deadbolt so the dog can’t get into the studio while I’m on the road…
Stay tuned…
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Well anyway, it sounded good at the time…
What could I have been thinking…
Fourteen unrelated seminars/workshops in 10 days…. (In five different venues)
What could I have been thinking…
The truth is, I love this sort of drama and intensity, except when things outside my control call at me like family commitments and yard/house disasters. In spite of the stupidity of booking this many unrelated things so close together, some of which I haven’t taught in years or ever actually, the universe gave me the gift of time this week. Other than a broken toilet flapper, which I promptly fixed first thing Sunday morning after a quick trip to the hardware store, the house is relatively happy to have me here and paying attention to it. I’ve even given it the gift of a new vacuum cleaner and have enjoyed actually using it. The pool is not green, the ponds are maintaining water levels, largely because it rains about 3 inches every day (Is this the new tropical rain forest here in NJ?) and with my husband and daughter away, (even my son was at national guard drills this weekend), I’ve had the house and the dog all to myself for the last week to keep it as I wish, to eat what I wish, and to have 20 different projects all over the house, as I wish.
So here is the rundown…
Set up large table loom for additional support for “Weave a Memory” class at JHW Guild
Make additional samples for speed tapestry weaving class for NY Sheep and Wool festival (make a tapestry in 3 hours, what could I have been thinking…)
Dig out bobbin lace pillows and refresh memory on first three patterns…
No, put that one away, this is only an hour and a half lecture/demo…
Wind a couple dozen skeins of white wool for dyeing for the kitchen dye workshop at NY Sheep and Wool Festival, and sample some of the dyes in the cabinet…
Left to right, orange Paas egg dye, cherry Kool-aid with green Paas egg dye, blue and green Paas egg dye, Wyler’s Pink Lemonade Singles to go…
And on top of all that entertainment, I signed up for an adult school class at the local HS, in Dreamweaver, (Adobe software for website design) which I have used, but am really not proficient in the least and I still have one more website to design, that I promised a couple years ago, and I figured this would light a fire under my butt, and it did, because here is the rough layout in Photoshop of what I’m thinking…
Stay tuned…
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One of the seminars I attended at the American Sewing Guild Conference in LA in August had nothing to do with the art of sewing, rather it had to do with organizing and Photoshop. Because the class was so unusual, I figured what the heck. The class was taught by two incredibly enthusiastic women, Pixeladies, who have this terrific comedy routine and use it to help students understand technology. They teach online classes so check them out, especially for designing fabric in Photoshop.
Anyway, the point of the seminar, was to show a way to easily organize your sewing patterns. For anyone who sews, and who has been sewing for quite awhile, this is truly an issue. I have probably 500 patterns lurking in all kinds of places in my studio, and absolutely no sense of organization to any of them, and this has come to haunt me in the last month or two when on more than one occasion a student has needed me to reference a pattern I used maybe 6 years ago, to help answer a construction question. I was able to locate one of the patterns, but I’ve yet to locate the second.
This whole organizing thing involves Photoshop Elements’ Organizer, which comes with the Elements package, about $80, and it is a helpful tool to keep your photos organized. I haven’t bothered, because I have about 30,000 photos, and wouldn’t even know where to begin. Oddly enough the loose system I have for keeping track of my photos works for me because I can usually locate a photo within about 15 minutes which is pretty decent considering they can be in about 6 different hard drive locations. Course there is the possibility the image I’m looking for is still in slide form and I have about 20 binders full of them as well.
Anyway, back to the pattern situation. It takes about 15 seconds to scan a pattern into the computer. The Pixeladies used their digital camera, but I found just laying them on the scanner worked better for me. Course I actually have a scanner. And I don’t actually like the Elements organizer, I prefer to work with Adobe Bridge which is the organizer that comes with the CS4 Creative Suite including the full version of Photoshop. The whole point here is that once a pattern is scanned in, I can rename it with the company and pattern number like V1234 for Vogue, and it will automatically sort by pattern company, and then I can assign keywords, like what shelf or box the pattern lives in, and what’s actually in the pattern, like, jacket/skirt/pants. You can add as many keywords as you want in any category you want, and it took about five minutes of the class to realize how valuable this is.
I’ve finally had an opportunity to actually try it out, and I’ve scanned a couple hundred patterns so far and I have to say I’m pretty embarrassed, I had no idea how many I owned, where half of them came from, how many I’ve never actually sewn, and what my garment tastes were back in the 1980′s. Some of these patterns are pretty scary. This is a perfect thing to do on another rainy day in the northeast, I know the western part of the state is already experiencing more flooding, I fear NJ will eventually be underwater and the Poconos in eastern PA will be beach front property…
Speaking of organizing, I nearly wet myself from laughing so hard when I came across this article in Real Simple magazine. Real Simple is probably the only non textile magazine I subscribe to other than Time or Newsweek, largely because I am inspired by the food. The article is called Micro Organizing, and there are a number of “I Spy” like photos that show junk drawers that have been converted to organized little compartments. They all look wonderful in the photos, but realistically, the time spent on this kind of task would be disproportionate to how long the contents would stay in that state, at least in this household.
The image though, that caused such apoplexy, was this one. Specifically the bottom shelf, where resides the complete collection of this particular writer’s craft/fabric stash. Enough said.
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A rare and unusual Saturday morning with nothing on the calendar except give the dog his heartworm pill. Has the defunct satellite crashed into the earth yet? Quite the sobering thought. What amazes me is that no computer model can tell where the pieces will make landfall. Surely we are technologically advanced enough to predict this sort of thing… There is also a rare break in the weather here. It isn’t sunny, but it isn’t raining, for the moment. Front page of the morning papers, the pumpkin crop is completely wrecked by all the rain. They are all rotting in the fields. No Jack-O-Lanterns this year. What is this world coming to, hurtling satellites and rotting pumpkins?
Meanwhile in my own corner of the world, I’m going through my to do list, tying up loose ends. For starters, I decided to make use of the little plugin on the side of my blog, I use to keep it up but with everything, got lazy. This is a busy month with lots of local learning opportunities, so rather than fill your in box with subscriber notices about everything I’m teaching which doesn’t help you if you live in Alaska and I’m teaching at the Newark Museum here in NJ, I decided to just post the upcoming learning opportunities, over there on the plugin on the right, that says upcoming events. I think only five are posted at a time, but the convenience here is once the event is finished, it automatically goes away. Something I don’t have to maintain.
So, there are lots of learning opportunities for the month of October if you live in NJ, then I’ll be flying to Alabama the end of the month and my teaching for the year starts to slow down. I’m already like a kid awaiting Christmas morning thinking of how I’m going to use the next few months and get the most out of my studio time. I briefly thought of moving my studio contents out to repaint the room and replace the floor where the dog did some unmentionable damage in my absence, but I quickly discounted that as the stupidest idea I’ve ever had. More crap on the walls and a small area rug will just wonderfully hide a worn paint job and stained floor.
I’m teaching a debut workshop for my guild, Jockey Hollow Weavers, called Weave a Memory, the details are over on the right in the event box, and I needed to get the loom going with a new inlay piece for demo purposes. So I spent all day yesterday playing with images, and getting the Epson software loaded along with the printer into my laptop so I can do image processing and printing on location. In this case it is only Mendham, a mere car ride away, so I don’t have to invest in a portable printer and scanner yet. $$$
I love the new images I did, using some filters in Photoshop to define edges so they really pop off the silk habotai fabric. I forgot how much fun it is to weave these little post cards.
While in California I made great progress on my knitting projects, I finished the little cotton and linen tank I was working on, and have almost finished a Kaffe Fassett sock. I know the sock looks oddly proportioned but I can assure you the 1×1 ribbing is really stretchy and it fits my foot perfectly. The first socks I made would give so much on my foot they were baggy by the time I’d worn them all day. I re-scaled the pattern for my slender ankles and long narrow feet. I love the colors.
I also taught an online class last night in pick up on the inkle loom through Weavolution. It was great fun, and I even had a student take the class while on vacation in a hotel lobby, on her laptop, mini inkle loom by her side. What a terrific venue this is, and I encourage everyone to check out the classes on Weavolution, the Webex conferencing software works well and it can only get better.
That got me to thinking that I never posted a photo of the supplemental weft trim I started on the little Inklette inkle loom that I took to the ASG conference in LA in August. It involves an unusual use for pick up techniques, and it is how I did the trim on the metallic suit I made last spring. I’ll be teaching Pick up and supplemental warp/weft at the Complex Weavers Conference in Washington, DC next September 2012.
I got this great idea I’d spin up some alpaca from my mother-in-law’s stash, to increase the yield on the angora/silk I bought for $3. a skein in California. I think in the blog post I mentioned it was alpaca. It isn’t, it is angora. I have eight soft luscious colors, and I’m thinking of a fair isle vest, but I really needed a base to extend it and there is this alpaca sitting in a bag on the floor of my bedroom by the spinning wheel, which means I had to empty it. The spinning wheel that is. So I finished plying what was on the wheel, and I’m all ready to go… I plied this yarn rather asymmetrically, I had twice as much of the lighter blue (80/20 Merino Silk from Louet) than the darker handdyed Finn cross from Spinners Hill. So I played around with uneven plying and making little slubs. I started to get a rhythm about a third into the skein. It was a good exercise.
And some other follow up, a rather sad note for this dreary day, no one died, but I did get the dreaded one page letter telling me that none of my felted 9x9x3 pieces were accepted for the Textile Study Group of New York exhibit. You may remember a blog post series back in July where I worked feverishly for a couple weeks, creating these little boxes, click here and here. The thing is, I new it was a crap shoot applying to this show, sometimes you get in and sometimes you don’t, and the whole process ultimately wasn’t about actually getting into the show. I use opportunities like this to push myself, certainly taking advantage of deadlines, but themed exhibits are great ways to see if you can think outside the box, or in this case inside the box, a 9x9x3 box, the artwork had to fit inside of it. I was disappointed I didn’t get accepted, but still really happy with what I’d done overall. I think I will re-shoot the images and use them for Small Expressions 2012 That deadline is coming up quick, and I’d rather work on some serious clothing in November/December, I have some wonderfully challenging ideas.
On a brighter note, I did get one piece accepted to the TSGNY Crossing Lines exhibit, The Many Faces of Fiber, Courtyard Gallery, Three World Financial Center, NYC, December 6, 2011-February 19, 2012. My stripped silk piece rewoven in the Theo Moorman inlay technique I mentioned above, of my mother in law as she lay dying in a nursing home, titled “Watching Death Come” was selected for exhibit. Rebecca Stevens who is consulting Curator of Contemporary Textiles at the Textile Museum, Washington, DC was the juror.
So it all turned out well in the end, and for now the rain has stopped and I’m going to iron a stack of clothing that has been hanging on the “to iron” rack an embarrassing long time. And then it is lunch time. :-)
Stay tuned…
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Who knew?
As you can imagine, re-entry was tough. It was one of the reasons I didn’t want to blog as soon as I returned from my 10 days in sunny spectacular California. The ruined businesses and condemned homes and piles of garbage in my town, were a sobering reminder of the destruction I left behind when I headed west more than a couple of weeks ago. And of course, my 21 year old son was responsible for everything in my absence, and no one, not my husband (who is in Saudi) or my daughter (who is happily hunkering down to dorm life and farm life in her pursuit of animal studies at UMass) can keep my house the way I like. So there is always the settling in, the finding my stuff, repairing what fell apart in my absence. My husband I would always joke that the house gods would break things in his absence to insure his return. The past couple of trips, I think the house gods have given up on my husband’s 
return, and have decided I’m fair game. The pool was a swamp, no surprise there. One of the ponds was empty, I corrected that, mucked out an upper spillway and reset the stone perimeter where the dog apparently went swimming, dumped six pounds of pool shock in the pool, tossed the moldy ziti in the oven into the garbage, cleaned an unmentionable and disgustingly smelly substance placed by the dog from my bedroom carpet and studio floor that my son missed because why would he go in my bedroom and studio? My son and I fixed the kitchen drain that was leaking all over the place, cheered on by Jenny who thankfully came to clean my disgusting house the day after I flew home. I love you Jenny, and thanks for suggesting we actually take the drain apart to see what the problem was.
And thanks for noticing that the label on the Plumber’s Putty said, “Not for use on plastic sinks…”. Two trips to the hardware store and the drain is dry and holding. Yeah us… Team work…
And for those following the drama of the dog to the emergency vet hospital last Friday, which my son had to undertake in my absence, netting a diagnosis of Lyme disease and a bill of $500, all is well, and the dog has recovered.
So in all this I managed to catch up on laundry, print and ship about 20 orders for books and interfacings, work through a huge pile of mail, unpack, organize, answer emails, and I’m not completely through them all yet, sign up for a couple of tech classes at the continuing ed program at the high school, which started last night, prepare for the debut of my new two day class called Weave a Memory, which I’ll be giving to my guild, who graciously agreed to be guinea pigs, catch up with my girlfriends, chat with my daughter on Skype, and reconnect with my knitting group, so I could start a couple of new projects. Oh yeah, and I taught an online class through Weavolution yesterday, and there is another one tomorrow night (tonight if you are reading this post on Friday). Busy week, and I’m tired, but I’m getting back into a routine and able to say, when asked about my day, that they are now calm and easy and nothing to report. Which is the way I like it, but as Brianna would say, that’s boring…
Speaking of, in my chat with her on Skype tonight, she mentioned that the Big E state fair is happening this week, and her animal science labs have been meeting there, so they can explore all the livestock. Today they went on a “scavenger hunt” and she was tickled to note they had to find Romney, Corriedale, Merino, and Suffolk, which her fellow students thought were towns. She recognized immediately they were sheep breeds and happily scampered off to the find the sheep. That’s my girl…
So by now I’m thinking my wonderful class in the bay area of northern California has just about given up getting any kind of mention in my blog, actually I’m saving the best for last.
I did have an amazing time in California, two of the best and most enthusiastic classes I’ve ever had, and I’m grateful for everyone who made it happen. My nine students in my jacket class had taken a class with Sharon Alderman last spring, Sharon taught them fabric design and structure and had them sample the rest of the spring and into the summer and then hand weave yardage so they would be ready for my class. Some of the yardage was still on the looms, but commercial fabric works just fine for this exercise and I encouraged them to bring whatever they could, just to be able to make a jacket and learn what I needed to teach them. What a great group of women.
The setting for this workshop was one of the best I’ve ever worked in. Located at Mercy Center in Burlingame, in the Bay Area of San Francisco, about 10 minutes from the airport, Mercy Center is a retreat house and convent, and a pleasure to work in. I stayed in a quiet room on the fourth floor, ate the food in the cafeteria which was surprisingly good, and enjoyed the spacious meeting room we had for the workshop. 
My only regret was not having the time to go out and walk the labyrinth. I hear it is an exceptional one. One of the Sisters, Gloria, who took the workshop and is a member of the weaving guild, wove a series of hangings for one of the corridors in the Mother House. We were able to take a peak the last afternoon of the class. It was beautiful the way it totally integrated with the space.
And so, minus some handwork and the occasional sleeve, here are my wonderful women with their new jackets, they worked really hard and learned so much and all left smiling and have promised me photos of the completed jackets when available.
Some of the handwoven jackets…
And the commercial equivalents (Though Kathleen hand dyed her wool fabric)…
Stay tuned…
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Last weekend I debuted my new two day workshop, Weave a Memory, sort of a beta test with a volunteer guild, the lovely ladies at Jockey Hollow Weavers in NJ. They all came in with warped looms, using a Theo Moorman inlay technique, the one I’ve written about incessantly, and armed with a printer/scanner, and some wonderful images, everyone had a blast weaving some pretty terrific stuff. We experimented with silk, cotton sateen/percale, and even some artist canvas. Images were stripped and rewoven back together. We spent a lot of time learning what could be done with Photoshop, lots of mending of old photographs. A big thank you to the Jockey Hollow Guild for allowing me to beta test this, I learned a lot about what could and could not be accomplished during the time frame, and what kinds of images students might bring in. I started everyone with an image I had pre-printed so they could jump right in!
I have to take a minute to thank the program chairs for the NY Sheep and Wool festival, they did a terrific job organizing all this, and assigned me a wonderful space, with carpeting, a private bathroom, space to set up multiple workshops simultaneously so I could seamlessly move from weaving to bobbin lace to garment construction without missing a beat. Best of all, we had heat. A rare commodity on a fair grounds.
I taught two inkle weaving classes, one for beginners, followed by an advanced technique class, where students came with a prewarped loom and learned 2:1 pickup, 1:1 name draft, and supplemental warps. It was a lot to cover in three hours but they all did magnificently. Of course I failed to get photos of some pretty terrific warps. 
And probably my favorite part of the NY Sheep and Wool Festival is the tradition of housing many of the instructors in a great big old Victorian bed and breakfast, The Grand Duchess, just north of the fairgrounds in Red Hook, NY. It is within walking distance of some terrific restaurants, and the hospitality of the proprietress Beth, and the camaraderie of the other instructors is something I look forward to and and am thrilled to be part of. I teach at a lot of conferences, and I spend time with a lot of teachers, but this is a different group, they are the knitting and spinning instructors, and the configuration of the third floor bedrooms in this B&B, which opens out into a common area, made for some great knitting, story telling, note comparing, and some wicked beer! A huge thanks to one of Abby Franquemont‘s students who gifted her with some fabulous craft beers from the Flying Dog Brewery, Frederick, MD. I’m drinking my new favorite, “Raging Bitch”, a Belgian Style IPA, and I couldn’t believe it when my son brought home a six pack tonight after I sent him out to see if it was carried by our local liquor store. I’m not sure which I love the most, the taste or the label! I hadn’t met Abby before, you may know, if you are a spinner, that she has authored a remarkable book called “Respect the Spindle” which of course I own and love, and it was a privilege to spend a wonderful dinner with her at the Flatiron Restaurant, sharing beer, lamb, and boar paté.
