A Creative Lull

I’m getting letters again. I know. But stay with me, I promise I’ll get back to some creative work, but there are other things calling to me, that I can’t ignore, and oddly enough, some of these things have taken me back to some very early chapters in my life. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. More fuel for my work.

Anyway, Monday and Tuesday, you might have read in the newspapers (or experienced if you live in the northeast, was brutal. I was saved by the 90 degree heat wave over the weekend, since I was at the Jersey shore, but Monday and Tuesday I couldn’t have blogged if I had wanted to, my dripping fingers would have short circuited my wireless keyboard! 🙂

We didn’t turn on the airconditioning. Pointless really, since we knew within a few days we would need the heat on again, and sure enough, it is back to 60’s during the day, and 40’s at night. Back to the winter jammies. So mostly on Monday and Tuesday, I sat in the shade, with my ice-tea, and read my HTML manual, preparing to write my new seminar on Website Success, which I will debut at the Michigan Conference in August. I’m loving this book, Ian Lloyd is a Brit, with a wicked sense of humor for a techie, and I understand what he is writing, and much of what I wasn’t completely connecting with before, is all coming together. I almost have a feeling I sort of could possibly know what I’m doing? I think that’s being overly confident, I have so much more to learn, but I have a foundation to start writing the seminar. Talk about putting the cart before the horse…

Wednesday, yesterday, was a really special day. First, the temperatures dropped about40 degrees to where they should be in April. It was a beautiful day, and with the heat, my entire yard exploded in color, EVERYTHING was blooming! But yesterday was a different kind of special day. It was my 31st wedding anniversary. Whew, it is hard to imagine we made it this far, there’s no turning back now!

Sidebar: I married my husband Kevin on a similarly beautiful April day in 1978, at a little church in Southern Jersey where I grew up. There were two Kwanzan Flowering Cherry Trees in front of the church, and we had our official wedding portraits taken in front of the trees. I can’t look at a Kwanzan Cherry without thinking of my wedding. So we planted one in the front yard of our house when we bought it in 1982, and since we still live in that house, it fills the front yard with spectacular blooms every April 29th.

Every year for 30 years, on my anniversary, my husband would send me a bouquet of roses, one for every year we were married. Last year the bouquet was almost unmanageable! So I highly encouraged him, sweet and romantic as the gesture was, he could retire the concept and just get me a lovely vase of spring flowers, they usually last longer than roses, and I’d be perfectly happy.

This is what arrived at the door yesterday. A huge explosion of color now sits on my cutting table, and it still has a couple of token roses, but the palette makes me want to open my dye cabinet and get cracking! All in good time.

For an anniversary treat, fueled by my stepsister’s love of Bruce Springsteen, the three of us, all loaded in the car yesterday afternoon and drove to the old Spectrum in Philadelphia. Now, it hasn’t escaped my coincidence radar, that I was married in Southern NJ, and our wedding night was spent at a Philadelphia airport hotel, since we were flying out in the morning to Disney World for our honeymoon! So last night, we were back in Philadelphia on our anniversary for the first time in 31 years. And what did we see? Bruce Springsteen’s 31st appearance at the Spectrum, his last before it is torn down in September. As he said during the concert, these old arenas have such character, the perfect venue for a rock concert, it was filled to capacity, which was pretty obvious during the half hour wait in line for the woman’s room, where some enterprising women decided they could hurry things along by passing the roll of toilet paper ahead down the line, so it would speed up the visit to the stall, having your toilet paper in hand before you entered. Gotta love those Springsteen fans.

The building was rockin’, and I will admit, after the opening chords of the three hour non-stop concert, I put in ear plugs, which was actually great, because it filtered out peripheral noise and allowed only what was being projected from the complex speaker system through at a decibel level that wouldn’t damage my sensitive hearing. We had great seats, as you can see from the photo, because we were high enough opposite the stage to see the mass of humanity and the wash of color lights as they flooded the crowd with fabulous palettes depending on the song. My favorite combination was the persimmon color followed by aqua. You can be sure that my next dye project will somehow incorporate that combination!

Anyway, it was a great evening, and Bruce Springsteen is a brilliant musician, showman, and song writer, and it was a privilege to listen to him, and watch him, and the E Street Band. The drummer for more than half the show was an 18 year old prodigy, son of his regular drummer. To watch the close-ups on the monitor was to watch raw talent exploding from the stage.

We got in very late, you can imagine, concert until 11:15, an hour to exit the arena parking lot, and a two hour drive back to Northern Jersey. But it was worth it, it brought back great memories, and as my husband and I opened our cards to each other, waiting for the concert to start, I knew in a heartbeat I’d do it all over again, when we both realized we had picked out the same card for each other.

PS. Placemat exchange score, Mom 4, Brianna 3. Loom warp beam is holding!

Weekend Update

Wow, what an amazing weekend, on many counts. First, let me just explain my family dynamics. In a nut shell, I am the eldest of three sisters. We are from youngest to eldest only 5 years apart. My mom is still living, and owns a house at the Jersey shore. She remarried a couple of years ago, to her high school sweetheart, after meeting up at a 60th High School reunion! She lives in Maryland now with her new husband, a delightful man, who calls himself our “bonus dad”.

To celebrate my middle sister’s 50th birthday a couple years ago, the three of us took a trip to San Francisco together where we had the most wonderful 5 days. We vowed to do it again, and after trying unsuccessfully to get to Charleston, SC this spring (work schedules, surgeries, dramas, families), we settled on meeting up at our mother’s home at the Jersey Shore.

Coincidentally, my mom has decided to sell the shore house, I gotta agree that maintaining two three bedroom ranch homes when you are pushing 80 is really tough. So the day before we all arrived, that would be last Thursday, my mom signed the contract listing the house. So it was with a bittersweet acknowledgement that this was the end of another era in our lives, that we arrived at the house on Friday. My mom and bonus dad were there to greet us, and we all settled in for a lovely visit.

My sisters and I spent some time in Cape May (exit zero for those who only know the geography of NJ by the parkway exit number), touring gardens, architecture, and even an evening ghost trolley tour (apparently there are a number of sites in Cape May which are quite haunted!), not unlike our trip to San Francisco where there are numerous old Victorian Mansions remaining, with amazing architecture and gorgeous gardens. (My middle sister you may remember is an architect with a fantastic knowledge of historic preservation, and my youngest sister is the CEO of a southern NJ rehabilitation hospital by day, and an award winning floral designer and exquisite gardener during the weekends.) So traveling around with these two is just too much fun! And both have opinions they aren’t afraid to share. I of course handle all the textiles we come across, and the fashion. As you can imagine, we laugh a lot! ( My youngest sister is in the middle and will be mortified to know I used the picture with her draped in my Pendleton Wool blanket she stole from my car because we were seriously underdressed, it was sooooooo cold!)

So, while we were having quality sister time, my mom was starting to de-acquisition her belongings, though I swore I wasn’t bringing anything home to my already too cluttered home, I was unprepared for the amount of my VERY early work she had in storage in this home. This isn’t the home I grew up in, and not even the only shore home they owned. She’s only been in this house about 10 years, so I didn’t think there was that much accumulated. Silly me…

First there were the pots. OK, I know these look like pots from ceramics class 101. Especially the little white one in front. In fact, the little white one in front was one I threw in 1970, at 15, in a high school craft class. I can NOT believe she still had it on the shelf! The other three I did in college. The one in the back, with the black glaze dripping from it had a lid which had broken, but she still kept the rest of it. God bless my mother… So now I have to figure out what to do with this motley collection of bad pots….

Then there was the bell-pull. I’m thinking I did this little “hanging” sometime around 1979. It was before I started craft fairs, but after I bought my “Tools of the Trade” Loom, it is made out of the most awful rug wool, because that’s what I had access to, the edges are very odd, I’m sure I never heard of a floating selvedge, but there it was, on the wall, and now it is in my collection of archived work. I’ll bring it to my next guild meeting for a good laugh. Honestly, it is great to see really early work like this, for it lets me know how far I’ve come. I remember being quite proud of it when I had finished it and presented it to my mom…

Then there was the collection of doup leno tops. These represented the first “clothing” I sold when I started doing craft fairs around 1980. They had evolved from a shawl I had made from curtain panels I had done, and someone suggested I cut a hole in the center and make a garment out of it. So that began my career of selling handwoven clothing for 10 years, in craft fairs all over the north east. What I didn’t remember, is how many my mom bought in those early years. The weave structure was quite complex for my relative inexperience on the loom. This was a six or seven shaft, doup leno, where false heddles are placed on the second harness and passed through the eyes of the heddles on the first harness. If I have a chance, I’ll do a blog someday on this technique, but those of you who have a good weaving library or are members of a guild with a good library, look for the Shuttle Craft Guild Monograph #32. It is on Doup Leno. It was published in 1980, so when I started doing this technique around 1981-2, it was the latest thing! I used that technique a lot in the beginning years of my craft fair life. My mom also had this set on the left, which I think I made custom for her, I don’t remember ever selling this piece in my booth. I did scarves like this, and I have a vague recollection of her asking me to make a whole outfit like it. The warp was a spaced 20/2 rayon, and the weft a very rick-racky rayon decorative yarn which I have a vague recollection of being from Scott’s Woolen Mill. I found the scarf that matches it in my mother in laws belongings after she died. My old work is finding its way back home.

Also uncovered in my mom’s stash of my early work, was this mohair bias vest and skirt. The warp was something like 24 different yarns from my stash, and the weft was a beige mohair, which I brushed on the loom. This little vest is all trimmed in Ultrasuede. I know I sold a few tops and vests like this in my booth, but had no idea my mom had bought one, and kept it all these years.

The best find though, was a tapestry I had done for my dad when I graduated from art school in 1977. My dad was the credit manager for Scott Paper Company in Philadelphia, and his office was done in the popular decorating scheme at the time, orange and grey. He asked me to do a tapestry for his office wall. I remember being really scared at the time, this was my first real commission (he wasn’t of course going to pay me, he just finished paying me for my bachelor’s degree) but never-the-less, I was feeling a bit over my head. But I did it, and I think my dad liked it, and it hung in his office until he retired many years later, and then it moved to the various homes they owned after they sold the house I grew up in. The tapestry is around four feet across, and it isn’t bad technically. I wince a little now, but I was young, and inexperienced, and destined to make a career in clothing, not in tapestries. Thank goodness!

Private Workshop

My private student, Virginia, came back today, with all of her yardage perfectly cut, so today was a marathon sewing day. After the morning PowerPoint tutorial, I put her in front of my Janome 6600, which is way more machine than she is use to using, but she adapted quickly and was just a joy to have in the studio. She worked very steadily, and very neatly. I think she was fairly brain dead by 6pm, but she was far enough into the jacket to be able to finish everything else at home. So here we are, she is missing the left sleeve, and all the handwork, and there are still a lot of tailor’s tacks marking the front, but the fit is beautiful, and she is really happy. Lots of hugs.

I’ve had other requests for private workshops, especially from out of state weavers. I’m glad this worked out as well as it did, and I have a better idea of what can be done in a couple days, and how I can price such a workshop. If anyone is interested in a private workshop, email me and we can talk details. I can do airport pick-ups, and I have a guest room.

So I am escaping for the weekend, my husband returns from New Hampshire, and will take over the reins. I’m off to the Jersey shore with my sisters, for a very much needed break. No computer, no laundry, no kids, just the family I grew up with. I promise I’ll take pictures!

Calendar Distractions

I’m still here, but badly distracted by some stuff on the calendar, all of which is good, and I probably needed a major break from the studio anyway. This weekend, I’m heading down to the Jersey shore, without my kids or husband, to be with my sisters one last time before my mom sells her place. I am really looking forward to just being with my sisters, they are a blast to hang with, and we laugh a lot!

Meanwhile, a few commercial announcements before we get back to our regularly scheduled programming…

I had a major brain hic-cup apparently, when I last bound a large amount of monographs. It would appear that I switched covers on two of the monographs, and I’m starting to get letters! If you’ve ordered either the Inkle Loom Monograph, or the What to do with Leftovers Monograph in the last couple months, you might want to check that the content inside is what is suppose to be inside! I’m thinking there is at least one person out there with a monograph on Leftovers that hasn’t opened it up yet to discover they have a great tutorial on Inkle Weaving lurking under the cover! 🙂

Also, there is a guild in the UK that would be interested in having me come and lecture and present a workshop or two, and would love to find another guild or two in the UK that could share travel expenses. If I fly to the UK, I might as well stay for more than one workshop for more than one guild! This guild is looking for dates in May of 2010, so if you are reading this from the UK, and think your guild would be interested, give me an email shout, and I’ll put you in touch with the Course Secretary for this guild. theweaver@weaversew.com

OK, back to our regularly scheduled programming…

I’ve had a couple of really fun days. Which is great because the weather here has been absolutely dreadful, though at least it isn’t snowing. A cold windy rain, pounding down on everything, wrecking the beautiful spring blossoms, major thunder storms, house rocking kind of thunder storms, and I even passed through a hail storm driving to the High School the other night to pick up my daughter. At least I don’t feel guilty about not being outside working in the yard when the weather is cold and rainy.

Anyway, on Monday, I had sort of a first. I had a weaver here in the studio all day, with her beautiful handwoven yardage, and I gave her a private workshop, making my standard jacket from her handwoven fabric. I rarely have private students, largely because there isn’t a lot of room in my studio, it is sort of a one butt studio, but this seemed to work well and my student got her pattern made and the fabric roughly laid out, and she went home to do the actual cutting. I’m looking forward to having her back tomorrow, to sew the jacket. I love working with newer weavers, they are such sponges and things I take for granted, I’m been a weaver for longer than I haven’t, are new and fabulous concepts for the novice, it makes me remember what attracted me to weaving in the first place, and that no matter how long I weave, I will always just barely have scratched the surface. There is always something else to explore or experience!

Monday night, I spent the evening packing. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. I hate packing. I will admit it. That is the one task of all the tasks I do that make up what I consider my life as a fiber artist, that I really find tedious and painful. I have preprinted computer lists of what to pack for every workshop/lecture I teach, which help to make sure I don’t forget anything. So it isn’t like I have to really think. And it keeps my ADD under control since I go down this list systematically and just check things off as they go into the suitcase.

Monday night’s packing experience wasn’t so easy. First, I needed to pack equipment like the table loom and the spinning wheel. Second, this wasn’t a lecture I’ve given in the last couple years, so what I wanted to cover didn’t have a current computerized packing list. I was asked by a local school district, to give a series of 45 minutes lectures to each of the four second grades classes, on fiber, where it comes from, and how it is made into cloth, and then ultimately a garment. They do a unit on clothing as part of their curriculum, and though I’ve done this series of lectures for this school district in the past, the teacher that coordinated it had retired, and there was a gap of a few years before they rediscovered the need for my services. I love doing this. But I really had to start from scratch. I didn’t have a free loom, and didn’t feel like warping up a loom for just a couple of quick shots of demonstration weft, for four short lectures, and then be stuck trying to clear the loom for something else. So I opted to bring my already in progress table loom where I was weaving one of my silk strip photo images, (see the previous blog for a picture of the loom and what’s on it), but I had to tie that into the topic, since it wasn’t yardage for clothing.

I’ve been playing around with felt since I did this lecture last, and thought it would be fun to incorporate it as well, but with only 45 minutes per lecture, I wanted to make sure I didn’t try to cram in too much and over pack. I also had a brainstorm of an idea, as I was puttering and packing and getting really distracted. I had taken a workshop with feltmaker Loretta Oliver at the Grand Rapids Convergence, just a one day workshop, on making an amulet bag from felt. In essence, we wrapped river stones with carded fleece, put them into a zip loc baggie, with hot soapy water, zipped the baggie, and then just rubbed until the wool felted around the rock. Later we cut the rock out of the felt in a way that the amulet bag would have a flap, but I decided that I’d stop packing and try to see if I could do this a bit simpler by just wrapping the fleece around the lower part of the river rock, put it in the baggie, and have the kids rub the stone while I was talking to them. Each student would rub both sides of the rock and pass it to the next. I had a towel with the baggie in case any of the students got a bit aggressive and ruptured the baggie. That didn’t happen. It was a complete hit! When I finished my lecture, I removed the felt from the rock, and rubbed it some more to further felt it, and then rinsed and presented to the students their small vessel. We spent a couple minutes talking about the word ‘vessel’, it was in fact just a fancy word for container, but the teacher and I devoted a few extra sentences explaining to the second graders that a vessel/container doesn’t actually have to hold anything. It could be just to look at and remember the experience. I also brought a tapestry I had done about 30+ years ago( titled Est Esse Percipe, Latin for “To Be is to Be Perceived”), which always impresses the students, it is quite large, and very colorful, and I still have the original watercolor I had done when I first designed this tapestry.

Sidebar: My last year of college in 1976-1977, I worked at a famous Bergen County rug store, demonstrating rug weaving to the public, I had a Cranbrook countermarche loom in the showroom, and on Wednesday nights and Saturdays, I’d sit and work on pile rugs and tapestries. I made five tapestries during that internship. They sold most of them, except the last tapestry. The assistant manager kept it for many years, hanging in his office. Occasionally I’d go back to visit the store, and sometimes purchase rugs for my house, but I always knew where the tapestry was. When I started to be asked to give lectures and demos to kids, having a tapestry to show them was really important and since I didn’t do tapestries anymore, in favor of clothing, I called up this famous Bergen County rug store, and asked if I could buy the tapestry back from them. They graciously sold it to me for about $100. After all they paid me minimum wage to make it, and in the 70’s that was probably $1.75/hour. So figuring 50 hours to make, we figured they paid me around $100. I was thrilled, and I always get BIG OHHHHHHHHHHS, when I unveil my 5 ft. tapestry.

Back to the story. So packing Monday night, meant inventing a project for the kids, finding all the things buried in my studio that I knew I had put somewhere, but couldn’t remember where, like the tapestry, the bucket of river stones, etc. In the search of course I find books I forgot I had, supplies I forgot I bought, raw materials that just needed to be made into something, and my poor ADD brain was running amok so badly I didn’t sleep the whole night. Not good.

But I made it through the day yesterday, completely exhausted by 3pm, but the kids and the teachers were so excited by the information I gave them, and the possibilities I presented, and at the end of each lecture as I was packing up to move to the next class, all the students were turning their t-shirts around to see what country their t-shirt was made in, and asking the teacher to show them where Laos, Vietnam, India, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Honduras, Nicaragua, China, Hungary, and Mexico were on the world map. Isn’t it great to use fiber to teach all other subjects? And of couse, showing them my articles in Handwoven magazine, with the actual garments in my hand, that appeared in the magazine, and stressing how important it was for the students to learn to write in case one day they got to write about what they love for a magazine, left every teacher on their knees in Thanksgiving for someone motivating their students to pay attention to writing skills. And of course there were a ton of math references as well…

I’ve had some great fiber adventures in the last couple days, and treated myself this morning to a much needed massage, and hair cut. I’m also cleaning my house since it was looking a little neglected. I still have some unpacking to do, but I’m sort of counting today as a good old fashion day off. What a concept.

I’m Here!

I feel so loved! Emails have started coming in wondering where I am and if everything is OK. I’m happy to report that yes, everything is OK. You see, this was my 16 year old daughter’s spring break. By Wednesday, the calendar was full. Even though it was spring break, my daughter had a track meet back at the High School. She throws discus and shot put. I have to admit, I’ve never watched the throwers. My son did a stint as a pole vaulter, but soon tired of not getting over the pole. He’d rather be skiing. But my daughter is showing some potential, and seems to be enjoying herself. It is a personal sport, though you are competing against others on your team, and another school, it is still a solo sport, and you are always trying to do better than your last throw.

After the meet, her friend from Girl Scout Summer Camp, who lives in a different county, came to spend the rest of the week. So it has been a busy few days, where I try to get in bits of work time, but haven’t had a whole lot of luck. Her friend is a delight, it has been fun having a couple of teen girls hanging around, and Wednesday night, we went to see the opening night performance, of Cinderella at the Community College. You might remember that my son has an ensemble role in this performance, and the role of the coachman, hence the mad couple of days where I was trying to make pantaloons. The show was cute, and we all enjoyed ourselves, and my son looked great in his pantaloons, but I have to honestly admit, that of all the theatre I’ve watched, and we’ve seen a lot, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s, Cinderella is my least favorite property. Maybe it was seeing Leslie Ann Warren too many times as Cinderella, the songs just grate on me, and the message here is revolting. And as I listened to the songs again, I still shudder at the messages they send. And I looked at the audience of young Cinderella wannabee’s, dressed in their Disney Cinderella dresses, wishing their fairy godmother would make them beautiful and fitting for a prince, and I shuddered some more. But I’m reading way too much into this, my son danced his heart out doing the waltz, and made a great coachman even if in a former life he was a rat from the basement and would turn into one again at the stroke of midnight! 🙂

Today, I took the girls into the city. There are a couple of shows that were closing soon, and I wanted to catch them. We started at FIT, and saw the Seduction Exhibit, seductive clothing to enhance physical attractiveness, or convey a sense of power and social status. I’ve seen better examples in other garment exhibits, but the FIT collection is world renowned, and it really doesn’t matter what the theme is, their exhibits always enlighten and are a feast for the eyes.

We left FIT, heading uptown all the way to 91st street in Manhattan and the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum. There an exhibit titled Fashioning Felt, opened in March. This is a must see exhibit, and it will be there until September 7. If you are anywhere near New York City between now and Labor Day, do not miss this show. The range of felt, from Jorrie Johnson’s felted vessels over lacquered wood, and the architectural industrial felt furnishings and wall coverings, the stunning nuno felt garments, to the modern interpretation of a Mongolian Yurt, with spectacular panels of dripping nuno felt, cascading from a dome of felt, down the windows, with light coming from the outside, through the ethereal felt, we all took a moment to sit and reflect and reenergize, and realize what a privilege it is to be able to come into Manhattan on a lovely spring day and experience the best.

After a quick bite, we raced to catch a bus back downtown, to Columbus Circle, and with 45 minutes to spare, we flew through the new digs of the Museum of Art and Design, which moved from across the street from MoMA, a year or so ago, to the new Columbus Circle location, to catch an exceptional exhibit called Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary. The show is closing Sunday, so I’m really glad we got to see it. We could have spent the day in this exhibit. Most of the pieces here required a second look because it wasn’t until you really looked, that you realized the pieces were created from the teeth of combs, or hypodermic needles, sunglasses, or the triggers of guns. Puzzle pieces, rubber tires, spools of thread, telephone books, plastic spoons and forks, the list of recycled trash was inspiring and eye-opening.

Terese Agnew

Portrait of a Textile Worker

2005

Photo Credit: Peter DiAntoni

I think this was our favorite piece, because of the subject matter, and the exquisite portraiture, but looking more closely revealed that this work of art, and it was quite large, over 100 inches, was made from 30,000 garment labels, all arranged and stitched in a tonal order to create the lights and darks of the work. The girls were blown away, and so was I.

My daughter’s friend is a pretty good cook, so I enjoyed eating teen friendly food all week, her omelets were excellent, and last night’s Chili Mac was pretty tasty. We have lots of leftovers so I know what I’ll be munching on all weekend. Last night’s dessert was quite unusual, fried Oreos. She dipped Double Creme Oreos into cake batter, and deep fried them. I only had one, which was actually really delicious, I was afraid my gall bladder would have a hissy fit. Tonight she made another unusual dessert, banana boats, wrapped in foil and grilled. When warmed through, I opened the foil, peeled back the banana peel that had been started, and found oozing dripping marshmallow and dark chocolate mixed with the warm banana, well, with my glass of pinot noir, I’d say all is well with the world. I stayed behind to clean up my kitchen while my daughter and her friend built a lovely bonfire in the back firepit. It is a warm spring night, and though the fire was inviting, I left them to their teen musings, and came in to blog.

All was not lost, I did manage to get a couple things going in the studio. I sewed the outer shell of the princess seam dress, in the brocade, which was acting like a muslin. I took the pattern in a bit too much, but I was able to let the dress out enough that it fits beautifully, now I’ll alter the pattern again, and I feel pretty confident I have it right for cutting out the Splash fabric. I am really looking forward to making this dress for the summer.

And finally, I started to weave another one of my Theo Moorman images, this time from a photo we took of my children on top of the World Trade Center Twin Towers, in August of 2001. I don’t know why that day I told my husband we should take the kids in to see the sites in NYC. We hadn’t done that with the kids, and I’d never been on top of the Trade Center Towers. It was an unbelievable feeling to be on the top of the world, looking out at Manhattan on that beautiful August day, and I will say that every strip I weave in is a painful memory that within two weeks, those towers would be rubble. I was just preparing to teach a class at Montclair State University in the fiber department when the towers were hit, and I was encouraged by Madelyn van der Hoogt, editor of Handwoven Magazine, to write my thoughts that day in a letter to the editor. That letter and some other essays I’ve done are on the Extras page of my website.

So I am slowly constructing this piece, rebuilding what once stood, like the innocence of my children on the roof that day, strip by strip, on my table loom. I need to take the loom into a classroom full of 2nd graders on Tuesday, and it is odd to think they weren’t born when this event happened. I want to show them how I can weave pictures, and I’ll take with me the Big Sister piece I did last winter. I’ll take one of my bags of fleece, and my carders and my repaired Ashford wheel, and some silk cocoons, and a cotton boll, and some examples of my work and my articles, and I’ll teach some 2nd graders about art, and fiber, and where their clothes come from, and who knows, maybe some day one or two of them will be drawn to a loom and vaguely remember when that weaver came to visit them in 2nd grade.