No rest for the weary…

I returned home very late from Harrisville, NH on Friday night and had the car unloaded before I went to bed, had a miserable night, and got right to work Saturday unpacking, opening up the house, processing a boat load of produce from the garden, and beginning the long slog of catch-up after a week away.

I woke up this morning, and although I did sleep well finally, the dogs needed to be fed, and let out, and the day called.  I dug my heels in and did something I absolutely never do.  I went back to bed.  Except I didn’t sleep, couldn’t sleep. So I sat in bed knitting and watching last Thursday’s episode of Project Runway.  I felt completely decadent. And guilty.  And I felt renewed.  But still guilty…

I started a new knitting project with the handspun I did during the Academy Awards last spring, from the leftover fibers from the felted jacket I made, also last spring. I combined it with a group of single skeins of Angora/Silk I bought a couple years ago on sale in a knitting shop on the West Coast.  I’m crossing my fingers it will be enough.

But I digress…

I finally got up and wandered outside and retrieved the morning papers.  After the Sunday comics (I actually avoid the headlines now, too depressing) I turn to the Perspective pages in one of the two papers we get, the Star Ledger.  There, on the front page of Perspective was this…

It made sense to read it with my morning tea and to my complete dismay, I have apparently lost the art of being able to do absolutely nothing.  I measure my hours, days, weeks, by what I get done, constantly checking things off my overwhelming to do lists.  So doing absolutely nothing for a time, only produces less stress and more creativity and focus according to the article, but nothing crossed off the to-do list.  So my guilty morning in bed was actually productive, I knitted a few rows on my sweater and crossed off a TV show that had been recorded a few days ago.  Damn.

I admit that my lifestyle isn’t a 9-5 with weekends off.  It never has been and never will.  I do have days, even weeks where I have nothing on the calendar and on those days I’ll do chores, clean, laundry, etc.  I wouldn’t know what to do with a weekend.  I’m usually teaching.  I think I may need to schedule a few minutes each day where I do nothing at all.  Some call this meditation.  I wouldn’t know.  I haven’t tried it yet.  I’ll let you know how I do…

Meanwhile, another amazing week at Harrisville Designs, in NH.  Harrisville is like this  step back to a simpler time and place, quaint picture postcard New England, with spotty connectivity and almost no Verizon wireless signal.  I have to say it is tough when you’ve become so dependent on the ability to communicate 24/7.  Even the phone call from an events coordinator for an ASG chapter left both of us shouting into the phone, “Hello?  Hello?  Can you hear me?  Who is this please?”  I’m hoping they call back this week while I’m in NJ.

The class this year was small.  Small classes are always lovely, more individual attention, and less stress for me when problems arise because when they arise it is usually for a number of students at once.  And like my class at Sievers School in Wisconsin (coming up the end of the month) I have a core of repeat students whom I’ve really gotten to know well.

There is Amy.  We are both stubborn and when Amy, who is a fantastic weaver and has become a competent garment maker, decides she doesn’t want to do a technique a certain way, she will dig her heels in and refuse, demanding I come up with a better way.  She loves my technique for putting in flawless bound buttonholes.  She couldn’t understand why I just didn’t apply that technique and design an easier way for putting in welt pockets.  I thought the old fashioned way worked just fine.  But not for Amy.  So after much arm twisting I did, and I re-engineered an easier way to get perfect welts on a welt pocket and Amy was thrilled and really really proud of her welt pockets in her gorgeous jacket from handwoven Zephyr (silk/wool) and Cashmere.  Amy chose a complicated garment, and some different ways of executing certain areas, since many of the patterns are now becoming dumbed down in their construction directions.  She wanted to make the under collar out of wool Melton, and hand attach it to the back of the collar to reduce bulk.  What’s left is hours of pressing and hand sewing but the jacket, with it’s gorgeous silk lining from Mood Fabrics in NY is mostly there.

And her best buddy Carole is one of those students who works really well independently, until there is a major screw up.  And we had a couple.  It happens in a class full of distractions no matter how good a sewer you are.  In spite of the pile of 47 pattern pieces all cut out and ready to go, we all did a head scratch when three of the four jacket fronts went missing.  All we could figure was they were never actually cut out.  So I sat down to figure out how to invent two jacket front pieces and a facing out of the handful of odd shaped scraps.  Of course none of the scraps worked for the full pattern piece.  There was one bound buttonhole at the waist of this jacket, and so to me the obvious thing was to run a seam through the buttonhole, cutting the pattern piece in two, and creating an in-seam buttonhole. We also had to reshape the shoulder and armhole seams, they made her look like a linebacker. It all worked and she was really happy.

Carole finished this gorgeous handwoven jacket in two days in spite of the mistake and then pulled out the fabric for jacket number two.  Also handwoven, this jacket turned out equally well and had a lovely silk lining, also from Mood.

Katie was also a return student from last year.  She had tried on my walking vest last year and vowed to make one for herself this year, and spent the last few weeks weaving trim on the inkle loom to match her handwoven fabric.  I love Katie.  She is like a kid in a candy shop; every step of the way she tries on the garment and dances.  It always makes me smile to see a student obviously so delighted with what they have done.  Most are very serious and I put myself in that category.  Katie still has a lot of handwork to do to sew on the inkle trim, but for now it is basted and the vest is fun and suits her and she is really happy.

Rita was a new student for me this year.  Rita has been weaving probably as long as I have, and I recognized many of the yarns I use to use in the 80’s.  Specifically Silk City Fiber’s Contessa.  We all mourned with that yarn was no longer available.  And we are both hoarding a few remaining cones.  Rita brought her vast stash of fabrics, and really needed help polishing her garment construction skills.  It isn’t unusual to have a self taught competent garment maker in a class, but with that comes some major pieces of missing information and I just about fell through the floor (which wouldn’t have been a bad thing because the Store and Gallery was right below us) when Rita said to me, “I’ve learned so much, I always thought that ‘grainlines’ were just a suggestion.”  Anyone who has ever studied garment construction with me knows how I feel about grainlines.  Anyway, Rita made a lovely vest from some of her stash, a cut of fabric, a scarf for the bands, and an old skirt for the lining.  She was so much fun to work with.

And that leaves Liz.  I’ve never worked with Liz before either.  Liz unrolled the most gorgeous piece of  handwoven Saori fabric I’ve ever seen, full of random clasped wefts in an exquisite palette, and I helped her make the best use of different areas of design.  I have to say that I’m sort of jaded at this point, I’ve probably see a couple thousand Daryl Jacket variations and this one jumped to the top of my favorites.  It suits her so well, she lives in Florida for a bit every year, and the fabric, though horizontal in nature worked beautifully with the jacket design.  She learned to do Hong Kong seam finishes on the interior of the unlined jacket and seemed genuinely happy when the jacket was finished (except for the handwork).

The class all got along well, always a plus, helping each other make decisions…

…enjoying an evening of wine and cheese while they worked late into the night.

My daughter Brianna drove up from Massachusetts, and met us on Wednesday for the scheduled tour of the spinning mill.  Since everyone in the class had already been on the tour at least once, that left Brianna and me to head over for a private tour.  Again, experiencing anything with an enthusiastic 21 year old is fun and informative and I always see things in a very different way when I’m with her.  It was great to have her come up to see Harrisville, and she looked longingly at the gorgeous classroom space and turned to me and said, “Mommy, this is the kind of studio I want some day, plenty of space.”

Friday night I left, stopped at her apartment, marveled how she packed so much of herself into such a little apartment bedroom, had dinner with her at the Panera in Hadley, MA and headed home.  Here is the final class shot.  The next garment construction intensive at Harrisville has been tentatively scheduled for next September, 2015.

I have about a week to prep for my month of teaching before I leave for a couple of days vacation down the shore with family.  There is the Potomac Guild outside DC, and then a weekend in Louisville, KY with an ASG chapter, followed by 10 days at Sievers in Wisconsin where I’m the keynote speaker at The Gathering before I start my seven day class.  And then suddenly it is October… Stay tuned…