- Daryl's Blog - https://weaversew.com/wordblog -

Time flies…

Whether you are having fun or not…

I can’t believe I’ve been back from the Midwest conference for a week and a half.  I’m just catching up, no never mind.  I’m never caught up.  If I catch up then there is no reason to get up in the morning except for the dogs!

Midwest Weaver’s Conference was an exhausting blast of fun.  I loved all my students, they are kind and generous and fun to be with, and I even managed to have a few political conversations at breakfast with a couple of mid-westerners, and we found much more common  ground to discuss than differences.  The conversations were civil, thoughtful and respectful.  As all of life should be.  We can’t all agree on everything.  But we can listen.  

I took no pictures.  Even judging and moderating a fashion show.  I took no pictures.  However someone did grab my cellphone and took these, one walking across campus of Butler University in Indianapolis with all my digital gear, blending into the greenery…

Conference1 [1]

And this one, at the very end, loading my ridiculous amount of luggage into the vehicle that would take me to the airport at 4 am in a Thunderstorm, traveling across campus to the parking garage by golf cart.  My new favorite way to travel.  We all waved at the passing pedestrians like the queen!

Conference2 [2]

That was Sunday a week ago, I arrived home by 10:30 am, and my lovely daughter agreed to pick me up from the airport, it was a special weekend, the first anniversary of my husband’s death.  I went to the garden center to buy more fish for his ponds, which were nearly completed.  The landscape designer had been busy while I was gone.  I found the water feature at the garden center I wanted to commemorate my husband, to lay some of his ashes beneath.  

Monday morning the landscape designer installed this.  It is a water ball, water cascades down the sphere.  It is beautiful. And simple.  Like my life.  Or how I envision my life to be…

Garden4 [3] Garden3 [4]Garden2 [5]

Tuesday amid a series of thunderstorms this happened. Sigh.

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Wednesday this happened to a glass side table under the gazebo.  I spent most of those two days picking up tiny glass chunks, and shards, picking it out between the sandy cracks between the pavers, and the spaces between the deck planking, which had swelled in the rain.  

Table2 [7]

By the weekend I had the new table in place on the deck.  I did not replace the side table under the gazebo.  There were others.

Table1 [8]

For the first time since I’ve lived in this house I am eager to go outside and be with my gardens.  The moderate temperatures, the low humidity, the abundant wildlife, the profuse bird song, it is heaven and I no longer have an anxiety attack when I walk outside and see all that has to be done.  I look for things to do outside, and this week has all been about handsewing.  I sat under that vine covered gazebo and spent hours listening to the birds, classical music, and handsewing…

Garden1 [9]

I’m in the middle of four issues of Threads Magazine articles.  Issue 192 should be in your mailboxes shortly.  That had the extensive article on the guts of a tailored jacket.  Last spring I spent about six weeks handsewing a white wool jacket [10].  Issue 193 is in photography, edits should come in shortly.  That article has a lovely vest I made using a seam finish technique, and I’m excited to add it to my possibilities for what to do with the Daryl Jacket from my garment construction workshops.  It has a zipper up the front.

OmbreVest [11]

Issue 194 is up next, I’m madly trying to finish the extensive samples.  Actually I’m madly trying to design all the samples, but first I had to make all the kumihimo braids, because the article is on kumihimo closures.  I wanted to make a jacket, killing two birds with the proverbial stone, I’m good at that, that shows how my C Jacket pattern can break apart into Princess Seams for those with narrow handpainted handwoven fabric especially without a repeat.  I used a commercial fabric here, with black corduroy side panels.

Jacket3 [12]Jacket2 [13]

Total success.

And the closure is pretty cool too.  The braid is attached like faux piping, by hand, and then it creates the loops for the jacket.

Jacket1 [14]

I’m working on a tote bag with a kumihimo closure at the moment.  This one is handwoven fabric.  Issue 195 manuscript is due next week…  No pressure…

Stay tuned…