This has been a particularly crazy week, because my husband is home, for just a couple weeks, and I forget how quiet and easy my life is with no one around. Normally it is sweet and lovely to take a break and enjoy my husband’s company but this week has been frenetic and chaotic, since we are refinancing the house, dealing with the total loss of my daughter’s car and all of that insurance hassle (in all fairness, the insurance company has been wonderful, it is just one more thing to deal with), buying a new car ( I pick up my new Rav4 tomorrow at noon), moving through the 2011 taxes, and a myriad of other things that had to be put off until my husband returned.
He is an amazing person, in that he can walk in the door, with almost no jet lag (from Saudi Arabia), and uncomplaining just pick up the pieces and move forward. He is a much better person than I. I would be a complete b**ch! He takes things in stride, only gets cranky with me just a little bit, and can research new car models and best prices around in the blink of an eye and get the job done.
I on the other hand am struggling to keep up the creativity in the studio, hold up my end of the bargain, accompany him on demand, “Daryl we need to get the Total Loss Claim forms notarized”, teach a couple of inconveniently scheduled online classes because who knew I’d have all this going on when I booked them a couple months ago, and prepare for the arrival tomorrow night of my band weaving rival John Mullarkey.
John and I are friends, we have taught at conferences together, and have a friendly rivalry going, because John is an expert at card weaving, and I teach inkle band weaving. Both methods produce some pretty amazing bands, and they couldn’t be more different in technique, though both can be done on similar looms. John is teaching in Connecticut tomorrow, and I’m teaching an inkle class at a local museum on Sunday, so the plan is for John to hop a train from Hartford to Newark tomorrow night, and we will pick him up, and he will accompany me to the workshop Sunday at the museum. I will return him safely to St. Louis on Monday. Promise.
So here is the dilemma. I have a naked inkle loom. Normally naked looms are not problematic, I have so many it isn’t possible to keep all of them dressed at all times. But my two larger inkle looms are usually full of something really special, complicated, something that will inspire students, challenge me, and make everyone exclaim, “Ohhhh” when I show the loom off in a classroom setting. One of my larger inkle looms has nothing but a Pick
Up sampler I use for online teaching through Weavolution. Though it will be handy for my workshop on Sunday, it isn’t eye popping. The other large inkle loom is naked. As in, nothing on it. The impressive band I had on it for a couple years has been woven off and made into this vest.
So, with John coming to visit my studio, and knowing I needed something really eye catching on it, because well, we are in a friendly battle here for who can generate the most “Ohhhh’s” from a work in progress, I decided to take the small supply of needlework yarns and fibers I picked up on a going out of business sale at the “Lacemaker” last November when I taught in Cleveland.
I looked through my box of pieces I use for show for classes, and I came across this little gem. It is my most favorite piece of inkle weaving in my collection and I didn’t weave it. It was actually a gift, it came in a thank you note, and I am mortified and embarrassed because the note got separated from the little 3 inch piece of weaving and I don’t know who wove it. I’m really really hoping they are reading this blog and will identify themselves.
Anyway, I love this little piece, and it always generates lots of “Ohhhhh’s” whenever I show it. I figured out it was a 19 thread 2:1 pick up, the most I’ve ever done is 7 threads. And it took awhile but I think I figured out how they did the little bumps up the side. I’ve wanted to reproduce this, not because I wanted to copy it, but because it was a stretch for me and I wanted to see how it was done.
The box of #10 crochet cord and rayon floss that I picked up in Cleveland would work perfectly, and I drafted a color sequence and then a pick up chart. That took most of an afternoon. I started warping, made a couple stupid mistakes (yeah I make them, get over it…) and finished up warping the loom at my knitting group last night. I started to weave and was really really disappointed. I hated it. I mean hated it. So I did some adjustments, and ripped out a second metallic color I had used,
which made the whole thing look like a Mummer’s Day parade (If you are from Philadelphia you know what that is…), and I tried again. It seemed better until I started in on the pick up. The scale of the threads I used are small and particularly hard to see, so I used powerful magnifiers, but I carefully followed the draft, it took almost an hour, but I finished one repeat last night around midnight, and stepped back and squealed in such delight, I shocked myself. I love this. I keep staring at it. I dragged my husband and my son into my studio today (which is normally not something I ever do, trust me) and even they were impressed. So John, top that…
I did get the scarf warp on the loom from the pile of yarn in the last post. I added in a couple of darker sections and completely changed the look of the yarns. I won’t really know if I like the whole effect until I weave a scarf and wash it, but I don’t really care, I’m pretty confident they will be pretty, since they are hand painted and interesting. And it is something on the loom from leftover warp I found in the cabinet. A freebie… I should net four scarves from this puppy…
And on a much better note, I got an email letting me know my yardage was accepted to the yardage exhibit for Convergence Long Beach. It sort of made up for the Small Expressions disappointment.
And so, my daughter is due in shortly from college, my uncomplaining husband got in the car this morning and drove to Connecticut to the salvage yard to strip her wrecked car of all essentials, plates, EZpass unit, new car stereo, etc. and then swing by University of Massachusetts to pick her up for spring break. She will only be here this weekend since she heads back up Monday in my old Honda wagon to spend her spring break acquiring certification for artificial insemination. That’s my girl… Some kids go to Ft. Lauderdale for spring break, my daughter goes to a slaughterhouse in Pennsylvania to learn how to get cows pregnant without sex. Works for me…
All is fair in love and inkle band wars…
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I occasionally write about what inspires a project, or adventure. It might be a trip, or it might be a photo. It might be a technique or something I need for a teaching example. It might be a magazine fashion, or just a plain old deadline. And occasionally, it is just some really silly sequence of events.
It started with the guild meeting on Wednesday. Sherrie had been cleaning out some old patterns, Sherrie and I wear the same pattern size range. She showed me the bag and asked if I wanted any of them. For free. Well that was a no brainer. Patterns, for free? Vogue? What I can’t wrap my head around is why people get rid of patterns. And that would explain why I am sitting in a studio that is so full of stuff there is no way I could actually ever move out of here.
I took about 5-6 of the patterns she had in the bag. There were some really interesting jacket shapes. I brought them home and tossed them on my overcrowded cutting table.
In an attempt to try to tidy up the overcrowded cutting table, I picked up the stack of patterns and scanned them into my computer, so I could organize them with keywords numerically in my Patterns file. Then I had to find a place to store them. This is proving to be a bit tricky since all my pattern boxes are overflowing, and I’m resorting to stuffing patterns into a shelf in one of the cabinets in my studio. Which is also getting pretty tight.
I shifted some of the detritus around, and found stuffed in the back of one of the shelves, the leftover warp from this dress…
I pulled it out to make room for the patterns, and thought I might set up one of my inkle looms with it. The warp is probably about 10 yards long. When I started to count the three different warp bundles, I realized there was a substantial amount of warp left, I could add to the pile with stuff from the stash, and do a quick scarf run, because the pile of leftover warp couldn’t go back on the shelf. No room.
So I looked at the loom I would be using, and realized I still had at least another couple of scarves to weave off the warp that was on it, and it was coming up on the top of the to do list anyway since I have a flurry of fundraisers for organizations near and dear to my heart that have sent me letters asking for a donation…
I spent last night clearing that loom, so I can throw the rest of the leftover warp on it, I’m almost to the point of having completely naked looms. Only one has a warp, one of my table looms, and I have to get moving on another large Weave a Memory piece for a fundraiser auction that is due in a couple of weeks.
No progress on the dress/felt scarf from two posts ago. Because I’m rethinking the whole idea, I love the tencel and the felt together, but remaking the gown, when I rarely ever have an opportunity to wear gowns except in fashion shows, doesn’t seem like the best use of the components. I’m exploring my options.
And in other news, I received my annual rejection non acceptance letter from Small Expressions. Sigh… Even though I expect to get rejected to not get accepted, one can always hope… So it was particularly poignant while randomly scrolling through Facebook, to come across this quote…
“Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” – Andy Warhol
Stay tuned…
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For all of you fans of public radio, you know it is pledge week. That’s the week when fans collectively sigh, and grin and bear all of those long drawn out pleas for money. Like every four minutes. Sigh…
For all of you fans of public radio, hopefully you have done your share to keep public radio vibrant and on the air. WNYC, my local station has a great program for sustaining members. I give monthly, an automatic withdrawal, and I never have to think about it.
I sort of feel like this blog is like public radio. Though I provide it for free, and am happy to contribute something meaningful when I have something meaningful to say, this is really just an advertisement for my workshops. Because that is really where I get paid.
So, before we get to the meat of this particular blog post, I have a couple of shameless commercial announcements, and you will just have to read through them to get to the good stuff…
First, some happenings this month. I am teaching an eight week class starting next Tuesday at the Newark Museum, afternoons from 1-4pm, here in NJ, which is a pick your own agenda sewing class. Everyone works on their own projects and agenda and I help and motivate and rip out if necessary, and get participants back into using the sewing machine for fun and wardrobe upgrade. You can link to the details in the side column on the right under Upcoming Events.
For those who live in or can travel to New England, Webs yarn store (fiber mecca) is hosting me for a two day garment construction intensive. This is a garment sewing class, with lots of lecture and some hands on sampling, and I basically cram everything you have forgotten or never learned, about fit, seams, construction techniques, sampling and washing for the weavers, and closures techniques, all in two days. You do not have to be a handweaver to attend. There are still a couple of spots open, and the class is Saturday and Sunday March 31-April 1st. Click here for more information…
And of course, I have ongoing classes in all kinds of techniques available on Weavolution.com, these are online classes, and there is one on Thursday, one session, in beginning Inkle Loom Weaving. For all of my classes and my complete schedule, visit my website.
And now back to our regularly scheduled programming…
So when last we left off, I was happily ripping apart a handwoven tencel gown, to refit my body, and then my plan was to incorporate a length of felt I created, and see what kind of interesting look I could come up with. Hahahahahahahah…
That would be the collective universe laughing at my silly notion that I had unlimited days and nights to just entertain myself with such frivolity…
My homesick daughter, left University of Massachusetts Amherst last Friday night, to do a brief weekend at home, needing some mommy time, and dog hugging time, and a serious meet-up with the washing machine… (Drive four hours to do laundry?) I said yes, because she seemed to really need a hug.
Unfortunately 40 minutes into the trip, she was rear ended on interstate 91, near Springfield, MA, which, though she was OK considering, has probably totaled her car. She loved that car. She had stickers over every inch of that car. She named that car Percy. We are waiting on the final damage appraisal, but it isn’t looking good. She managed to get back to campus after contacting someone from her dorm, and we spent a shell shocked and teary Friday night, with a string of about 100 texts and phone calls.
It was decided to do what any self respecting mother would have done under the circumstances, I procured a crate, loaded the dog into my car, along with my son, and a dozen hot NJ bagels (you have to be from NJ to understand the significance of this) and Saturday morning we all drove up to see Brianna and bring the mommy and doggie hugs to her. And bagels… Because mothers do this…
Meanwhile, the universe is wreaking havoc on my electronics and Saturday morning my cell phone, (a Droid 2) succumbed and became unusable. A well meaning friend tried a bit of Reiki on it, which allowed it to work on the trip to Massachusetts, but it was pretty clear that the 6 month old phone was malfunctioning and my Sunday was spent at Verizon dealing with that. Sigh… The upshot is, they will replace the phone, but it hasn’t arrived yet and this is Tuesday…
Monday was spent on the regular telephone with insurance companies, my daughter and my husband who is dear God, still in Saudi Arabia. Sigh. It is times like these that make me so incredibly grateful I don’t have to be at a desk every day from 9-5, on the phone dealing with crap such as this. My life and work is all wrapped up in pretty fibers and lovely students who are appreciative of what I know and what I can teach them. And I don’t do it every day. The rest of my professional life is seeing what fun stuff I can come up with using a bunch of yarn and cool fiber tools, and writing about it.
And so I’ve done nothing in my studio but take care of accident related stuff, cell phone stuff, refinancing stuff (which we are in the middle of), medical stuff (obtaining records and such), procuring titles, repair records, and anything else that pops up as soon as I walk over to the cutting table to pick up my tencel gown, now in pieces. By yesterday afternoon, I was fried and stressed and needed a break.
So I got in my car, and drove to Trenton NJ, home to Stephanie Plum, and the Hospitality House for the NJ Restaurant Association where they teamed up with ArtPride to present a wonderful evening, a $50 a head fund raiser celebrating Inspiring Women in the culinary and visual arts. There were tables of truffle butter, duck, the biggest raw oysters I’ve ever seen, wines, local microbrews, and so much food, salmon tartar, beet tartar, and anything else they could think of to tartar, all surrounded by artworks hanging on the walls from various NJ women artists. I had two of my woven photos hanging in one of the hallways, and as a result, I got a free ticket to the event.
This was one of those classic times when I was too stressed to think about going, the phone wouldn’t stop ringing and I had trouble even getting to the shower. I had almost talked myself out of going down to Trenton, an hour and a half drive, until I realized that without a working phone, no one could reach me. 
So I jumped in the shower, put on my gorgeous coat dress, hand dyed and hand woven ( I do know how to stick out in a crowd), jumped in the car, and headed down the NJ Turnpike and gorged my way through the evening. It was healing and productive.
And so, the drama continues at home, but I’m fine. And my daughter is fine. And cars can be replaced. And with luck my workshops will fill, and I’ll get on with the tasks at hand that I do best.
I leave you with this epitaph that my lovely daughter, who calls herself Lunch Box Rodriquez on Facebook, wrote about her favorite car Percy,
Dear Percius P. Percival, (some of you know him as Percy) I thank you for being the car that you were (in case you are totaled). You saved the life of 5 people in your lifetime. Between the truck tire blowout that hit you, the teenager running the red light, and my accident 3 days ago, you have performed valiantly. I know we have put you through so much, but we love you and wish that you could have lasted with us longer. When recounting my story of last Friday, I’ve been asked if I had spun out or swerved. You, being the car that you were, handled beautifully and I did not spin or swerve, but drove straight and pulled over with ease, despite the blowout which was inflicted upon you.
Rest in pieces. ~Lunch Box
Stay tuned…
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I was inspired by two events, one my trip to Iowa, where I stayed with fabulous felter Gisela McDonald, who opened up her stash to me (you have no idea…) and receiving back a piece via USPS (in a smashed box) from Loretta Phipps, who was my partner for the 2008 Design Challenge for Convergence Tampa Bay. In a nutshell, Loretta and I were randomly paired, given yarn dyed in Floridian hues, and given about 6 months to come up with an ensemble for the runway, pooling our collective talents. I am of course a handweaver, and garment designer, and Loretta does everything else but weave. So I created a canvas so to speak, with both a coat and tencel dress for her to embellish and bead and make runway worthy. Which she did until her fingers bled. 
The ensemble traveled for a couple years, and then Loretta took the pieces home with her, and has had them for the last year or so. We decided that she should keep the coat, most of her embellishment was actually on the coat (there is a terrific felt godet in the back), and I would keep the dress. Her embellishment there, done with 24 hours to spare, was minimal, and though it worked with the dress at the time, as an underlay for the coat, by itself, the embellishment looks stuck on like a neck tie. 
I need to remake the dress anyway. It was designed to fit my daughter, then 15 and considerably more endowed than I am or have ever been. I’d like it to fit me. Weavers don’t often make cloth for an evening gown, and I like the over all design, which was completely draped, but it needs to fit me so I can actually wear it. I removed the embellishment Loretta did, a few stitches, and I have preserved it to return to her, I’ll see her in Houston at the American Sewing guild conference in August. Back to my experience with Gisela. Her gorgeous home was filled with all kinds of textile books, many of which I’ve never seen and of course instantly coveted, I don’t recall a commandment of “Thou shalt not covet they neighbor’s textile books…”, so I’m good to go… Now her stash, there really must be a commandment for that, “Thou shalt not covet they neighbor’s stash?” All is fair in love and textiles… Gisela gave me a scarf length of silk gauze 4.5 mm from Thai Silks, which I remember visiting last September where I bought all kinds of stuff so I must revisit my own stash one of these days… She also gave me some beautiful handfuls of merino/silk, hand dyed, and a couple of silk hankies. There were also a couple of reelings of a gorgeous metallicky knitting yarn from Michaels, which would create some surface interest. And I sat reading her books, and looking at ideas, felting isn’t a strength of mine, largely because I haven’t played with it enough, but I’m always intrigued by the surface, and how one can have instant cloth without bothering with the loom. The downside is the physical labor involved… Anyway, I am sick, nothing serious, but I’ve holed up all week in my studio, since I have a cold, and I’m trying to keep it out of my chest, and to entertain myself I dug out stuff from my own stash and started to play. One of the books Gisela had, involved felting and stitching, using a water soluble stabilizer to secure the layers when not everything can be felted. That whole idea really intrigued me, and I thought about it all the way home on the plane ride. I came up with a sample that led to some interesting possibilities.
So I jumped in head first… I used Solvy Stabilizer as the first layer and laid the silk gauze scarf length down on top of that. I started with a layer of merino/silk, didn’t have enough to cover the whole thing so I pulled another color out for the middle.
Next layer was more merino/silk…
I wanted a third layer, and had no more merino/silk, so I rooted around in my stash and couldn’t believe I had a skein of alpaca/silk in the right colors. I knew the alpaca would probably not felt or felt the way I needed it to, but I hoped the merino would grab a hold and the stitching I was going to do would hold everything in place. Crossing my fingers. I loved the shine-y-ness of the alpaca/silk, which might work better with the dress fabric, which did I mention was woven from 8/2 tencel sett at 36 epi, in case anyone is asking…
My friend Ginnie from Hancock Michigan sent me a baggie of shredded silk sari scraps awhile ago, for my fiber adventures, and I dug that out and there was this amazing handful of the perfect color, which I shredded some more and spread it across the entire web. I had fibers everywhere. Too much fun…
I took Gisela’s metallicky yarn and put that on top for some surface interest…
Covered the whole thing with another layer of Solvy
And went to the sewing machine to baste the layers together. My one mistake here was the direction I basted. (My Janome Professional machine has this very cool basting stitch, so I can tack things together without having to do it by hand.) I should have basted lengthwise because the foot kept getting caught in the basting threads when I did the final stitching…
I put on a couching foot, and stitched in random swirling patterns down the length of the layered stack, using the original tencel yarn I wove the cloth with.
Once that was completed and I removed the basting I headed down to the kitchen sink and started on a section at a time, first rinsing the Solvy and then felting the area in the bottom of the sink. It felted fairly quickly, duh, this is merino we are working with here, and now I understand why everyone rolled their eyes at my trying to felt romney… 
So now I have this gorgeous textile to play with, first I have to actually alter the gown, and then I get to drape and play and see where it takes me. I may end up doing something else with the felted length, my one concern is the elements are too disparate and that it will look like a craft project when I’m done, but it is fun to play around with a couple of textiles and see what can come of it. This is sort of like a Project Runway Challenge, “Make a pretty dress out of these two elements…” I’ll keep you posted…
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Actually, I’ve just returned!
First, let me say how incredibly touched I am by all of your supportive and wonderful comments on my previous post commemorating 10 years of surviving breast cancer. You cannot know how much your comments mean to me, and how much I enjoy reading every one. Thank you…
I posted that blog, and then stealthily left for the airport the following morning for Iowa. I didn’t mention this trip before I left, largely because of my revolving door household, it probably isn’t the best idea to announce to the world that I’m going out of town when everyone who follows my blog and my Facebook page knows my husband is in Saudi Arabia, my son was training at Fort Dix (home now), and my daughter is away at college (though she is homesick and planning to come in this weekend…)
I had a lovely uneventful trip, via O’Hare, to Moline Illinois, which is one of the Quad Cities, split apart by the Mississippi River. I’m learning so much about the geography of this country. My hostess picked me up in Moline, and we headed off to Bettendorf, where the Mississippi Valley Weavers’ Guild hired me to give my three day intensive garment construction workshop. And it was amazing.
Let me just say that my opinion of mid-westerners goes up a half dozen points every time I’m with them. I know that’s a snobby thing to say, but understand that those living on the coasts don’t think about the Midwest much until it is primary season and so much of the presidential selection starts there. Every experience I’ve ever had teaching at and attending an event hosted by a group in the Midwest has been a fantastic experience (except for my debacle at the Midwest conference in Hancock, MI last year, which was no one’s fault but a planetary collision of cosmic proportions). I find mid-western women to be kind, well mannered, enthusiastic, and very very sharp. They are always a genuine pleasure to work with, and their events are top notch.
This workshop took place in the Bettendorf Library. I wish I had snapped a couple of photos because if it one thing I’ve noticed, some of the best libraries I’ve ever been in have been in the Midwest. They serve the community well, and provide all kinds of services and community rooms, and this one was just perfect for the workshop. Spacious, well lit, with areas for work and for lecture, and the all important food table. I took this photo after the hyacinths had been given away as door prizes.
The workshop was organized by Gisela, who is primarily a felt maker, Gisela has taken a couple workshops from me in the past, I first met her at the Felter’s Fling in Massachusetts. She has a lovely home, geothermal, contemporary, right up against a cornfield, and it was the coolest thing to get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and find that the tile floors were warm.
I was concerned when I woke up on Friday morning, the second day of the workshop and saw this…
My first real snow of the season, and not welcome when you are in the middle of a workshop. Sigh… But my indomitable Midwestern ladies all made it in to class, they are made of solid stock and nothing stands in their way…
We worked hard, they learned a lot, and one of the comments I heard from a number of them, one that means so much to me, was towards the end of the workshop, when I heard, “Thank you for giving me permission…” In fact that’s all any of us really need in life, permission to follow our passions, fearlessly, and with humor and grace. It is hard for women in general to give it to themselves. I can’t tell you what it meant to hear that comment from many of my students, I’ve done my job, I feel like I pushed them out of the nest and am watching them fly. It won’t be smooth at first, but they will learn…
We had a lovely group dinner at one of the local restaurants, they gave us a private room, which was a good thing, we are of course a noisy bunch… The Crane and Pelican in LeClaire, IA is housed in an 1851 Riverpilot’s home.
The food was fantastic, and of course the company delightful.
And I got to experience a couple of real Quad City treats. At the end of the workshop, the participants presented me with the most lovely gift. A small statue of two children hugging, apparently quite famous in these here parts, from the Isabel Bloom collection. I’d never heard of Isabel Bloom but I’m enchanted with the sculpture. It was such a thoughtful surprise.
And of course, I can’t end without mentioning my new favorite spread, Boetje’s mustard, a Quad City Staple, made in Rock Island, IL, I came home with two jars… (Growing up near Philadelphia, one puts mustard on everything. I feel a kindred spirit…)
I’m home now, and I have so much stuff swimming in my head, I get inspired when I visit new places, and experience new things. I long to do some felting, Gisela’s influence was strong… I spent the day drowning in paperwork, which I hate, but it has to be done, and so the bills are paid, I’ve worked through all the correspondence that came in while I was gone, and now I can look forward to some grand new adventure in the studio.
Stay tuned…
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So here is the dilemma. I have a naked inkle loom. Normally naked looms are not problematic, I have so many it isn’t possible to keep all of them dressed at all times. But my two larger inkle looms are usually full of something really special, complicated, something that will inspire students, challenge me, and make everyone exclaim, “Ohhhh” when I show the loom off in a classroom setting. One of my larger inkle looms has nothing but a Pick
I looked through my box of pieces I use for show for classes, and I came across this little gem. It is my most favorite piece of inkle weaving in my collection and I didn’t weave it. It was actually a gift, it came in a thank you note, and I am mortified and embarrassed because the note got separated from the little 3 inch piece of weaving and I don’t know who wove it. I’m really really hoping they are reading this blog and will identify themselves.
The box of #10 crochet cord and rayon floss that I picked up in Cleveland would work perfectly, and I drafted a color sequence and then a pick up chart. That took most of an afternoon. I started warping, made a couple stupid mistakes (yeah I make them, get over it…) and finished up warping the loom at my knitting group last night. I started to weave and was really really disappointed. I hated it. I mean hated it. So I did some adjustments, and ripped out a second metallic color I had used,
I did get the scarf warp on the loom from the pile of yarn in the last post. I added in a couple of darker sections and completely changed the look of the yarns. I won’t really know if I like the whole effect until I weave a scarf and wash it, but I don’t really care, I’m pretty confident they will be pretty, since they are hand painted and interesting. And it is something on the loom from leftover warp I found in the cabinet. A freebie… I should net four scarves from this puppy…
And on a much better note, I got an email letting me know my yardage was accepted to the yardage exhibit for Convergence Long Beach. It sort of made up for the Small Expressions disappointment.
