Daryl's Blog – The World from a Weaver's point of view!

Bittersweet Farewells…

Don’t worry dear readers, I’m not going anywhere. But there have been some changes that have me saying goodbye to things that impacted my life in some way, in many areas of my life.

The biggest news is a bittersweet farewell to the Duchess. I’ve blogged about her many times, this is a 12-shaft 54″ wide Tools of the Trade loom, a monster of a loom, challenging to weave on with this aging body. But weave I did. My daughter brought her here to live, picking her up from Rochester, NY, in the middle of Covid, and I was able to clear the warp she put on shortly after that, along with one I transferred to this loom, from a 12-shaft table loom, (which is now safely in Michigan) using a pattern I purchased from Denise Kovnat. I referenced that in my previous blog post.

I cleared the loom of that warp in short order. It is a very gorgeous piece of Tencel fabric, and no I don’t have any idea of what I want to do with it. It will sit quietly and be, for now.

I started packing the loom, stripping it down to reduce weight. Fashion Institute of Technology, in NYC was sending a moving van to pick it up and move it into their new weaving space. The movers came last Tuesday in the icy rain, two strong guys with a big truck and a lift gate, and within two hours, it was loaded…

…and installed at FIT. It looks really happy with the other multi shaft looms, looks like mostly Macombers. I hope it helps a new generation love weaving. Or at least get a good workout weaving on it!

Of course that left a huge chunk of space in my studio, which I filled by just rearranging some of the furniture that was already there.

I had moved my teaching set up, for zoom meetings, to the back corner of the studio, away from light and traffic, and that was fun staging a new look behind me as I taught or just tuned in to Zoom.

With all the space, and rearranging, I’m seeing things I haven’t looked at for a while, and getting psyched to start getting more things on the remaining looms… I have a couple that are empty…

It is also a bittersweet farewell to winter. It’s probably not completely done, but it reached 69 degrees today. I will say, that though for the first time since my husband died, I’ve given thought to how much this house is to care for by myself. This latest snow storm, of 14 inches, on the back of another one that produced about 15 inches, almost finished me. I worked doggedly every day to try to clear a pathway to my house, and to try to dig out the cars. Snow days are fun until you are the one removing the snow. My daughter was on her annual Star Trek Cruise in the Caribbean, and my son was in NC at Ft. Bragg for leadership training with the military. So they were absolutely of no help. This is the picture from the Ring Camera on my front porch, after I managed to clear the front deck steps.

I shoveled daily…

But it was really beautiful. The snow was heavy, and covered the trees, and one morning, after the first snow storm, after the roads were clear enough to drive, I actually pulled over on my way to the Shakespeare Theatre to volunteer, and just looked at the stunning landscape of everything covered in a blanket of white. I didn’t even try to get a picture. It would have never done it justice. This was the view out the window in my music room.

So a farewell to this winter, hopefully there will not be anymore storms like this for the rest of the season. The snow is gone now, with the warmer temps, leaving behind a dreary muddy landscape (we got 3.25 inches of rain in the last 24 hours).

And a sad farewell to my beautiful vine covered gazebo, which didn’t survive this winter. I’m debating what to do, I can’t fix it myself, and I can’t find a handyman, and I’m just sad…

But I did go out today, and start to clean out the vegetable garden, and planted some arugula, lettuce and spinach seeds. Spring is coming…

Meanwhile, I had hoped to say goodbye to my natural dye class I’ve been doggedly working through for the last number of months. I managed to use up all the exhaust baths I saved from my 18 dye adventures.

I washed samples that I’ve been sitting on for a few weeks before I divided them into thirds.

I divided up all the samples, these are the cellulose fabrics, into thirds, one third for an extensive dye notebook, one third for Iron Modifiers, and one third for an Indigo overdye.

I thought I’d be through the indigo unit by now, but alas… I needed 7 pounds of very ripe bananas. Really…

There are many ways to create an indigo vat, and Maiwa teaches making Banana mash and using it to feed the indigo. I’ve done other methods, but I’m good at following directions. You would have laughed hysterically at me trying to carry what I hoped was 7 pounds of bananas across the produce department in my Shoprite, in the very thin produce bags, to weigh on the scale, nowhere near the bananas, and watching the bags rip as I tried to lift them onto the scale. The other shoppers were quite aghast… The things we do for our craft…

So I wait patiently for them to over rippen…

Meanwhile, I try to weave every day. I’m doggedly working through the Quigley course Diane Click was gracious enough to send me a few years ago, when I mentioned in a blog I had put a Quigley threading onto one of my Structos. Having transferred that warp to a floor loom, I threaded it based on Diane’s extensive handout from a class she taught in Florida in 2015. I do a new sample every day. I think there are 19 samples in total. I love this structure, a four tie unit weave, though it is very slow and tedious, especially in 20/2 cotton.

And dearest gentle readers, this will sound really silly, but I’ve been in mourning every since I binge watched the latest season of Bridgerton, which for those who have never seen it, is a Regency era romp through life on the ton under Queen Charlotte, turn of a couple century’s ago, (you might remember she was married to mad King George), and it is so gorgeous, so decadent, so utterly ridiculous and so addicting, that I couldn’t stop watching until the last episode. Now I have to wait probably another year and a half for season 5. The costumes are incredible. The sets lavish and stunning. And Queen Charlotte’s head pieces, are the highlights of any scene she is in. I don’t have a TV, and I don’t watch television, but I started watching Bridgerton during Covid, on Netflix, and it has been the one decadent treat every couple years. I’m sad the season is over.

And finally, I took a one day workshop in Broom making at my weaving guild. It was so much fun. The teacher, Sue Muldoon, stayed with me and I realized how much I missed the one on one I used to have with my hostess when I’d travel. Always a new friend, with an amazing story, and I’m a better person for each of the wonderful people who hosted me over the decades I taught. Sue is a wonderful teacher, very prepared, and I made some pretty cool brooms…

And there you have it. My daily life at this point, with the coming spring is now a check list of ‘Weave every day’, ‘Finish the dye class’ (when the bananas are ripe), ‘Play in the muddy gardens every day’, and of course practice every day for all the music groups I play with at the moment, spring concerts are coming up, and the set lists for each group are growing. There are multiple rehearsals each week, and I’m improving in tiny increments each time I sit down with the cello. One day I hope to be competent…

Stay tuned…

Spring is coming…

…and I’m weaving as fast as I can…

I suppose it is a good thing that there is still a foot or more of packed ice covering all of northern NJ. And of course my gardens. And half my driveway (well that part isn’t so great). I try to spend each day chipping away at the ice piles in the driveway. But the gardens I’m told are fine. Snow is an insulator, and all will be well when it finally all melts. The good news is that may take a while, and there is nothing for me to do in the gardens until I see the actual ground. Which means I have some more time inside before I have to venture outside.

I’m still slogging my way through the natural dye class through Maiwa. Each of the saved batches of dye are being reused to exhaust them, no sense tossing perfectly good dyepots. I’ve got a routine, including exhausting the exhaust baths… Don’t ask! I think I counted so far that I will have done more than 75 dyebaths. And I haven’t gotten to the indigo yet.

I finished the 8-shaft Shadow Weave scarves, design from Webs, I put the link in the last post. They are sitting in my closet waiting for the guild sale.

I kept at the 12-shaft towels my daughter started years ago. I wanted that warp off. Good thing I have such good leg and upper back strength from weaving on this monster loom, because I need it shoveling mounds of icy snow.

Pretty soon, the sight every weaver longs for…

And I cut the roll of towels off the loom, and left them for my daughter. They are really hers.

Then I took my 12-shaft Voyager Table loom, (did I mention I hate table looms?) and slowly started to transfer the echo weave draft I got from Denise Kovnat, onto the 12-shaft floor loom. I wanted to finish one last warp before this loom moves to FIT in NYC. I knew I’d never get to weaving off this complex Tencel warp on the table loom, so I started sleying the reed of the floor loom, directly from the table loom.

I got all 574 ends threaded, 36 ends per inch.

And then releasing the brake on the table loom, I wound through the four yards onto the floor loom.

And I will admit, it took a while to get the sheds clean on all 12 treadles, lots of tweaking, but once I spent the time on it, it is weaving beautifully. I love this pattern. And I love that it is a single shuttle weft. My kind of weaving.

And just today… Knots… This makes me so happy. Probably one more repeat…

I pulled a box of sheepskin fur scraps from the attic, I’m making a medieval brocade vest, and I’ll line it with the sheepskin pieced together. It only took the cat about 10 minutes to find the box, and now it is his favorite place to rest.

I think I want to come back in another life as one of my animals…

I got my latest Shuttle, Spindle and Dyepot last week. It is the publication for the Handweavers Guild of America. I casually opened the front cover and there I was, with all these young faces, part of the Careers in Textiles symposium sponsored by the Handweavers Guild of America. I was reluctant at first to be a part of it, because the path I took to become who I am doesn’t really exist anymore. But then I thought about it, and it isn’t about the path, it is about seizing opportunities and learning everything I could about each of the components that helped me earn a living as an artist, handweaver, writer, and educator. So I’m the artist, handweaver, writer and educator on the panel. It happens in March. I have started writing my presentation, which I have so much fun with…

And I practice like a crazy person every day, cello and recorders, and a week ago Friday I had a performance with one of my groups, the Mendham Consort for the Folk Project. We played a colorful version of Greensleeves, which is a song about unrequited love, from the 16th century, at a concert featuring love songs for Valentine’s Day. It was so much fun. That’s me in the center, standing, playing bass recorder. Seated next to me is my cello teacher Loni Bach.

And one of my groups, New Jersey Early Music, has its spring concert on March 22, which is coming up soon, less than 4 rehearsals to go. I’m playing cello and bass recorder for that one.

And I was just asked to record a podcast with the SweetGeorgia Yarn company, out of Vancouver. I’m always up for a podcast. I looked at their yarns, all handdyed or handpainted. They are gorgeous.

So life is of course spiraling out of control, which is all fine. I choose all these fun things, and they sometimes collide, but I have a breather before I have to get outside and work in the dirt. In the next couple of weeks, two more looms will be gone from my studio. The 12-shaft Voyager Table loom is heading to Michigan to my weaver friend there, and the 12-shaft 54″ Tools of the Trade is heading to NYC to the weaving lab at FIT. And at the Shakespeare Theatre of NJ, we are working on costuming four shows at once. And this is the off season. My weekly volunteer day there is chocked full of entertaining sewing.

Stay warm my faithful readers, and stay tuned…

One repeat at a time…

Or one row at a time, or one module at a time, or one inch at a time…

There is a great saying, used well by 12-step groups, “One Day at a Time…” The theory is that you can accomplish anything if you just take it one day, or even one minute at a time. I’ve lived by those words for my entire adult life, and it is how I accomplish much of what I set out to do…

This is a new year. And though I almost never set resolutions for myself, this year I have a number of goals. Continuing to clear looms is high on the list, but the most important one, is to finish the online class I started in Natural Dyeing with Maiwa. I signed up back in 2024, it was an expensive class, and I bought the kit, with all the fabrics, dyes, chemicals, tagging sheets, everything needed to take the class. It was shipped from Canada. I have three years to complete the course. I’m already half way into that time restriction. So this dark cold January, when I thought the music rehearsals and performances would ease up (Hahahahahah… what was I thinking…) that I could really take the time to work through all the modules, one a day.

I am actually doing well, I’m more than half finished the class, and have a lovely array of wool yarn, wool fabrics, and silk jacquard all dyed with natural dyes. Each of those skeins/fabrics, will then be cut into more pieces to experiment with modifiers, indigo overdyes, etc. The class is fantastic. Worth every penny I spent. Directions and videos are exceptional, and I look forward to cranking up the dye pot every morning.

My only complaint, and it is a humorous one, and I was warned, all the dye baths need to be saved for exhaust dye studies. So my basement refrigerator looks like this, and I haven’t even gotten to the cotton/linen/hemp module. It is hard to find large ball jars in the middle of winter…

I’ve already written in a previous post how I’m not great at babysitting pots on the stove, so I went to the loom with the Shadow Weave Sampler, in 8/2 Tencel, and I’d weave one section of one repeat, get up and check the temp on the dyepot, and stir, and then go back and weave another section of one repeat. After a couple of weeks of this, I finished two 2-yard scarves, and have enough warp left for a few more repeats, which I’ll use for zippered bags next fall for the guild sale. The pattern is from Webs.

Meanwhile, this morning it snowed. We got about 4″ of heavy wet snow, which I had to clear pretty quickly, because in NJ, temps drop at night, causing everything to freeze and turn to ice. But I made myself a deluxe grain bowl and sat by my garden window in the music room and watched the falling snow. It was beautiful.

Meanwhile, I had transferred the warp from one of my little Structos, which was set up for Doup Leno. I put it on one of my small 4-shaft floor looms. With a single shuttle, I blew through that warp in a couple sittings. Though it was painfully slow to twist all that fringe.

I had actually cleared that loom back in November or December and put on a run of Monk’s belt towels, which I talked about in my last blog post, from the latest issue of Handwoven Magazine, and blew through them in record time, which gave me a nice stack for holiday gifts.

The loom I was weaving on, sits tucked into a corner next to a shelving unit, and hanging from that shelving unit were two very large skeins of hand painted cotton, which kept getting in the way when I’d reach back to adjust the back brake. In disgust, I pulled the skeins from the side of the shelving unit, and then got distracted, thinking, how much fun would it be to weave up some yardage, using a draft I developed for Silk City Fibers, using a similar fat cotton floating over a finer ground. The draft is on my website, and is free.

It was great fun to go shopping in my stash. I refuse to ever buy yarn again, I have so much, and I pulled things that made the hand painted warp sing.

I went right to the warping board, once I finished all the towels, cut them off, washed and hemmed them, and gave them all away.

There is a fine thread of purple glitter yarn, which must have been something my daughter acquired because I can’t imagine ever buying purple metallic.

I am in the process of threading the heddles, again, a couple inches at a time, in between weaving off the shadow weave, and watching the next module for the Maiwa class. I’m more than half way, and can’t wait to beam this and start weaving to see what it looks like. Patience…

When I showed my weaving buddies the photo of the warp, my friend Ginnie, who lives on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where they are up to 137″ of snow, that is not a typo, sent me a gorgeous photo of a winter sunset, that looks exactly like the palette of my yarn choices.

Meanwhile, last Saturday I had a performance with one of my Early Music Groups, this one for a Viking coronation ceremony. It was so much fun, I played cello mostly, and we all got dressed up in our medieval garb, and played our hearts out, all through the ceremony. There was a wonderful Viking feast afterward, with all foods that would have been cooked back in the Viking period.

Meanwhile… first the back story… My daughter, many of you know, is a terrific weaver. Before Covid, she was even thinking of going into life as a craftsman, between the knitting machines, and the looms, five of the ones in the studio are hers, and we started teaching together, and planning to move in the direction of a mother/daughter team. Then Covid hit, and everything got cancelled, I don’t have to tell you dear readers, that so many people, including me, changed the direction of their lives as a result. I had hired my out-of-work daughter, to figure out how to do a YouTube channel, we bought the equipment and filmed more than 75 videos, one a week for more than a year and a half. It is called, The Weaver Sews, and if you haven’t checked it out at this point there is a tremendous amount of information on Sewing Handwoven Fabrics. It is everything I know.

Anyway, my daughter went on to finish her vet tech degree, and after a couple of different positions at vet practices, she now works the night shift as a critical care vet tech and sleeps all day. She loves the job, and the career, and spends her days, when she is not asleep doing things she loves, watching TikTok, playing video games, building small kits she finds online, and creating a life very different than mine. I have no judgement here, I miss her in the studio, but in our discussions, she has mostly just lost the passion she once had. It may come back, but it isn’t my life or my place to push her to do that which no longer defines her. She has a really tough career, some of the stories she tells are devastating. She does what she needs to do for her sanity. As I do mine…

One of my long term goals is to completely downsize my entire studio, move out things that no longer interest me, and though I’m down to under 30 looms, from my previous high of 64, I still have a long way to go to clear and find teaching homes for my equipment. I cannot keep a studio with 30 looms in the hopes that someday my daughter will want to return to my passion.

In 2021, my daughter loaded a trailer onto the SUV, and drove to Rochester NY to pick up a loom that had become available, a 12-shaft 54″ wide Tools of the Trade Loom. I wrote about the adventure here. It is a monster loom, originally from the Rochester Institute of Technology, which closed its weaving program some time ago. It takes up a huge amount of space in the studio. It is really too much loom for me, lifting 54″ rock maple shafts at 70 years old is a challenge. Originally my daughter commandeered the loom after I wove a small piece of yardage, and there still sits, a very long warp, for rainbow dish towels, taken from a 1959 10-shaft draft from Robin and Russ. (I would have been four years old…) Since we had 12 shafts, she rewrote the draft to use all 12. She wove a couple of towels for gifts, but the warp still sits on what is essentially my loom. I bought it and paid for it.

I have found someone who wants it, The Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan. It will be used in their new renovated weaving studio. It seems fitting that it is going from RIT to FIT… The problem is, I’ve repeatedly asked my daughter to clear the warp, and after a number of months, I realize she isn’t going to. So…

First I had to figure out what she did. She doesn’t keep records, it is all in her head… I sat for a long time staring at weaving software and came up with the draft, based on the original, the current threading and tie-up.

I will tell you, by the time I finish this warp, I will have the leg strength of an ox, and a bunch of powerful back muscles. This is pretty tough on the body. But I am weaving the warp off. I do about 4 repeats at a time, and it adds up. She probably won’t be happy with me, it is her warp, but it is my loom, and I’ve given her plenty of opportunity to weave it off.

And, of course there are bins and bins of spinning fibers, which haven’t been touched in a ridiculous number of years. I joined my guild’s spinning study group, and we meet once a month and just sit around as friends and chat, and spin, or knit, or whatever someone is currently working on that’s portable. My goal is that at least once a month, I have devoted time to just sit and spin. And today, I plied the last of this mystery fiber I bought too many conferences ago, I’m thinking it is Merino and maybe Tencel, or all Merino, it is beautiful. You can tell I started spinning it years ago, and with a dozen year’s gap, the spin isn’t the same as what I spin now. But I’ll make something from it eventually. One bobbin at a time, one month at a time, and eventually the job gets done.

All of my Early Music ensembles are gearing up for spring concerts and recitals, and events. I have more playlists than I had last December if you can imagine that. So when I’m not rehearsing or practicing, I’m in the studio, tackling a task an inch at a time, a repeat at a time, a dye class module at a time, one day at a time…

Stay tuned…

Into the light…

Tomorrow (or today, depending on when I finish this post) is the Winter Solstice, December 21st at 10:30am for the northern hemisphere. No matter what holiday you celebrate, or don’t, this time of year, the seasons remain strong reminders of the power of light and darkness. The winter solstice marks the shortest day of the year, the light will return. And plants will grow, and nature will thrive in spite of us.

I looked out my window earlier this week and saw this. It is/was beautiful, I say “was” because it was all gone quickly when we had 3/4″ of rain the other day, and the temps got up to 60 degrees.

Meanwhile, in prep for all the cold weather approaching, I did one final sweep of the vegetable garden, and harvested the remaining chard, and late planted arugula. They were washed and refrigerated, and I’m enjoying the last of my garden harvest, well into December. And there is all that tomato sauce and pesto in the freezer…

Performance season is drawing to a close, it has been crazy and wild and a true honor to perform at so many places for worthy causes. I’m not a professional musician, I don’t want to be, so performing with a group for a worthy cause, like a nursing home, is the ultimate way of giving joy to those who don’t get much joy during the holiday season.

There was the Randolph, NJ Historical Society open house with the Mendham Consort. We were the background music and I played bass recorder.

There was the Holiday Tapestry concert for Montclair Early Music, I played recorder for the main group, and cello with the beginner group called the Musettes. That’s me way in the far end of the semi-circle with my cello.

My new cello has been just an amazing piece of equipment. It is lightweight, super responsive, and I can be much more relaxed about extreme weather conditions. It is a 3-D printed carbon fiber cello from Forte3-D.

I’m thinking that somebody needs to start producing looms and other weaving equipment on a large scale using more contemporary materials and processes, because if they can make a performance cello from plastic, surely they can make a loom. Like the little Structo I used for teaching…

Anyway, I played with the Mendham Consort again, at an event sponsored by Project Self Sufficiency, which is an incredible non-profit charity spanning two counties that that helps low-income families achieve economic stability through comprehensive support services like case management, job training, childcare, and emergency assistance. They sponsor a toy drive each holiday season, so no child goes without. Area musicians provide background holiday music for the “shopping” experience.

And the one that I worked the hardest on, the annual Suzuki concert with the cellos and violins (maybe 30 of us?) at a local nursing home. This is just a small section of the full group, musicians as young as 4, playing some pretty challenging stuff. I’m way in the back with one of the other adults. On my carbon fiber cello.

Good thing I’m a textile artist… two days before a concert where I would be playing my bass recorder, a Kung, Swiss made, magnificent piece, really powerful, so happy with it except… the cork broke. Two days before the concert. I do not own a repair kit, however, before there were corks sealing the joints on recorders, there was string. I had a cone of 16/2 cotton, and a cake of beeswax, and with a lot of patience, I carefully strung the joint, and it works perfectly. ( I should mention that this recorder, a 70th birthday present to myself, was more expensive than what I paid for my used 54″ 12-Shaft Tools of the Trade Loom, why do I insist on jumping down rabbit holes of very expensive hobbies…)

One of the other members of the consort I play with, is also a handweaver. She approached me after one of our performances and said she heard I’d given up weaving… Hahahahahaha! Why would I do that?

In reality, I stopped using handweaving as something that produced income. I don’t want to do it anymore as a profession. I left an 80 video YouTube channel, The Weaver Sews, available free (though the ads are annoying); it is everything I know about sewing handwovens, and I make nothing from it. I did not monetize the channel, it is my gift to a community that supported me for 40 years. And I spent about a year and a half indexing the videos, so you (and I) could find the content we want to access specifically. That index can be found here.

But I am and will always be a handweaver, as long as I can still crawl under the loom. (’cause remember, I’m a floor loom fan, not a table loom fan…) I was sitting in my bathroom, where I keep all my unread magazines, and picked up the latest Handwoven Magazine (Winter 2025), and started leafing through it. I spied a photo of some lovely towels, in a Monk’s Belt pattern, on a 4-shaft loom, by Malynda Allen, and thought… “Oh crap, I need to get my December Towel Run on the loom, because it is yikes! December…”

And so, I grabbed some natural 8/2 cotton, I have a huge stash of natural yarns for dyeing, and put 10 yards on the loom. Took me about a day and a half. I work quick.

These towels are really easy, great stash busters (I used 5/2 perle cotton instead of the suggested 6/2 cotton which I have in a bazillion colors, for the Monk’s Belt borders), the entire middle is just plain weave.

I pulled the 10 yards off the loom the other day, threw the entire thing in the wash, and voila! There are 9 new towels to add to the stack.

So yes, I still weave. And I play music. And I am surrounded by so many wonderful new friends, from garden people, to early music people, to textile people, to handweavers, and sometimes, they are part of more than one community. In this return to the light, may your days be brighter with each sunrise, may the holiday season bring hope of a better New Year, where we all can respect each other, especially our differences. There is room for everyone at the table.

Stay tuned…

No rest for the weary…

First, let me say that at this point in my life, everything I agree to, everything I participate in, and how much I participate, is completely my choice. I’ve spent my life overbooking myself, because it is what I do, and my twilight “retirement years” are no exception. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m absolutely not the kind of person who sits on the couch watching TV, I got rid of the TV after the flood.

And in my twilight years, especially now that I’m widowed, it is super important to be with a community, or multiple communities, as is the case. I will always have my textile community, my friends, my guild mates, my former students, I love them all and try to gather with them as often as I can. Now there is the early music community, and my beginner cello opportunities, plus the native plant people who are even more generous than the handweaving community, if that’s possible.

And of course there are lots of volunteer opportunities, like at the Shakespeare Theatre of NJ, where I get to hang with the most amazing and talented people. Who knew with 60 years of sewing experience behind me, I could still learn so much.

So yes, my life is crazy busy, and right now way overbooked, but I have a reason to get out of bed each morning and deal with the most critical things, and learn, and celebrate, and create, and I’d say, there is nothing I’d change about my life.

Where to begin…

When I posted last month, I was just beginning to figure out what I wanted to make for my guild sale. My plan, which worked spectacularly well, was to gather all the leftover fabrics, swatches, samples, etc, from the last couple of years, and create stacks of kits so I would know what I had for inventory. The inventory sheets were due ahead of the sale, so the committee could generate bar coded tags. Then I could sew like the wind…

So I cut out tote bags… with just a dusting of scrap left…

And I took a pile of sushi containers and made tons of ornaments…

And I cut out something like 18 zippered project bags, and five ginger jars.

I took advantage of the timing of the Weaving History Conference, sponsored by the Thousand Island Arts Center in Clayton, NY. It was held the end of October, and it was three days of Zoom lectures, which were fantastic. I highly recommend it. I was so very impressed at the passion of the speakers, to devote their lives to the research on some pretty obscure topics, much to the delight of the audience who listened to them. This is the same art center that houses the handweaving museum, which is in the process of building a larger space to house/exhibit their vast textile archives and holdings. They are the ones that if all goes well, sometime in 2026, they will take much of my work from my retrospective exhibit last year at County College of Morris. Anyway, I sat for three days watching Zoom sessions and hand stitching my little heart out… By the end of the conference, all the handwork was done.

I had bunches of ornaments… (many of which sold at the guild sale, the remaining few are now at the Shakespeare Theatre of NJ lobby shop at the Kirby Theatre)

I had 5 ginger jars, all of which sold within the first hour of the guild sale, to the same person. She would have bought more if I’d had them…

I made three stuffed bears, in addition to the two remaining rabbits I had from last year. I sold one of the rabbits and the bears and remaining rabbit are at the Shakespeare Theatre shop. The bears are so freaking cute…

I made a pile of new tote bags, one is missing from the photo as it sold within hours of my making it, to one of my musician friends. I think there are only two left, they are at the Shakespeare Theatre.

I added more greeting cards, many of which sold…

I put two of my woven scarves in the sale, and two of the scarves I wove on the remaining deflected double weave warp from the Natalie Drummond class my guild sponsored in the spring, along with four botanically printed scarves, and all of the scarves sold.

And I created, like I said, something like 18 zippered project bags, in addition to what was left from last year, many of them from Botanically printed silk scraps. This was one of my favorites, with a base of kimono silk from my trip to Japan a couple years ago.

I think there were only about five left when I packed up Sunday night of the sale, they are at the theatre lobby shop.

As you can probably surmise, I did really really well at the sale. It helped that I was there, working the floor the entire three days, and it helped that my friends from the plant communities and the music communities, and my weaving friends from afar all came to buy my work. It is fun to go to a musical gig and see one of my totes carrying someone’s music.

Just before Halloween, I volunteered to work the Shakespeare Theatre costume and prop sale, an annual fund raising event for them. Of course one can’t help but look at what’s on the rack, and I came home with this amazing vest, which was custom made for one of the actors in Romeo and Juliet, but came out the wrong size. It was tiny. I could technically fit in it, but I needed more arm movement for playing the cello, so I thought, “What would we have done in the costume shop?” I ended up creating extensions in black microsuede, which encased loops, and stitched them to the zipper tape, to camouflage the zipper, and give me a couple more inches across the chest. And with a shoelace, I had an instant closure. I was so freaking proud of my solution.

And I took a denim split pant I picked up at the costume sale, remade it and wore it, with the vest, to my performance Sunday at a local Viking Festival, Gormanudur. I played cello and bass recorder. Someone grabbed a photo of me and my friend Ken, who plays all of the recorders, and bass clarinet. In addition to early music, we played some wonderful series and video game music, from Lord of the Rings, Skyrim, Valhalla, etc. And I was delighted to see in the audience one of my weaving guild friends. Her husband is a professional musician. My world overlaps in the best ways!

And though at first glance, my gardens have gone to sleep, my son came and helped me bring in the hoses, put away the mowers, and cut back some of the more prolific Joe Pye Weed and Rudbeckia, to keep the pathways clear for winter walking. It poured rain the day he came, but we persevered and took care of my list anyway, getting completely soaked, but ultimately triumphing and accomplishing my agenda.

I had to pick all the tomatoes left on the vines, we had a hard frost that night. My window sills were full, and I’ve made a lot more sauce and froze it, and oven dried a lot more cherry tomatoes to add to my bags in the freezer.

There are so many berries out there on the bushes, some are native, and some are not, but my gardens are still a work in progress, and I’ll probably remove more invasives next year as the native plants fill in.

And on my walk around the yard this morning, I couldn’t believe how many things were still blooming… I especially loved the rose bud way up in the air against a brilliant blue sky.

And so, now that the guild sale is behind me, and remaining inventory delivered to the Shakespeare Theatre (I let them keep all the money from anything they sell), I can concentrate on all the upcoming performances, and the more than 100 pieces of music I need to learn for them. Yes, it is really hard work, and yes it is probably way too much. But I am learning so fast, and practicing really hard, and making such wonderful supportive friends, and having a blast playing dress up, that saying “no” isn’t going to be part of my vocabulary for the foreseeable future. And I just ordered a 3D carbon fiber cello, because I’m a handweaver with about 30 looms, (down from 64), why would I only have one cello… (The real reason is apparently I’m a klutz, and I’ve had three accidents with my wood cello, all from things falling on it while I was playing another instrument… I still have to send it in for repair from the previous accident).

And so, I probably won’t post again until after Thanksgiving; for all of you that use the time for quiet recharging, or spend the time with family and friends, for better or for worse, I hope that the holiday brings you a chance to give thanks, for what we have, community that supports us, and in spite of the curious world we are living in at the moment, with whiplash at every turn, there are always trees and bushes to tell us that spring will come again, and that life is renewable…

Stay tuned…