March 2009 – Page 3 – Daryl's Blog

Vernal Equinox

Happy First Day of Spring! In the northern Hemisphere, spring officially started at 7:44am. Course you couldn’t tell it by looking outside! This is the picture outside my balcony when I got up! Little puffs of heavy snow on all the buds. It was quite lovely.

I woke up this morning a little later than usual, since I was up until 1am Thursday night processing the last of the 32 pages for my sister’s website. I FINISHED IT! What huge relief to be able to finally say, I’m done. I expect there to be edits and changes and updates, but those are usually quick fixes, the bulk of the work is done. The site is up and running in its entirety, and after looking at a couple hundred magazine looking shots of gorgeous homes, I’m a little depressed by my average 100 year old home I’ve happily lived in for more than 25 years, it is beginning to show signs of neglect… Could it be I am too busy weaving and having other grand adventures to deal with painting and repairs?

Anyway, my sister’s firm, Ebeling Noe Associates is very happy with the new site, and I’m hoping it helps her connect with some future clients. I really enjoyed getting to know her work over the past 10-15 years more intimately, and I have a huge respect for what she does. After all, she is just my younger sister…

Now I have to tackle my woefully outdated website, and one for my weaving guild…

Sunday is my husband’s birthday. He will return from his ski adventure with our son tomorrow night, so far no broken bones… Anyway, I took the day off to run around and shop for some things for him, I had been doing research online all along for ideas, who had what at what price, the internet is good for stuff like that, and I took today to do the final shopping. And I had a coupon at Kohl’s and with their sales, I managed to do some serious damage to the charge buying some new things for myself! You see, it all started with the cancer thing. And the weight gain from the chemo (yes I know it was 7 years ago), and then the instant menopause, and the weight gain from that, and then the tamoxifen for five years. Apparently now that I’ve been off Tamoxifen for over a year, my body is strangely returning to its original shape before I had cancer. Which was pretty thin. So over the last year I’ve dropped 12 pounds. I know all of you are rolling your eyes, this would be a good thing under normal circumstances. But all my pants were too big.

So, armed with my coupon, I hit Kohl’s with a vengance, and bought pants in my new size, and a couple pairs of shoes while I was at it, because my favorite pair of travel wedges broke last fall, and I haven’t been able to find a pair that are comfortable to walk and travel in all day for a week or more, so I had to buy three that had possibilities and I have until June to break them in…

You can tell I was really roughing it today. And I did manage to get my husband quite a few gifts while I was at it. Please note that I almost never shop. I make clothing last for years, and largely if I shop, I buy coordinates to wear with my immense wardrobe of handwoven jackets and tops. But the pants thing was a really a problem. So, just like that, problem solved!

As I traveled around today, doing my shopping thing, I loved going into stores, fresh with spring merchandise, garden centers waking up, fully stocked, after having sat in my studio for the last week with my nose in the computer screen. I even picked up a handful of packets of seeds, for the cold weather crops, lettuces and such, I always have such high expectations for a garden, and as my life gets out of control, so does the garden, last year it was decimated by the groundhogs, who tunneled in from the outer fence perimeter, so I always have to wonder why I bother? I bother because it is important to keep trying, and I love to watch things grow and eat what I plant. So, depending on the weather tomorrow, it is suppose to be a high of 51 degrees and sunny, I’m hoping to get quite muddy and clear the garden of the winter debris and plant some seeds.

The sand paper seems to be holding the friction brake on the loom I mentioned a couple days ago. Thanks for all the great suggestions on what to do. I did stop at the local bowling alley on my way to the High School Thursday night, to pick up a bag of rosin, which Sandy Gunther from Weaver’s Cottage suggested as a surefire way of getting a non metal friction break to hold when it starts slipping. Alas, my bowling alley pro shop was out. So now I have to search further, but for now, I wove a bit into the second mat, and all seemed secure. Stay tuned.

And one final note, I spent the afternoon on the phone with Sandy Bowles from the HGA. She very graciously spent hours pouring over my Design Challenge presentation, all 80 slides, and had some wonderful editorial suggestions, cleaning up some copyright issues, and helping to point out things that weren’t quite clear. So I’ve made the changes, will send her the final copy, and hopefully get my HGA Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval and then I can add it to my webshop and offer it to any guild that would like to present it as a program without having to fly me in! And I’ll be writing a very condensed version of it for the Summer Issue of Shuttle Spindle and Dyepot. I’ll keep you posted…

Public or Private?

It would seem that two of my recent posts were published privately? instead of publicly. They didn’t show up in my email notifications, and they were headlined with “Private” when I clicked on them to check. Odd. The mysteries of software and computers. Hal isn’t some myth from ‘2001’. He is alive and well and lives in cyberworld. He actually controls cyberworld…

Anyway, in case you are relying on the email notifications for my blog entries, I believe there were two missed entries, A More Focused Monday and Cast of Characters were published earlier this week.

If anyone blogs using WordPress and knows why a blog entry would spontaneously publish privately instead of publicly, let me know. I know how to correct it once it happens, but not what I did to cause it in the first place.

Where Did the Time Go?

Is it Wednesday night already? I have spent most of the last two days sitting in front of my computer, my hand permanently attached to my mouse, processing photos of houses, additions, and renovations for my sister’s website (she is an architect). My eyes are crossing, I’m not processing anything in my brain, and my hand is in the permanent shape of the mouse. I have to uncurl the fingers from it when I want a tea break. But I’m making huge progress. I am close to the end. There are a total of about 30 pages for this site, and I have about 6 to go. My sister is thrilled. So I’m thrilled too.

This is my favorite clock in the house. It is in my studio, right by the door, within site anywhere I happen to be. My husband and I use to collect clocks, until we had no more space to put them. I showed my work at craft fairs all through the 1980’s, and traded for a lot of craft/art work over the years. Do you know how many pieces of pottery/dinnerware you can get for one handwoven jacket?

Anyway, I remember trading a jacket to a husband and wife craftsmen team, and I got a few clocks for the trade. One was this one, done on foam core, the signature is Gail Oring, but it isn’t really clear, so that may not be correct. It is done in a very Lichtenstein-esque style, (Roy Lichtenstein being one of my all time favorite modern artists, seems to me we saw a retrospective of his work at the Tate in London on one of our trips). The clock keeps ticking away, and I totally identify with the blonde in the artwork. It is always “beat the clock” with me.

My daughter and I took a break when she got home from school yesterday, and we curled up in my bedroom (which is the only TV I can figure out in this house), and watched the DVD from the fashion show at the Tampa Convergence, sponsored by the Handweavers Guild of America, in June of 2008. One of my previous blogs, I talked about the challenge project I was involved in for this show, and the presentation I put together for it. I haven’t forgotten, I am still waiting for the “HGA Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval”, and then hopefully I’ll have my own disk to market. But the DVD from the Fashion Show is now available from the HGA, for about $25., including shipping, less if you are a member. It is worth seeing. If you belong to a guild, get it for your library. It is an inexpensive thing to show at a meeting, you just need a computer/projector set up, and this past year’s version is well done.

That said, I have a couple of musings I’d like to share. I’ve seen a lot of weaving conference fashion shows. I’ve seen some with professional models, I’ve seen even more without, where the maker or someone from the conference wears the work. I’ve seen some really professional models, and I’ve seen some models that have no business modeling. I’m not talking about body types. It is the way a model carries themselves, walks, and presents the garment. I’ve seen some pretty bad ones. The models in this DVD were at best, a mixed bag. But that happens, and that’s what the agency sent.

But what I really want to talk about, has nothing to do with the models, or in this case, everything. When I sent my work to the Surface Design Conference in Kansas City in 2007, the paperwork clearly explained that I had to send coordinating support outfits, head to toe, for the model to wear along with my accepted garment. If I was sending a short jacket, I had to send the skirt or pants, and a shirt with it. Even the accessories. What that does, is it makes you think of the garment you have made as part of an ensemble. When I was given the criteria for the design challenge I was asked to participate in for the Tampa show, my partner and I were told our project had to be an ensemble. I am thinking much more in terms of “ensemble” with my work now, especially if I design it for the runway.

Fast forward to the Convergence show. I was back stage for much of the preparation of the fashion show, the fittings, and the dress rehearsal. Sadly, no request was made of the participaing artists to send anything other than their actual garment. And no one shopped for coordinating garments or accessories. So that left whatever the models had in their bags. Which is usually black. Spandex. Badly fitting black spandex. So the artists who sent a beautiful silky jacket in gorgeous Floridian colors, it was stuck on a black spandex body.

So my message to any of you who design garments, and might want to submit work for a fashion show, don’t wait for the sponsoring organization to ask. They might not. Design an entire look, like they do on Project Runway. That doesn’t mean you have to weave the pants and the shirt. But you could make them out of a commercial fabric and send them along so the garment isn’t orphaned. When you watch the DVD, you will see exactly what I’m talking about.

The good news here, is that the work is really easy to see. The models held still long enough for the close-up cameras to really pan the garments, and the details are pretty amazing. Sadly, there isn’t a clue about what techniques are used, only the name of the artist and title of the piece. I’d like to encourage the HGA to consider putting that information on future DVD’s as well.

And, I got the first Overshot placemat woven for our placemat exchange. If you haven’t been following this thread, since way back over the Winter Break when my daughter started winding the warp for this project, in a nutshell, my daughter and I are each participating in an overshot placemat exchange with our guild, Jockey Hollow Weavers. We are each paired with seven other weavers, and each weaver selects an overshot pattern, and we each select our color, and give 2 ounces to each of the other weavers in our group. The idea at the end is, you will get 8 placemats in your color, each with a different overshot design. My daughter immediately selected purple, and asked when I select my color, that I pick something that will sort of go with purple so when I die, she can have my set as well. 🙂

So I picked a celadon green. I love how icy it looks. I started with my mat, to work out all the bugs with the loom. This one is a little quirky, and the warp beam is slipping, and I’ve spent a lot of time trying to get it to hold tension. I haven’t been totally successful. But I made it through one mat, only 15 more to go…

A More Focused Monday

When I walked into my studio this morning, the looms were clearly more content, no longer naked, except my poor big guy. So I removed all the piles from the big loom, which started a process, filing the programming information for my guild, which meant making room in a file cabinet for that, and that turned out to entail purging all the old files from all my articles I wrote over 35 issues for Handwoven. Boy was that a stack of papers. I still have all the computer files, and I do refer to them from time to time, but the hard copy stuff needed to go.

So now my loom is just naked, no longer a catch all for what I hadn’t gotten a chance to put away. And I have a number of little baby looms, a couple Structo’s, and a Penny Loom, they sit on top of the other looms, and my inkle looms haven’t come back yet from California, they sit on top as well.

I spent most of the day processing photos for my sister’s website. I’m sort of bleary eyed. I welcomed the break in the afternoon, to run over to the breast center for my annual mammogram. I know most people dread getting one, but I love the huge relief of hearing those wonderful words, “everything is fine, see you in a year…” So if you have been putting off getting one….

After dinner I drove to the Westfield Weavers, a guild I’m not actually a member of, it is a bit of a distance away, but I wanted to hear my old college professor Carol Westfall give a lecture on her 2007 trip to Europe to see the Venice Biennial, and the Documenta Kassel in Germany. The work was politically charged, lots of recycled materials, and I felt like I had just been through a major textile/art exhibit at the MET. A great evening. I met Carol in 1974, in my first weaving class in college, (Montclair State University in NJ), we have remained friends ever since. A great lady, she touches all those she meets in very positive way.

My husband and son finished their first day of skiing in Utah, so far, no broken bones! They are having a great time, conditions are excellent.

A Cast of Characters

I could not get focused today. Maybe it was because I got up at 3am to drive my husband and son to the airport. They are taking advantage of some frequent flyer miles, my son’s spring break, and some new snow in Utah, and off they flew to Salt Lake City for the week to enjoy some guy time on the mountain. 🙂

I did go back to bed once I returned from the airport, and I did manage another four hours of sleep, but the day felt very disjointed. So I puttered. I did a little of this, a little of that. After all, it is Sunday, and most normal people get off a day or two a week. That would be a foreign word for me. I did some grocery shopping, cleaned my bathroom, started cleaning the kitchen, the dirt doesn’t stop coming just because I left for a week for a conference. I tackled a pile of files, deciding that my son’s progress reports and school files from elementary and middle school, now that he is in college, didn’t need to be taking up space in my file cabinet any longer. They’ve been on my floor for awhile. So that pile is gone.

Speaking of piles.

This is what happens when a loom is left unused for a period of time. Piles start to cover it. It looks lost amid the debris. I had a major guilt attack today over my poor naked looms. I’m in the middle of too many other projects to even think about getting a warp on this puppy, my beloved first loom, a 45″ 8 shaft double sectional back beam Tools of the Trade, I bought in 1978, right out of college. I love this loom, I will never part with it. I have woven thousands of yards of fabric on it. But at the moment, it is looking like a neglected child.

Enter the twins.

This pair of looms sits beside the big loom. I never named my looms, not sure why. It was hard enough to name my kids. So this pair, both from Tools of the Trade as well, bought in the 1980’s at different times, helps me out when my big loom is busy. The one on the right, 25″ wide, is four shaft, and it is warped with 10/2 cotton for my daughter’s and my placemat exchange we are doing with the Jockey Hollow Guild. More about that later.

The one on the left, is pretty well equipped, for a 25″ wide loom, it has eight shafts, double sectional back beams, and is a little work horse. I wove the Arctic Sky fabric on that loom. It currently has the remaining yard or so of tencel warp from a Bonnie Inouye class I took last October (oh how embarrassing). It had my only 25″ 12 dent reed in it, which I needed for the placemat exchange loom on the right, so I stole it. Just pulled the warp out of the reed and moved it over. So I couldn’t have woven the rest of the warp if I had wanted to.

To the left of that loom, I have a 25″ Tools of the Trade table loom, also four shaft, that I keep warped with a Theo Moorman 10/2 cotton structure, for my art pieces. I just finished the Big Sister piece, and I had originally needed the 12 dent reed for that one, but settled on a 6 dent reed, though I wasn’t completely happy with the reed marks it left.

So I was pretty embarrassed that nothing was happening on any of my four looms, one without a reed, one with the wrong reed, one with a warp and nothing started, and one with no warp at all.

So I looked through my vast stash of reeds, and found an extra 12 dent reed I had purchased used many years ago, for my 45″ loom, and I had my daughter hacksaw the thing into two pieces. I decided that I needed to spend the day paying some attention to my poor neglected looms, and I resleyed the tencel warp into the replacement reed, and I switched out the reed on the table loom, tied both warps on the front beams, and they are ready to weave.

I turned my attention to the placemat exchange, and spent some time getting the structure to work right. I took it from a workshop I took many years ago with Barbara Miller on 18th Century Structures. It is a four shaft overshot pattern called Dog Tracks. My daughter and I are both participating in this exchange, each of the 16 participants picks a 5/2 cotton weft color, and winds off a couple ounces and passes a ball off to each of the other 7 participants in their group. My daughter and I are in two different groups. So we will each have eight different overshot placemats at the end, all in our selected color. I chose a grayed green, and I started the whole thing with mine. Once I reworked the treadling, to give me the placement of the blocks I wanted, it started to weave quite well.

I detest two shuttle weaves. I know, I know… But I am use to weaving yardage, lots of yardage, I like my shuttles to fly, and two shuttle weaves just don’t produce the speed of a one shuttle structure. Part of the problem here is the size of the loom. There isn’t room for the two shuttles to fit on the web, when I beat, they bounce right off the loom into my lap and onto the floor. I solved this problem on another warp I did, by taking the unused second back beam from the eight shaft (remember two warp beams require a second back beam), and clipping it onto the front of the loom, with a heavy plastic ruler clipped to the surface so I have an extra ledge to support the shuttles while I’m weaving.

I did manage to get to Morristown today, to practice with my recorder group. I probably didn’t mention that I play Baroque recorder, I play alto with this group, and we got all new music today, something new to practice, a whole play list of French love songs from the 1600’s. And I did manage to get down to my neighbor’s house for our Sunday night ritual, a gathering of the women to watch Desperate Housewives. We hoot and howl all the way through it, and will be really sorry when the season ends, it is a long way until September….

It turned out to be a productive day after all, and the looms (all except my big one) look so much more happy. I think tomorrow I will clean off the big loom so it doesn’t feel so burdened with my junk…