Yesterday morning I woke to beautiful spring like sunshine, the gardens exploding in color, and the promise of a day in the yard, weeding, mulching, staking peas, and generally enjoying my private oasis. I did a quick check of my email, and my Google Calendar Alert popped up reminding me that within an hour, I needed to be in Dover at the Hilton Garden Inn for the American Sewing Guild Spring Fling. This is an annual event sponsored by the North Jersey Chapter of the ASG. Insert audible groan… There goes my day in the gardens. However I have no one to blame but myself, I signed up for this event, only Wednesday, because I to need to get out of my studio, get some inspiration and support my local sewing chapter. I went off to the shower…
What a great day this turned out to be. The speaker was Anna Mazur, you would know her if you’ve subscribed to Threads Magazine in the last few years. What a gifted and talented sewer, dressmaker, designer, fabric artist, and inspiration. Anna is a Contributing Editor for Threads, and many many of her intricate garments and techniques have been featured over the years. She began her program with her experience with beads, how she works, organizes, and lays-out her projects. I intentionally listened with only half an ear since I did NOT want to run the risk of getting into yet another area of study. After all, I just bought this new loom…
The lunch was surprisingly good, and then came the best part. Anna brought a car full of her most amazing garments, spanning 30 years of dedicated workmanship, including some amazing coats tailored for her daughter when she was just a toddler (she is now graduating from college). She brought garments from her articles, and garments from the Bernina Fashion Shows. She brought award winning garments, and some of her mistakes. It was a pleasure to listen and to be inspired, she has a sense of humor and an easy spirited demeanor that is engaging and encouraging. And it was great to spend time with someone who is way more skilled than I am… 🙂
I actually learned a thing or two… 🙂
After the luncheon, I stayed to help Anna, introduced to her by our chapter president Carla, I am an experienced garment packer from years of schlepping and hauling my garments all over the world. While we were packing, one of the attendees Sara Ann Megletti, owner of PB&J Stores in Newton, NJ covered one of the round banquet tables with the most beautiful Polymer Clay buttons I’ve ever seen. Not only were their surfaces rich, but the color palettes fresh and current, and the shapes interesting and playful.
I of course bought the olive green button in the center of the group photo, out of all of them, it kept calling to me…
Sara said that the buttons, from Crone Art, will be sold through distributors like herself, and she is feverishly working to get the collection up on her webstore. She anticipates availability within the week.
So Anna will be teaching at the American Sewing Guild Atlanta Conference in August, where I will be as well, and we hugged and promised to reconnect in August. It will be my pleasure…
On a sad note, my poor techie Kevin, stayed up until 3am last night, doing what a techie does when all else fails. Uninstall/Reinstall. I have had, as you have probably experienced, continual Fatal Error messages when trying to read, post or post comments on my blog, referring to Out of Memory Errors, since December 19th, 2009 when the first error was recorded in the log. When I say this techie of mine is good, I think he is the best, his tenacity to stick with a problem until it is solved puts me to shame, and he has worked tirelessly on this problem for months. The problem seems to be getting progressively worse, and the only thing left to try was a complete uninstall and reinstall. Scary, but I trusted he would be able to do it without losing my data.
At 3am, he came to bed confident that the problem was corrected. Sadly, three sentences into writing this post, I got the fatal error message. I wanted to cry…
So, we will keep trying, be patient….