Taking care of business…

I haven’t blogged this week because, well frankly, there wasn’t a lot to say.  I had the house mostly to myself, my husband is in Saudi Arabia, my daughter away for staff training week at a girl scout camp.  My son largely lives with the other bottom feeders in the basement, and at the moment is away with friends doing things I don’t even want to imagine, at a cabin in upstate NY.  Oh to be 20 again…

And that left me and the dog.  I’d get up really early, work on the gardens in the morning for an hour, before the sun got too hot.  It has been 98 here all week.  And then I’d shower and be ready to tackle more of the Convergence to-do list.  The issue of the no handout for 60 students was resolved, with a letter to the students having them pre-purchase the handout ahead, so I’ve been printing and shipping the individual books as I get receive the orders, only hampered by the fact that this is a holiday weekend and there is no mail tomorrow.  🙁

I have completely filled all the surfaces in the guest room with all of the handouts and materials needed for each of my seminars.  At this point, other than individually shipping the handouts for the class where I can’t provide one onsite, I am ready to go.  I’ve put together 17 looms, printed more than 200 handout/monographs, and gathered all the samples and examples I need to teach each of the seminars. I just can’t put everything into suitcases yet, because I need the suitcases to transport all the materials for the museum fiber boot camp class I am teaching starting Tuesday.

One of my favorite students Virginia, a talented weaver and spinner, came up and spent the day, and we went through all the packing lists gathering supplies for the 4 day 7 technique boot camp class.  We made drop spindles from CD’s, we measured lengths of cord for kumihimo braiding.  We gathered fleece for felting, and counted packets of Kool-aid for microwave dyeing.  We printed handouts, and gathered samples, and Virginia proved to be a real asset collating and stapling, packing and organizing, and she had lots of her own tips for how she teaches some of the techniques, so we really enjoyed our day.  I took frequent breaks to move the hose, trying to save the beautiful gardens from completely frying in the intense heat.

With no one in the house this week, I’ve felt much more in control of everything that needs to be done.  I have the space to do it in, and nothing pulling at me.  I worked hard to iron out difficulties, every time a wrench would get stuck in the machinery, I stopped, removed the wrench, and continued to work.  Like weaving.  When a thread breaks, you must stop and repair, and then resume where you left off.  It breaks the momentum, but that’s part of the process.  It can’t always be smooth sailing from start to finish.  You wouldn’t learn anything.

I actually got to socialize a bit this weekend, a couple of private parties celebrating the 4th, and my girlfriend came up tonight, we made Margaritas, and we sat and played recorders on the back deck, well after dark, forcing me to hunt for a floor lamp I could bring outside.  Fortunately I hadn’t packed the extension cord… 🙂

In  all of this, I long to just sit and make something.  As I went through the techniques, packing for each of the sessions I will teach this week at the museum, I wished for time to just sit and play with them by myself.  That will come, teaching for the year finishes up in late October, but I really really wanted to just sit at the sewing machine and make something.  One of the projects I wrote about in detail when I first started the blog more than a year and a half ago, was the frosted florals dress.  I had made a couple of “muslins” of preliminary designs, that really didn’t fly, the feedback I got from all of you was to keep pushing the envelope.  Two of the muslins had actually gone into real fabric, and I did finish one of the gowns last year, and have actually worn it.  I don’t have a lot of opportunity to wear long summer dresses, and in fact, the other muslin never got finished.  It just hung off the yarn shelf for an embarrassingly long period of time (since January 3, 2009, but who’s counting…).  It has been hanging there so long I stopped seeing it.  So the other night, I pulled it off the hanger, and tried it on.  The dress was OK, but definitely needed to be shorter.  So I finished up the critical handwork, and took the scissors to it.  I didn’t like the way the zipper looked in the back, the gauzy floral print fought the zipper, so I pulled the zipper out and will rethink how I apply it, it might be just too lightweight for an invisible zipper, and the lower hips of the dress are a bit too tight for a light airy dress (not that I actually gained any weight here with all my traveling and wonderful food experiences).  I’m toying around with the idea of a godet of fabric below the zipper in the back, cut from what I lopped off with the scissors.  Stay tuned…

Meanwhile, Friday’s mail was really thrilling when I opened up the manila envelope and discovered the Summer 2010 issue of Fibre Focus, the Magazine of the Ontario Handweavers and Spinners. (The link shows the previous issue.)  There on the front of the cover was my frosted florals dress.  I will be the keynote speaker at the Ontario provincial conference next April, and they asked for an article for this issue of Fibre Focus, which will provide a sneak preview of the 2011 Conference.   I was so thrilled to finally make a cover, I’ve probably written for more than 40 publications, and never been on a cover, and it was the Canadians who finally put me there.  So a huge thank you to all of you wonderful weavers to the north, and I’m really looking forward to meeting all of you at the conference in April.

I’ve accomplished a lot this week, and I’ve felt more in control than I have in awhile.  I’m looking forward to my boot camp class at the Newark Museum, then a fast pack, and hoping a plane to Albuquerque and points beyond with my husband for a getaway before I actually teach at Convergence.  And I’m starting to look ahead and gather my lists for the American Sewing Guild conference in Atlanta, immediately on the heels of Convergence.