This time I’m really back, for good!

Or at least until April of 2011.  As it turns out in the scheduling world, I am now finished my last teaching gig, until April of 2011, no more dragging 200 pounds of luggage through the airport and no more knitting socks on planes, at least until April.  I can’t describe what it means to be home.  For a nice long while…

I came in yesterday afternoon from the NY Sheep and Wool Festival, my son arrived from National Guard drills just before me, and my husband pulled in in the limo from Saudi Arabia about an hour after I did.  It was the first time all four of us have been home together in months, and it was comforting to know we were all in the same place, even though we were all experiencing severe re-entry, meaning we couldn’t get out of each other’s way fast enough.  Re-entry is hard, especially when both my husband and I re-enter at the same time, he has been gone for weeks, and I’ve been gone about 10 days, other than the brief touch down I had last Wednesday for a few hours before heading out again.  One of the ponds was nearly empty, that made my poor husband even crankier.  I felt bad, but I wasn’t home either.  But I am now, and this morning, I got up, got in the car, and drove my husband back to the airport, heading east on RT. 78, watching the pink haze form behind the clouds as the sun rose over the Manhattan Skyline.  It was so beautiful, worth leaving at 6:30am.  My husband is off golfing for the week, a much needed vacation, and when he returns next weekend, he will close up the pool, do a couple of other much needed repairs, check the heating system, and head back to Saudi Arabia.  Poor guy.

Meanwhile, I get to find my house, find my kids, get reacquainted with the dog, remove the science experiments in the refrigerator, haul off all the trash and recycling, funny how 20 somethings are incapable of remembering when trash/recycle day is…

I’ve had some terrific adventures since my last blog post.  I left off with a stack of fabric from Elfriede’s in Boulder.  Betsy Blumenthal, my hostess took me to Shuttles, Spindles, and Skeins, also in Boulder (I think I want to move there, I’m sure this is why there are more than 300 members in the Boulder Handweaving Guild).  What an amazing store.  We wandered for a couple of hours, I’ve never seen so much fiber in one place, really overwhelming.  One of the owners, Maggie, was incredibly kind and demonstrated Navajo 3ply on a spinning wheel, and I was eternally grateful.  I picked up Judith McKenzie’s DVD on Spinning Wheel Mechanics.  I inherited my mother-in-law’s hand made Wes Blackburn spinning wheel and it has a double drive band and I’m not really sure what to do with it.  I’m so use to my ancient 70’s Ashford spinning wheel.  So I was assured the video would answer all my questions.

Betsy and I walked around the corner from Shuttles to this wonderful little eatery, South Side Walnut Cafe.  We had great egg dishes, and the waitress surprised us with a small plate with tiny chocolate cupcakes on it.  Seems it was Tiny Treat Tuesday.  Betsy was such a wonderful hostess and we talked about so many things.  One of the things we saw at Shuttles, that sparked a conversation was my need for a rayon ribbon I could dye.  Most of the ribbons I find are polyamide.  Betsy asked me to remind her to show me all her stash of ribbon yarns when we got back to her studio.

What started out as Tiny Treat Tuesday, turned out to be Trade your Stash Tuesday.  Betsy decided that she didn’t want all her ribbon yarns anymore, she was working on collapse structures, and I would probably use the yarn before she ever did.  She also gave me a huge box of some kind of rayon or silk floss on wooden bobbins.  I’ll have to do a burn test to figure out what it is, but I can definitely use it in some of my scarves.  We headed to UPS to ship both boxes home to NJ.

My flight home Wednesday was uneventful, I finished another pair of socks, and spun some more merino/silk.  My son picked me up from the airport, and I will say, he worked really hard to get my house in shape, clean it up, and I walked in and almost cried.  It was great to be home and not have to reach for the rake.  I could actually cook in my kitchen without having to fumigate everything.  No matter how much I complain about how lazy and unmotivated my son is, he really came through.  Except he forgot to bind my handouts for the NY Sheep and Wool Festival.

So I unpacked in record time, headed to the theater to see a fantastic production of Hairspray at the Papermill Playhouse, (I would normally never have booked theater tickets when I had a one day turn around between teaching gigs, but my husband thought it would be the only night we would be home together, so we changed our subscription to Wednesday night, except he got held up in Saudi, and never made it back.  So I took my neighbor instead.  We had a blast.

I repacked Thursday morning, stopped at the grocery store to restock for the kids, and found lines about 10 deep at the registers.  The place was mobbed.  The woman in line behind me commented how ridiculous people were when the least little bit of a weather issue is predicted.  I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about, apparently, there was a wicked Nor’easter coming in Thursday and Friday, how would I have known, I’d been in Boulder CO.  All I could think of was swell, I’m heading up the NY Thruway to the Hudson Valley Region to spend the weekend at a fairgrounds in the middle of a nor’easter.  Crap…

As Tim Gunn would say, “Carry on…”  So I did.  I loaded the car, and headed up the NY Thruway.  The clouds were ominous and broiling, and the sky threatening, which made the most dramatic backdrop for the spectacular colors of the leaves.  This is probably peak season for the changing leaves, and I have never had a more enjoyable ride.  I arrived at the Bed and Breakfast, a lovely Victorian inn, in Red Hook, NY in just under two hours.  Then it started to rain, and it rained for the next two days…

Most of the other teachers from the NY Sheep and Wool Festival were staying at the bed and breakfast, and it was a little like a sorority weekend, even though the other teachers like Lily Chin, Amy Tyler, and Candace Strick, were all knitters and spinners, we had the common language of thread and of teaching.  It was great to ask about each other’s classes and share our experiences.  And I loved finding out some of the inside scoop, do you know that Lily Chin keeps her overflow of yarn in the oven?  I definitely don’t feel so bad about my exploding stash…  We fell in love with a fabulous restaurant, called Flatiron, in Red Hook, within walking distance of the Grand Duchess Bed and Breakfast, where we were staying.  I had one of the best beers I’ve ever tasted.  St. Bernardus Watou. They had it on tap.

I gave two workshops on Friday, a beginner Inkle Loom class in the morning, I had twelve enthusiastic students, most brought their own looms and I rented the remainder the small Inklette from Ashford.  They all had warps on in short order and were weaving away within a couple of hours.  The afternoon class was an advanced Inkle class, I covered more difficult techniques like a 7 thread pick up, 1:1 Name draft, and supplemental warp on an inkle loom.  All of the students worked hard, this is a tough class to get through in a three hour time period, but they all stayed with it and seemed to understand enough to be able to carry on at home.  They had to come with a pre-warped loom, and it was a complicated set up to start with.

Saturday I had the great privilege of working with two professors in the fashion design department at Marist College, and together we judged the NY Make it with Wool Competition. The link is for the 2009 winners, and I’m hoping the 2010 winners will be posted soon.  This was one of my most favorite judging experiences.  I think I loved it because I was working with all age groups.  There was an entry from a girl who was only seven years old.  And the entries were placed in age divisions, including adults.  There weren’t a lot of entries, but we had a great time carefully looking at each entry, inside and out, taking notes, and then came my favorite part.  Each person who entered a garment, tried it on, and we got to personally interview each contestant, check the fit, and really see the piece come to life on the person it was intended for.  I’m always surprised at how different a garment reads on a person, rather than flat on a table.  Interviewing the pre-teen girls was such an honor and such a pleasure.  They were so poised and chatty and willing to wow us with their enthusiasm for the craft.  It was a great experience.

As a thank you gift, we were given a tote, with a couple of sheep products inside, and a $50. gift certificate.  Well the only thing I could do with that was head straight to the vendors.  OMG!  Not only were there hundreds of vendors with every kind of fiber related product, but there were thousands of people lined up, packing booth after booth, it was almost paralyzing.  Moving along with the crowd, because it was too difficult to stop and look at anything, I did a quick survey of two of the buildings for what I wanted most, a new small drop spindle to replace the one I travel with, which was made from a toy wooden wheel from Michaels Craft Shop.

I stumbled upon Golding Ring Spindles, OMG!  My fiber buddy Betts Silver Shacht happened to run into me as I was having the dilemma of my life trying to decide which spindle needed to come home with me.  She authoritatively pointed me into the right direction, explaining how they were weighted and the weight appeared on the hang tag and based on what was already in my bag, Betts encouraged me to get this little gem.  I can’t wait to chain play off what’s currently on my little spindle and give this one a whorl…

I managed to fight the crowds, hug many of my guild members as I ran into them, spend some time chatting with an old old friend Marie, who is now an avid knitter, we actually went through college together studying fibers back in the 1970’s.  I found some things I had needed to get, a bottle of Synthrapol, and a bulb spritzer for felting.  And then I found Lisa Merian’s booth, Spinners Hill.  I adore Lisa’s carded fleeces and rovings.  Her color sense and palettes (she confided in me that she used many of my color forecasts I wrote for Handwoven as inspiration, no wonder I loved them…)  And her Corriedale Finn Rambouillet Cross Sheep wool is a joy to felt.  I stood staring at one of her crazy balls of roving for a long time and finally decided to get 2 1/2 pounds of it and hope one day I can make some felt yardage and have a felt “Daryl Jacket” of my own.

In addition to all my wonderful treasures, I brought home a case of wine, one of my favorites from a NY State Winery I had visited last April with my sisters.  The El Paso Winery had a booth, along with one I’d never heard of, but my sister highly recommended for their flavorful and highly creative wines, the Pazdar Winery. I had to pick up a couple of bottles of a lemoncello flavored wine called Ravishing Sunrise.

I gave one final lecture Sunday morning, a private class to many of the Make it With Wool participants, on Solving the Mystery of Fit.  They were so excited, and the girl who won the Jr. Division, who had made a crocheted wool bikini (it was pretty amazing) with a handwoven beach cover up (equally amazing) asked lots of questions about working with handwovens. There was another entrant who had woven fabric and was hoping to use it next year.  I was thrilled to answer any question for teenage handweavers wanting to make clothing from their handwoven fabric.  I think I died and went to handweaving teacher heaven.

So now I’m home.  This week is proposal writing week, find the studio week, find the children and get them back on track, and start the process of cleaning and organizing the house.  The leaves are everywhere, and the wood crib empty, so I put my son on deck clearing duty and had him haul wood from the back wood piles and refill the crib by the garage in anticipation of needing a fire in the wood stove before the week is out.  Tomorrow I start an eight week class on sewing at the Newark Museum, but for now…

I get to play…  I’m hoping for a really really long winter…  Stay tuned…

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Rita Rooney
Rita Rooney
October 19, 2010 6:59 am

Seeing your photo of the drive up with all the fall colors was wonderful. We don’t get that down here. I miss fall! Are we hoping for a long snowy winter as well. Glad the summer teaching has slowed down and you can finally regroup and reconnect. Love to here about all your adventures. Enjoy fall, hot cups of tea and your studio!

Marie
Marie
October 19, 2010 7:36 am

Welcome home. This was the first year I missed Rhinebeck since 2002. Hope to see you soon.

candiss cole
October 19, 2010 8:22 am

glad you are home and hope you didn’t lose the fish to the water being low in the pond. I know how much the yard means to both you and Kevin. get through your re-entry…I know it welll….I do it all the time…..and it just takes time. and enjoy your home! we will be in morristown for the first weekend in december for the artrider show…looking forward to seeing you then.
so many adventures this year for the family. it will an interesting christmas letter!

Carmella
Carmella
October 19, 2010 10:54 am

I’ve just returned home after another week at Sievers, this time making rag rugs with Deb Sharpee. My two rugs turned out super fantastic! I challenged myself to be brave with color and used some really bright fabric for two color bock rugs on the same warp. I love them! Now I’m home and feel the same way – ready to settle in for a long winter weaving, spinning, sewing, and finishing my unfinished projects. That is my next challenge to myself! I promise to send pictures when I finish my jacket! It’s good to be back on the farm… Read more »

Ginnie
Ginnie
October 20, 2010 7:43 am

Daryl, so glad you are home to nest for the winter! And I can’t wait to see your creations to come!

I am just home from visiting family before the winter sets in, and hopefully I will be productive, too. Lost out on a TOOT loom, but will order an 8H Harrisville this week for the new studio.

Let’s see your new socks! I’m so happy you are knitting!

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