What to do first…

My husband is gone (back to North Carolina) and my best friend Candiss Cole and her lovely husband are gone (finished their show and on their way to Florida), and my son has returned from points south (deployed down the shore as a result of Hurricane Sandy), and my daughter will finish exams and return home until the end of January, next week.  The house is a revolving door.  And I’m really struggling to stay focused.  Correction, I’m struggling for any focus at all.

As in my previous post, there are things that drop in your lap that are all good things that involve people you love, that take precedence over anything else, but I’m having real anxiety that I’m not going to get my down time to be creative in the studio the way I thought after a year of intense teaching.  Of course no one will die if I don’t make another masterpiece in the next six weeks, which is about all I’ll have in the studio until I’m on the road again.  And if I can just enjoy the days for what they are instead of a nightly assessment of what I accomplished or didn’t as the case seems to be, I’d be a lot better off.  But alas, then I wouldn’t be me.

I have so many ideas and so many things I want to try and things I want to make, yarn to weave, yarn to dye, fibers to felt and to spin, bands to make, and tons of clothing to make from my fabric stash that doesn’t appear to be getting smaller no matter how hard I try.  So today I just sort of piddled around and kind of  formulated a plan of what I can realistically begin, but even then, I’m having a hard time knowing where to start.  This is a new dilemma for me.

I wrapped up my article and submitted the six page text and have all the images ready to upload.  The garment will be shipped for photography at the end of the week.  I want to bring it to my guild meeting show and tell Wednesday night so the weaver Jerri can see what I did with her fabric.  It was part of an exchange we did a couple years ago.  I provided the yarn, Jerri picked my bag of yarn, and wove yardage for me.  It was all rather fun, and now I’ve done something with it.  And killed two birds with one stone, (that is a really stupid saying) and wrote an article using the jacket as the feature.  I won’t say more about the magazine or the theme of the article, just that it is a sewing publication and scheduled for next August.  Since I don’t have a contract yet, I’m not completely confident they will use it.  I’ve never written for this magazine before.

Anyway, I’m itching to keep to my promise that I’ll always have a project going on the sewing machine.  So I have a couple of remnants that actually look really lovely with this jacket.  I have just enough I think for a top and skirt, and I thought I’d cut out the pattern for a simple pencil skirt, make a muslin to check the fit, and then do the same for the blouse.  I can’t decide on the V neck or the scoop neck.  I won’t know until I see it in muslin.  I have a gorgeous wool suiting remnant in grey with a pinstripe I got from Waechter’s Silk Shop a couple years ago, or maybe it was only this past summer.  I’ve lost track what came from which trip.  And I have some pretty floral poly left over from the lining of a coat I made, I have a vague recollection of purchasing that from G-Street Fabrics and that definitely was a number of years ago.

And I’m anxious to get another run of scarves onto the loom.  I have so many skeins of hand dyed yarn, mostly rayons and cottons with some raw silk, and I have an opportunity to sell some when I come to the west coast in February, so it makes sense to fire up the loom so to speak.  I love putting together the colors for this kind of scarf, and I did something similar with the yardage I made for the yardage exhibit at Convergence.   And of course I did the same thing and ended up making my prize winning dress from four of the scarves.

I have lots of paperwork looming (sorry, pun intended), final contracts for next year’s teaching schedule.  I’m doing more and more five day intensives, which I really love, especially the one for garment construction, stay tuned as my schedule builds and dates are confirmed.  This year I’m adding two five day classes at Peters Valley Craft Center in NJ, one in July for my 5 day boot camp fiber intensive, where every three hours you learn a new fiber technique from spinning to dyeing to felting, plaiting, inkle loom weaving, kumihimo, tapestry weaving and in this case, shaft loom weaving.  So all of you lurkers who don’t actually know what I’m talking about half the time, here is your chance to become a fiber addict! Plus Peters Valley is my most favorite place on the planet.  I will teach my five day garment construction intensive there in August, also at Harrisville Designs in NH the end of August.  I’m still in negotiations with Sievers Fiber School in Wisconsin for the 2013 dates, and I’ll be teaching one in Asheville NC in June.  The only part of the country missing is of course the west coast.  I’m heading west the first of February to start a one month tour, starting in San Francisco with the Black Sheep Guild, and working my way south.  Details will be on my website shortly, but most important is the five day garment construction intensive I’m just finishing up plans for at the end of February in San Diego.  This will be a private group, they are looking for a couple of extra people, but will keep the number small.  If you are interested at all let me know and I’ll put you in touch with the coordinator.

And finally, I’ve made a bit of progress on my newest inkle loom adventure.  I am really enjoying this 1:1 pick up called Runic from Ann Dixon’s pattern book, because it is random and freeform.  NOTHING in weaving is random!  (Ok, I’ll probably get lots of argument on that one…)  But this technique is pretty cool.  And I was able to use my little stash of Treenway Silks 20/2 and Fine Cord.  The dark purple is hand dyed tencel.  From my stash of course…

And so, I’m going to curl up with my sewing machine, and make a couple of muslins, or maybe I’ll just take my poor tired body to bed, since I’m still recovering from helping my husband split and haul more than 3 cords of wood from all the trees we had taken out over the past two summers, and stack it in the five plus cribs we have on the property.  We went through much of our split wood with the 10 days without power earlier in November, and needed to refill the coffers.  Home Depot is a great place to rent big things like a wood splitter.

Stay tuned!