Busy Beaver…

I’ve been working on archiving the family photos, back from 1974, and there is a big push right before Christmas and my husband’s Birthday in March, to add another hundred or so pages, which is sort of my gift to him/my family.  I’m sure you all know about those stacks of albums/boxes/envelopes/boxes/slides/etc. that represent your entire life, your kid’s lives, and everything you’ve done that you bothered to take a photo of, just lurking on the shelves, collecting dust, and no one, absolutely no one ever looks at them.  We have shelves full, we have cabinets full, we have slides and no projector.

So over the past couple of years, I’ve carefully pulled, year by year, event by event, the images that record us as a couple, us as a family, and now us as a couple again, and am scanning the most important, 6-8 per event, and putting them up on a PowerPoint page.  I have a few hundred pages at this point, but they are all printed and spiral bound into one huge bound volume per decade, and it is with great joy that I relive all the fun of my kids growing up, and see what they’ve become.  I’ve learned that we probably spoiled them rotten, but in spite of us, they are turning out pretty good anyway.

So I’m up to 1996 (I started a couple years ago at 1974) and now that my daughter is home from college for a few weeks, she has been terrific in helping us make order to the unsorted boxes of loose photos.  She uses her spread sheet of school photos and compares facial structure and hair style to determine dates.  That would be my little scientist Brianna.  (Who just reported that she got an A- for the semester in Organic Chemistry.)

Anyway, my kids went to nursery school at Busy Beaver right here on Main Street in little Lincoln Park, and I’ve always loved the name. I”m enjoying all the photos of their time there. And this week, I feel like I’m a busy beaver, diving into everything with a burst of enthusiasm and speed, knowing that something will eventually knock me off my pedestal, like the flu or a massive winter storm or the Mayan Apocalypse, so I’m enjoying this while I have the energy.

First off, I’ve posted the online classes for January at Weavolution.com.  A perfect time to curl up in your bedroom slippers with a warm drink and take a class.  There are lots to chose from and since I won’t be teaching online in February since I’ll be on the west coast for a teaching marathon the entire month, you’ll have to wait for March for the class cycle to come ’round again.

My daughter came back from college last Thursday with a bag full of WEBS 8/2 Cotlin, which I had ordered and had her pick up at the Pioneer Valley Guild meeting. (Ok, I was a bad mommy.  I arm twisted her into going under the pretext that I really needed this yarn, and she HAD to pick it up, and since there was this guild meeting and all…  Well surprise, surprise, she loved them and they loved her and my daughter now has a new home Weaving Guild!)

Well I actually did need the yarn.  I wanted to fill the last unwarped Tools of the Trade loom in my studio with a run of dishtowels that I’d like to have woven off before Christmas.  You know, instant gifts…  It made sense to warp 12 yards.  Don’t ask.

Since WEBS was backordered on Natural, I went to the next lightest neutral, which was a pale green, called Willow, and I beamed 12 yards, and dove in head first.  The design is from Handwoven Magazine’s eBook, Top ten towels on four shafts, a lovely simple towel design called “Keep it Simple Towels” by Mary Ann Geers.  I wanted something quick to weave with a single shuttle.  I’ve only got a week.

There was the Mosstone Towel.

Followed by the Baked Clay Towel.

Followed by two Magenta Towels.  The first Magenta towel my daughter jumped in to weave, and found to her dismay that she is an aggressive weaver and she pulls her selvages in too tight, netting about three dozen broken warp threads for the towel she wove.  I can’t really give it as a gift, so it will be mine, but it frustrated her to no end that I don’t get selvage breakage.  I tried to let her know that all new weavers get too much draw in, that practice makes you pull less, and the angle of the weft as it exits the shed makes a difference, and she will learn.

Meanwhile, she is sitting on the floor of her bedroom with her own loom, an Ashford 8 shaft table loom, she warped it while away at school, and is determined to empty the loom so she can start something else.  She can’t remember how much warp she put on, probably five yards, but she is weaving away, on this black and orange four shaft twill color and weave, rayon novelty, and she can weave on that table loom with practically the same speed I do on a floor loom.  And I’m fast.  She is getting better at pulling in less, and getting less selvage breakage.

Meanwhile, I finished up the skirt I started a number of blog posts ago.  Once I cleared my cutting table from all the photos, wrapping paper, project notes, and just junk that had accumulated, I was able to cut out the top and skirt I had planned a couple weeks ago.  I loved the muslins, surprisingly, and with just some minor tweaking, I cut out both the top and the skirt and planned to underline both.  The skirt is a gorgeous Italian lightweight men’s trouser suiting, I had just a 3/4 yard remnant from Waechter’s Silk Shop in Asheville, NC, 60″ wide more than fits around me.  This is a simple pencil skirt, with no waistband, grosgrain instead for a clean finish.

I underlined the skirt with something from the archives.  But first a story.

Years ago, I mean years ago, I visited my parents who were renting a condo for the winter in Florida.  They were on the west coast, and my mom told me about this famous fabric store called Jay’s.  This was the kind of place that had been around since the heyday of couture, and their back stockroom had stuff I’m sure they couldn’t even identify.   Though probably the owner knew every single bolt of fabric collected over 50 years.  I miss places like that, they aren’t around anymore.  Anyway, my mom told me that when she stopped in there (and this was years ago…), she noticed a table of SiBonne rayon underlinings for $1. a yard.  Was I interested?

SiBonne is of course no longer made.  It was developed after the war as an inexpensive alternative for Silk Organza for an underlining and it was pretty amazing stuff.  It had a crispness like Organza and had an anti static treatment and it was the go to fabric of choice for underlining just about anything that required an underlining.  And here was a table full of bolts, at only $1. a yard.  I bought all of it.  They estimated about 200 yards, I paid the man $200.  We bundled the bolts, and I took them home on the plane, checked through baggage, this was a long time ago when you could still do stuff like that with an airline and not have to pay the equivalent of a college tuition to get your bags from one place to another.

And so I have a private stash of this stuff.  And sadly I’m down to the last four bolts.  Sigh…

And the pale blue Sibonne is what I used as the underlining of this light Italian pinstripe wool.

All hems and facings can be tacked to the underlining, instead of the outer fabric.  So there are no breaks in the smooth surface.

Stay tuned…