My favorite month…

I recall a similar blog post, a number of years ago, where I said that I always thought of September as the start of my new year. There is something about new beginnings, even though I’ve been out of school for a long time; fresh pencils, new clean copybooks, newly covered textbooks with brown shopping bags (I was a pro at this), and the chance to learn new stuff. I loved school, I loved learning, and still do.

I’ve talked throughout this year about how important it was to keep myself busy. I think I took probably a dozen classes so far this year, many of them through Peters Valley School of Craft, which is only an hour from me. The last of the classes I signed up for there, occurred Labor Day weekend, a three-day weaving class actually. Unfortunately the teacher, Brittany Wittman cancelled the week of the class. The title of the original class was ” Tactile Sensibility: Weaving Compositions”, focusing on weaving as a creative process and enhancing tactile sensibility through experimentation with structure and surface. Sounds like art speak, but hey, I’m a good weaver, but can always look at the loom differently. I was of course disappointed when I found out she cancelled, but Jesse Satterfeld, who is the fiber fellow this year at the fiber studio of Peters Valley, stepped in to run the class. He is quite talented, master’s degree from Kent State if I recall, and though the course description changed somewhat, I decided to follow through because, well why not…

I was a bit surprised that the three other participants in the class were all brand new weavers. But my needs would be different than theirs, and I’m a self-starter. And the looms were already warped, so I plowed ahead.

The looms were set up with the most basic blank canvas you could ever have in weaving. 10/2 cotton, 30 epi, about 9″ wide, and all white. In a straight draw. For the non weavers, that means that the threading was 1,2,3,4 and repeat. I brought some odd funky yarns from my studio, and a bucket of some of my oddiments left from the basketry class. We were given directions for plain weave, various twills, rib, basket weave, many of the same structures I already teach when I do a Learn to Weave class. So I started to play. I sat at the loom, with this “blank canvas” of a warp, and just wove.

Who does that in the weaving world? For three whole days? With no plan or goal? Just sample, play, see what happens if? I even jumped ahead to clasped weft, while the rest of the class was still trying to understand how to do a twill structure. I probably had a yard and a half woven by the end of the day.

Day two I came back, and tired of just weaving odd yarns in basic structures, I really started to look at the four shafts and what they were capable of. Honestly, to spend three days, with one canvas, just looking at it and seeing possibilities I really hadn’t looked at before, was such a gift. It was also a challenge beyond belief, to keep reminding myself that I’m not the teacher, to keep my mouth shut, and let the teacher do his job with the new students. This entire year has been a challenging exercise in this regard, and not always have I been successful, but I’m determined…

I started to play with a mock Theo Moorman, using one shaft as tie down, using a pick up stick to isolate where I wanted the threads. I had a few Catalpa pods and I played with adding them to the mix.

And I took some of the cordage I had made leftover from the basketry class I took back in the summer, and used that same inlay technique.

I even tried weaving in some of the little actual seeds, in the same technique.

The third day, I played around with things I know about but hadn’t ever thought they could work on a four shaft threading. I did some Brocade, which is nothing more than combining a 1/3 twill with a 3/1 twill, using a pick up stick.

And I did some actual inlay, which I haven’t done since a workshop I did in the 1970’s. I’d like to go back and revisit this technique, with a different warp and sett. We combined the inlay with damask, which was pretty cool.

In the end, I had a sampler that reached taller than any ceiling in my house.

I realized it would fit perfectly between the garage doors in the weaving studio, hanging from the ceiling, with a little prop support to keep it from dragging on the ground, becoming cricket fodder (even though Mulder is stalking them every night, I didn’t want my sampler to get in the way of his routine slaughter…)

And of course, September means that the weather is gloriously cooler, and that the garden season is starting to wind down. My gardens are amazing, considering where I started last spring with tiny little plugs. I am including lots of pictures because my 93 year old mom, has by request, no access to anything digital, and the only way she can enjoy my blog, which she loves to get, is by snail mail. So mom, here are a bunch of garden pictures…

The pool in the back of the picture is the neighbor’s yard, there is a stockade fence between us, running along behind the greenhouse, which is in the middle of my vegetable garden.

And of course, my tomatoes are coming in like crazy! I just oven dried a bunch of the little guys to pop in my freezer for the winter

And I’m starting to put the appliqué quilt blocks together. There is still a massive amount of work to do, even once all nine are together, because there is a 380 piece vine that runs through the entire quilt. But it is really cool to see the blocks take shape, and I’m beginning to finish the blocks that I couldn’t initially finish because they extended over the borders into the adjacent blocks.

The Maine Coon on top has a glorious tail that will extend into the adjacent block once it is added.

I’ve never understood the lure of a kit, and I’m a complete convert. Where I spent three days just staring at a blank “canvas” of a warp, just making stuff up as I went along, executing someone else’s design in a kit that provided all the materials, fabric selections and schematics has been such a different experience. I can see the benefits of both ways of working. One is a creative exercise and one is a technical exercise. Different parts of the brain! Different skill sets. It is probably why I love volunteering as a stitcher at the Shakespeare Theatre of NJ costume department. I just get handed assignments and I have to figure out how to do them.

Last night, I drove up the NY State Thruway, in the pouring rain, to a wedding of one of the girls my kids grew up with. Her family has remained close, and though neither of my children could attend, I was privileged to have been invited and made the trek up to the country club where the wedding was held. During the cocktail hour, the weather started to clear, and I wandered outside to look at the fountains and to my complete shock, there was the most glorious rainbow I’ve ever seen. Guests started pouring outside, and there were more photos of the rainbow I’m thinking than of the bride and groom!

And then as we all watched, a double rainbow appeared. That has to be good luck and a strong omen for the newly wed couple.

And tomorrow, I get to go “back to school”. My ten week class in natural dyeing starts, through Maiwa, and I’ve watched the intros, started a binder of the PDF printouts, organized my dye area, unpacked the “kit”, and am ready to sink my teeth into yet another opportunity to learn.

Fall is coming… stay tuned…