And the Seasons, they go round and round…

With apologies to Joni Mitchell…

I’m sitting here looking out my beautiful window, overlooking my gardens, musing on how fast the seasons are changing, and how oddly beautiful everything looks as it is dying back. It will all go to sleep thankfully for a few months, while I regroup and survive music performance season.

It has been a challenge I will admit, to keep everything alive this summer into September, the intense heat and drought has forced me to plan my day around what desperately needs water. I’ve given up on weeding, it will resume again next spring when new growth presents new challenges. Right now it is seed spreading time, dancing around the yard, putting seeds like milkweed, baptisia, Joe Pye, and iris versicolor, everywhere there is a blank spot. My landscape designer says, “Put down hundreds of seeds, if a few take, they are free plants…” So the autumn dance continues.

As I left my house over the weekend for yet another rehearsal, I slammed on the brakes, because there, a lone iris in my garden by the street, was blooming. You gotta love that even plants can thumb their noses at Mother Nature…

Right now, it is raining. Blissfully. Though the predictions have been ominous, coastal flooding and high winds, the nor’easter, descending upon us, is largely for me, a couple days of gentle, much needed rain, breezy winds, which create a gentle swirl of leaves as they fall off the trees. I will rake them into the beds, “Leave the leaves…”

My days are full, and the calendar for December filling up to the point where I’m getting a bit nervous. I, of course, never overbook….. Hahahaha! Anyone who plays music with an ensemble of any type, knows that December is not necessarily the end of year full of holiday celebrations of all religions, full of family gatherings, etc. It is the season of concerts, gigs, nursing home sing-a-longs, small recitals, and whatever else the 5 early music ensembles I play with, plus my cello lessons (yes we do holiday gigs too) comes up with. Three more gigs were added yesterday. Tomorrow, my day starts with volunteering at the Shakespeare Theatre starting at 9am, guild sponsored spinning group at 2pm, craft group which meets in the library in my town from 6-8pm, and my recorded yoga class at 8pm, carry over from tonight, since I’ll miss it because I’m at a rehearsal from 7pm.

I keep reminding myself that I really do love all these opportunities to be with people of all ages, all kinds of talent, all kinds of backgrounds, and that community is what keeps up moving forward. We need this in our current challenging times of civil unrest. If I can play Christmas songs on the cello or recorder for a group of people society has forgotten, in a nursing home or memory care facility, then I have given back in my own small way.

One of the other ways I give back, is to look at my still overflowing stash of scrap handwoven fabrics, samples and samplers, experiments, and even loom waste, and see what I can make from it. Our guild, the Jockey Hollow Weavers, has a show and sale every year the beginning of November, and I make whatever I can to sell there, a percentage of sales goes to the guild for programming and operating expenses, equipment and library acquisitions, to ensure future generations have access to what has defined me for the last 40 years.

I have to have my complete inventory submitted by October 28th, but the work doesn’t have to be completed until the morning of set up, which is November 7th. So I’m cutting up everything I can, making trays and kits, which I will then furiously sew and construct once the inventory sheets are submitted for bar coded tags.

There are teddy bears…

And zip bags…

And trays of ornaments…

And a few ginger jars…

I’ll make some tote bags, and greeting cards, and add a few scarves which are already finished and in the closet.

What doesn’t sell at the sale, I’ll take to the Shakespeare Theatre of NJ for their lobby pop-up shop in the Kirby Theatre at Drew University. They get to keep all the monies from anything they sell.

I’m pretty proud of the journey I undertook the last couple of weeks reworking a gown I had in the back of my closet for 20 years, to use as a costume for when I play with my early music groups. I needed something “Renna-bethean” as we call it, Rennaisance/Elizabethean, which also serves when I need something Viking and Medieval… tall order. In my last couple of blog posts, I talked about cutting up this gown, creating a lacing down the front, however, when I tried it on, I realized immediately that the slender silk arms of the gown were too restrictive to play cello, which requires sweeping right arm movements. I also needed something that though it looked like a skirt, would split apart to create room for the cello between my legs.

To note… I’m just beginning to play cello, somewhat reluctantly, with a couple of the groups. I’m still only a year in, and though I have made remarkable progress, I’m still a beginner and make mistakes, off pitch, crossed strings with the bow, etc. But more opportunities are coming, I just have to keep practicing. The rest of the groups I play a solid bass recorder, and am so happy keeping the low voice going in a group of talented sopranos and altos. I don’t need to be front and center. I did that too much in my handweaving career. Give me the back row any day.

So, to remind me and my beloved readers, I cut the original dress up the middle, and added lacings.

I created culottes, from a 1990’s pattern, using one of the decorator fabrics I got from a deceased weaver’s stash sale a couple months ago. I needed some kind of camisole to go with it, so I grabbed some Rit dye at the ShopRite, and dyed an ivory lace camisole that was sitting in my drawer, probably for 30 years.

I had to hem the dress, since when I initially wore it, I had 3″ heels. Not doing that anymore. I carefully removed the sleeves, and took the strip from the hem, laying it crosswise grain over a sleeve pattern I found in a back issue of Burda Style, and piecing it together to create a short sleeve. I used the silk from the original sleeves to create the same overlay as the bodice.

It was still too restrictive, and so I put in gussets, like we do all the time at the Shakespeare Theatre costume shop. Then I went spelunking in my stash and found a lace fabric, which was again, ivory, to potentially use for the medieval sleeve. I couldn’t identify what the fiber content was from a burn test, there was synthetic, but also ash, so it was some kind of combination. I brewed all the coffee in my freezer.

The color was a glorious orange shade that went perfect with the dress.

So the result was something I was really really proud of. My skills with the sewing machine are dramatically shifting, getting more creative at repurposing, altering and restyling what already exists. I have the Shakespeare Theatre costume shop to thank for that. I have a lot of fun there…

And Saturday, I jumped in a car with other musicians, and we made our way down to Princeton, in heavy traffic, to a festival of early music sponsored by the Guild of Early Music, where we, NJ Early Music, were the last group to perform. I played cello for a couple of pieces, which really needed a cello, and our regular cellist couldn’t come. I made mistakes, but with music performance, unlike textiles, where you can rip something out and redo it, I have to just keep going. There is no correcting a wrong note in performance. No one will die, and it all turns out fine in the end, with a sigh of relief when we all end where we are supposed to! We all went out to a pub in Princeton afterward, and it was so great to get to really know some of the other players in a social setting.

Note… Cello players can’t wear jewelry, have their hair down (it gets tangled in the strings) and need short fingernails on their left hand (challenging for a textile artist). But I persevere…

I actually had a free day yesterday, nothing on the calendar. So I got up, did my morning routine, and went out into the vegetable garden, and harvested all the basil, which was showing signs of cold weather, and larges bunches of parsley. I picked the tomatoes that were starting to turn a blush color, and replaced the ones on my window sill, now very ripe, which I made into a pot of sauce.

I also put a tray of sliced cherry tomatoes, with a drizzle of olive oil, into the oven at 200 degrees, to dry all day. After a few hours, I take them out, cool them, and add them to the large zip-loc in the freezer to use all winter long.

While all that was happening, I started picking all the basil and parsley leaves. With olive oil, garlic, walnuts and parmesan, I made 12 zip-loc bags of pesto, and along with three bags of sauce (I had the 4th one for dinner), my freezer is filling up! I should probably grow potatoes…

I don’t remember if I mentioned that I go dancing on Friday nights with one of my music friends. We go to a local Arthur Murray, where I adore the staff, learn a lot about teaching skills that involve body movement, learn to follow (definitely not one of my strengths, which is why playing in a music ensemble is so good for me, even though again, it isn’t my strength) and get good exercise. My strappy sandals I wore fell apart, and I talked to one of the instructors who pulled up her pant leg and showed me what she wore… Ballroom dancing practice shoes. Who knew there was such a thing… Amazon… They are super flexible, (they can fold in half) with suede on the bottom, and the next day, these were on my feet. I got the sliver ones!

So my world is changing with the seasons, and mostly I’m so happy with all of my new-found communities of interesting and varied people. (The packed schedule is a bit tiring, but I keep going…) Politics are rarely ever discussed, and if they are, there are real discussions, with informed people who are open to other points of view. It is a healthy world, and I have hope that it can prevail.

Enjoy the falling leaves, as nature takes a long nap. We fiber people, and now music people need the time to dive in uninterrupted with our next season of activities.

Stay tuned…