There’s got to be a morning after…

Tough weekend.  Teaching four days straight isn’t usually any kind of a problem, I do it all the time.  And I’ll be doing it in February of 2013 for an entire month as I travel the coast of California.  But the pace of the NY Sheep and Wool Festival, and the incredible variety of what I teach, eight classes in all, most completely unrelated, it is intense and exhausting.  And I wouldn’t do it any other way.  I love teaching, and I love reaching new students.  It is great to go to a place where many of the students have never heard of me.  Festivals like this primarily attract knitters and spinners and people interested in sheep, so I’m sort of the new kid on the block.  Many asked if this was my first time teaching there.  No.

I really debated when proposals were due if I should offer my workshop on beginning shaft weaving because the time frame meant I had to do the workshop in one day, on and off the loom in six hours.  At the time I proposed the class I only thought I’d be able to collect 8 looms, and as it turns out, I now have 10, and looking for more, but I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.

So I started on Thursday with a one day crash course in weaving on a shaft loom, I edited the content down, made the warps narrower and shorter from the beginning class I taught at the Fiber Fallout last month, and it turned out to be a total success.  I had seven students, and they all did an amazing job and I took not one photo of them furiously working.  It was music to my ears when more than one commented that threading the loom, was sort of zen like…  They all liked exploring the patterns I gave them, and I think I created seven new weaving enthusiasts.

Thursday I had a tough night.  This was one of those rare experiences where I was alone, and sick, and not sure if I could actually finish the weekend.  I had what I think was a major gall bladder attack, I’m usually pretty careful with what I eat, I haven’t had issues since I was pregnant with my daughter and if you follow my blog, you know she is in college.  See, here’s the thing.  I had to cancel only once in my life.  It was 10 years ago when I was diagnosed with cancer.  Hardest thing I’ve ever done, because as I sat on the phone with a girlfriend back home, I tried to make her understand that my students come first, and I’ll die trying to follow through on what I’ve committed to do.  I’m like that.  It is my work ethic.  It was my dad’s work ethic. It is my sisters’ work ethic.   I can’t escape the genetic pool…

So I called another girlfriend who is a nurse, we talked about what to do.  I did some internet searching and decided that I’d be OK if I stopped eating and took some pain meds, as long as I didn’t develop a fever, and I spent the next two days teaching living on my mom’s folk remedy for whatever ails you, apple cider vinegar and honey in water.  It worked, I lived.  I managed to continue teaching, most didn’t know there was anything wrong.

Friday I taught a beginning inkle class in the morning, and a wild and crazy intermediate/advanced class in the afternoon.  I had 13 students in the afternoon, many needed a refresher, but they left so excited about the possibilities and all were on their way to look for Ann Dixon’s inkle weaving pattern book.  And of course I took not one photo of the afternoon class either.  I was too busy.

Friday night I actually spent some time in the hotel hot tub.  Very very needed and appreciated…

Saturday I had two classes, the morning class was Dyeing with Kool-aid and other kitchen stuff, using a microwave, and though I only had a couple students for that, (I heard there were a lot of dyeing classes offered this year) it was still a blast and I worked right along with them, with two microwaves, we were like mad scientists and we made sample after sample and then split up the spoils at the end so we all had great stuff for a notebook.

The interesting thing about this class, was the addition of something I didn’t know about, Eileen Hallman of New World Textiles wrote me ahead and asked if I would like to try this product that she carries, called EZ Dye Cotton in a 10/2 weight.  She sent me a number of 10 gram skeins, apparently this pre-treated cotton will take any kind of dye, including acid dyes like Kool-aid, Easter Egg dyes, food coloring, natural dyes without mordants and whatever else you throw at it.  So in addition to all the wool skeins I had prepared, I had the small skeins of cotton.  The cotton also apparently comes in sliver for spinning.

I have to say, I loved the results.  They looked like they were dyed with natural dyes, and there was this lovely heather quality that you don’t get with chemical dyes.  We found that we ended up with a lot of rusty peaches and reds, even when we were going for something else, but the colors were lovely and the fact that you can use safe kitchen dyes on cotton makes the range of what you can do with kids pretty amazing.  So thanks Eileen, I’ll try to make something interesting with the skeins I have…  The comments seemed to be, “This is really fun, but does it come in anything fatter?” (So you can knit with it!)

Saturday afternoon I taught a class in speed tapestry weaving.  I love this class, no experience necessary, and within the first 40 minutes of the class, I have them completely cover the warp with roving.  Then they can explore and add color and texture and just build on what is essentially a finished piece at any point.  It was so great to watch how differently everyone approached the same task.  One woman thought this would be a great exercise for staff development workshops.  There is no wrong here, no mistakes, just exploring and creating.  I have a big basket of yarn and scraps, and a couple of sheets that show how to do some of the pile weaves and textures.  One student was inspired by the turning leaves, so spectacular, and built her tapestry after the fall spectacle right outside the window.

Saturday night, my last night in the hotel, I decided it was time to try to eat something, you can go without food for just so many days and pay a price.  So I took myself to the hotel restaurant, and sat down and realized that there were three women seated at the table directly behind me all knitting.  This could mean only one thing.  I couldn’t resist asking them if they were attending the sheep and wool festival.  They said yes, and asked if I was as well, I mentioned I was an instructor, of course they had no idea who I was, which was just delightful, and they invited me to join them for dinner, they had just ordered and were all sipping martini’s.  And knitting.  It doesn’t get any better than that.

I had a wonderful dinner with these three strangers, one of them turns out to have been a former Olympian, a rower from the ’76 Montreal Olympics.  I’ve never met anyone whose ever participated in the Olympics, and I think what a fabulous thing to have as a chapter in one’s life.  These women were interesting, and of course, they were knitters and learning to spin, and I pulled out my knitting as well.  Only at Rhinebeck can you go out to dinner and knit along with everyone else at the table while waiting for your food.  They were positively gleeful describing all their purchases.

And so Sunday, I finished up the festival with three back to back seminars in garment construction, Fit, Sewing with Handwovens, and a class in Seam and Edge Finishes.  That last class was pretty tough, I was bleary eyed, with no voice, but the students said they learned a lot and it was what they needed to move forward and dust off those sewing machines and use some of their stash.  And so I loaded up the last of the suitcases, headed for the car in the parking lot, moved the looms around to accommodate the last of the suitcases, and headed for home.  I was glad to be only a few hours away, and walking into my house at 7pm last night was one of the sweetest feelings ever.  No matter that my son was in the middle of a wild party and that the house was trashed.  It was so good to be home, it has been a long few months, not that I would have changed anything at all, but I’m safe in my own home in my own studio in my own bed and surrounded by familiarity and people whom I love.  My girlfriend drove down today from NY State and we called a couple other friends and had a wonderful lunch of old friends and great memories.

And to finish off the season, I opened my mail and discovered that I had taken second place in the Blue Ridge Fiber Show in NC, in the professional wearables Category for my coat Wildfires.  Yippee!