Blog Entries – Daryl's Blog

And so starts the holiday season…

…with a vengeance! Thanksgiving is late this year, so hasn’t happened as of this writing. But the last few weeks have been horrifically busy, because, ’tis the season.

It is the season for our annual guild show and sale. I worked furiously making stuff from leftover scraps, for the sale, like ornaments…

Like zip bags…

And I loaded up the car, helped set up the sale, spent an exhausting three days working the floor, and selling my little heart out. I sold quite a bit of work, which made me happy.

Most of the unsold work was just delivered to the Shakespeare Theatre of NJ, for them to add to their little gift shoppe in the lobby of the Kirby Theatre for the final show of the year. ‘Tis the season!

The final show is A Christmas Carol, and because I volunteer as a stitcher in the costume shop, it has been all hands on deck. I always thought my least favorite show to help with costume alterations was Macbeth. Lots of black, lots of leather, and garments that weight 75 pounds. The current production is just as challenging. Many of the garments for this show have to be rigged for quick release, for costume changes that have to occur in about 15 seconds. There are only 8 actors in this version of A Christmas Carol. That means fitted corseted jackets have to be attached to full skirts, and full petticoat attached to that. With a lapped separating zipper down the back, where some of the layers were 1/2″ thick. We have industrial machines there at the costume shop, but nothing would go through this except the costume shop’s manager’s personal $199 11 year old Singer from Walmart. Try putting in a lapped zipper after the fact in a garment that weights as much as I do… Go figure… The things I am learning… I’ll go in one more day on Tuesday, they pack out on Wednesday and go into tech this weekend. Show opens December 4th. ‘Tis the season!

This is the season of harvesting, and I had a friend collect a huge bucket of black walnut hulls. I don’t have a garage to put them in, since that is now the weaving studio, and with the animals always getting into something, I don’t dare just put them in my studio. So I left them in front of the garage bay under the overhang, to protect them, and the squirrels had an absolute field day. There were crushed walnut hulls all over the driveway. Somebody was happy! I covered the bucket and now they are all moldy. Sigh… Maybe next year my life won’t be so crazy and I can soak them immediately and use them as a dye promptly.

It has been a beautiful fall season, especially in my yard with all the wonderful native plants and the colors that they are turning, much subtler than all the invasives on my property, but beautiful in their own way. However, this is NJ. And though it flooded four times in the last year, we have been under extreme drought conditions for the last couple of months. No rain. None. Which means no fire pits, no fireworks, nothing that could spark dry leaves and create a conflagration. Nevertheless, thousands of acres have burned over the last couple weeks, which is pretty scary in this small and overcrowded state. I became obsessed with watching the weather apps on my phone, hourly, praying for some kind of precipitation, watering where I thought I had no other option, but understanding that our reservoirs were half empty, and conservation was important. So it was with extreme joy that over the last few days, we received slow and steady precipitation, that amounted to nearly 4″ of rain. Everything looks wet and healthy.

I grabbed a photo of some of the color outside my studio window.

And with the all the rain, I was inspired to wind a warp for dishtowels, because, IT IS THE END OF NOVEMBER AND I DON’T HAVE MY HOLIDAY GIFT DISHTOWELS ON THE LOOM! I grabbed the draft from last year’s 4-shaft combination structure towels, based on this design from my eShop. I just edited the colors in my weaving software, and started winding.

I put 10 yards of 8/2 cotton. I have a lot of cotton. Within two days I was weaving… I’m calling this run Autumn Rain.

With a lot of help from Mulder. NOT!

I’m about three yards in so far. I try to do about a yard at a sitting. ‘Tis the season for dishtowels!

And for anyone who plays music, this really is the season. I played recorders at a Viking festival last weekend, and our annual holiday concert is this Sunday in Montclair. I play bass recorder, with Montclair Early Music, and we have had a number of opportunities to share our music with the public. Which means lots of practice and lots of rehearsals. And a couple of us are planning to take a quartet to a memory care facility in my county to play Christmas music. More rehearsals and practicing. ‘Tis the season!

And of course, thrown in there was the election. I don’t ever talk about politics in my blog, or my Facebook page. Most of you who know me know where I stand politically. And in the arts, most of us lean in the same direction, since we are such a diverse community. That said, I pray for some stability and kindness, and willingness to have frank discussions, and embracing those who think differently than I do. I’ve reached out to talk with those who voted differently than I did. And there is always more than one perspective, for any situation. I miss my late husband terribly, because he was the absolute best at seeing all sides of a situation and acting accordingly. And though election season is over for now, the 2025 gubernatorial primary season for NJ has already started, and there are about a dozen good candidates up for the position of NJ Governor. I’ve tried to limit my news exposure at this point. Because even though, ’tis the season, I don’t have the stomach for it right now.

And I wait. By the phone. For my son’s return from his deployment in Syria. I know the process has started for his return, but the military never gives details about troop movement, so I have no information, except that I’ll eventually get a text from him telling me he is on US soil. Soon…

And so dear readers, I’ll spend Thursday quietly with a friend, and then back to work rehearsing, weaving, and all the other things that need to be done in this season of darkness. I love the waning afternoon light through the trees, minus their leaves. I love the blowing leaves along the streets and in my yard. I left them in the beds this year, because apparently that’s the thing to do. Like covering up everything with a blanket for the winter. It rained, and I have towels on the loom, and my son will be home soon. All is well.

Stay tuned…

Look at the Time…

Too many cool things happening and not nearly enough time…

I know, these are definitely first world problems. I recently had my cable service upgraded to fiber, and they kept asking all sorts of questions about my TV use, and frankly, I’m not even sure how to work the smart TV I have, and I really don’t care. There just aren’t enough hours…

Fall is a super busy time here, and there are all sorts of fibery happenings, I skipped the HGA Spinning and Weaving Week this year, and Rhinebeck Sheep and Wool. NOT ENOUGH HOURS IN THE DAY! But I am signed up for the remote Weaving History Conference starting tomorrow, and running through Wednesday. (I plan to do lots and lots of handwork…)

I had to take a break watching the sessions for my natural dye class with Maiwa, NOT ENOUGH HOURS IN THE DAY!

I took a break from watching the daily sessions for the Sketchbook Revival 2024, which was free to join in, but I’m enjoying the sessions, or at least I was, until I realized there are NOT ENOUGH HOURS IN THE DAY! So I paid for the sessions so I could watch them later…

Tuesday night my inventory list is due with all the cool things I’m selling at the Jockey Hollow Weavers Guild show and sale which opens in a week and a half. So that’s been my 24/7 focus for the last two weeks, making stuff for the guild sale from all my leftover scraps. I pulled a bunch of scraps from my massive collection in the attic, and made kits of various ornaments…

Kits for zippered bags…

Greeting cards, and tote bags. Lots of tote bags. I’ve been sewing up a storm… And Mulder is very happy to help.

And lots of rabbits…

Meanwhile, it is end of the garden season. We have so far avoided a frost, but I’m watching carefully. I harvested the last of the basil, and made another five batches of pesto for the freezer.

I harvested another huge bowl of grape tomatoes, and oven dried another bunch for the freezer as well.

And those were marigolds in the other bowl. Those I dried in the oven and popped that bag in the freezer to use for dyeing at a later date.

And I’m trying to dry flat, all the flag iris leaves, which are great for making cordage. Apparently I’ve found that if you dry them flat, rotating them frequently, they will retain their green color. I tried on the floor between two large looms. Except Mulder thought it was a cool fort and gathered up all the leaves to make a nest…

I’ve had to go to plan B… outside in a protected area away from critters but still with good airflow…

Meanwhile, at the end of September, I took a weekend away, with the Native Plant Society of NJ, at their fall retreat at the Cape May Science Center. What a great weekend. I have to say that plant people, turns out, are as generous of spirit and non-competitive as weavers, I felt right at home. And I met a couple of people who recognized me, and shared their desire to get back into weaving, a great winter hobby when the gardens go to sleep.

We had a number of hikes, and one of the goals was to see monarchs on their last stop before heading to Mexico. Walking with plant people was just the coolest thing, because they see things I would have missed. They point out bugs, and birds, and invasives, like Porcelain Berry, which I’d never seen, cool plant but horribly destructive.

And I learned the technical name for caterpillar poop, “frass”. An important term to know.

And I learned that there are native praying mantis and there are non native ones. I probably saw the non native one in my garden. Below is the native one, as pointed out by someone way more knowledgeable than me…

There were such interesting textures everywhere I looked…

And this amazing shaped tree was probably from some invasive vine that was eventually removed…

A photo op at a preserve with the Nature Conservancy.

I finished the doubleweave sampler I transferred from my small table loom onto the floor loom, in record time. I’m still working on the fringe, but the sampler came out really well. Right from Jennifer Moore’s Doubleweave Book.

I pulled down another Structo and cut off what I’d started, and transferred the 8-shaft warp from it onto my floor loom. This structure is Deflected Doubleweave, in 8/2 Tencel. I had six yards on my little Structo. What the heck was I thinking…

And here it is, I’m weaving away, through a yard already. What a breeze using my hands and feet! Refer back to my last post to see how I truly feel about table looms… My guild is doing a swatch exchange this year in just this technique. I’ll be quite ahead of the game as the swatches aren’t due until June… The Draft is from page 205 of Marian Stubenitsky’s Double with a Twist.

And I continue to hang in the music world. We had a performance a couple weeks ago at the Montclair Public Library. I was playing bass recorder, and professional photographer Mike Peters grabbed a shot of me in action and some great photos got posted on the website for Montclair Early Music.

Meanwhile, I am really enjoying learning to play the cello. And I went shopping. It started with me needing a decent bow… And now I own a very decent bow, and a cello to go with it. And I graduated from Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, which is I understand a big deal in the Suzuki world of music lessons.

Did I mention there are NOT ENOUGH HOURS IN THE DAY!

So for the next three days I’ll be watching the sessions at the Weaving History Conference and madly assembling the ornaments. I also cut out snowmen, and gingerbread men. Pictures to come…

There are NOT ENOUGH HOURS IN THE DAY! Stay tuned…

True Confessions…

My life is so full of really fun stuff, gardening is winding down, the visuals are changing daily. New stuff is blooming, (hello goldenrod) and other plants are dying back, going to seed, and looking wretched (goodbye milkweed).

I’m taking a natural dye intensive through Maiwa, in Canada (remotely of course) and watching each module, carefully taking lots of notes, and starting to scour some of the yarns and fabrics in the kit.

I’m taking cello lessons. Yep, something I always wanted to learn, it is my most favorite sounding instrument of all. First draw of the bow string and I was hooked. I practice furiously every day, hoping the pads of my fingertips will soon harden up! The photo from the teacher is for me to try to replicate proper posture…

And in all of that, honestly, I miss weaving. I love and have always loved the gentle process of a shuttle going back and forth, feet and hands in a rhythm that makes my heart sing. That and the cello… Often I listen to one while doing the other.

So here is the true confessions part. I have 17 table looms, all with interesting stuff on them, and I HATE weaving on a table loom. Really. Please don’t write letters telling me all the advantages of having a table loom, I know what they are, that’s why I still have 17 of them, down from around 3 dozen. There is nothing better for teaching structure, portability, etc.

Before Covid changed the world and certainly my life, I was able to cart around an entire weaving studio in my car, and bring the world of weaving to the masses. I gave 12 of my sturdy little 4-shaft Structos to my weaving friend Anne Choi, who has a sheep farm and was excited to get them, and set up her own mobile weaving studio, concentrating in underserved areas that don’t have access to the joy of handweaving. She sent me these couple of images of my beloved Structos at the Newark Museum, here in NJ, this past weekend, another group of new weavers is born. Here is the link to her website.

So, what about me… Back when I was doing this regularly, with my daughter in tow (she is now an emergency vet tech, and has little time for weaving), I started to build a group of 4-8 shaft Structos, with all different structures, envisioning a follow-up round robin, where people could try things like Summer/Winter, Huck, Doubleweave, Deflected Doubleweave, Honeycomb, Rosepath, etc. I put 4-6 yards of fine yarn, cotton or Tencel, on these little Structos and got each of them started and there they sat. This photo is from October 2023, it hasn’t changed…

One of them, actually a Leclerc 10″ wide 4-shaft sample loom, with spools on the back, had a Huck Sampler in linen, the spools had come with the loom, from my mother-in-law, and I thought it would be perfect to use up all that linen. What was I thinking…

I had no idea how much linen was on this group of spools, so I finished the yard and a half sampler, and there was still plenty to go. I picked one pattern and figured, how much could there be? So, I wove… And wove… And wove… This went on for the last year. I will be honest, it was painful… I couldn’t believe that the end was nowhere in sight.

So determined to clear this little guy if it killed me, I finally last weekend wove until I saw the end of the warp, which on a loom like this with spools, is the paper tape end that tucks into the flange of the metal spool.

And there it is. 7 1/2 freaking yards. Of 10″ wide huck in fine linen. I could have done this in probably a couple sittings on a floor loom. Instead it took me months. Sigh…

I had needed one of the small looms for the group that went to the college for my retrospective. So back in January I decided to actually cut off a Doubleweave sampler I started, and rethread, and beam onto a floor loom. Desperate to weave something, anything, I sat down this week, and pulled out Jennifer Moore’s Doubleweave book, and started in again. Oh the joy of using my hands and feet. I only have two more units left on this sampler, and I’m loving every minute of it. I have the more challenging ones left, quilting in a pattern and doubleweave pick-up, but with my feet working as part of the team, I’m looking forward to this.

That said, I looked at that wall of Structos and thought, well damn, I’ll just take them one at a time, and dump them onto my little 8-shaft Tools of the Trade loom, and carry on. I’m actually excited. The planning is done (though I have to convert from a lift-plan to a treadling sequence, I have software for that), and once I dump onto my floor loom I can weave like the wind.

I was chatting about this brilliant decision of mine with a weaving friend, and as I took a sip of my tea, she blurted out, “Friends don’t let friends weave on a rigid heddle loom…” (Sorry, if you aren’t a weaver you won’t understand this comment) I spit my tea across the table! Them’s fighting words in the weaving community. Truth be told, I feel the same way, and again, please don’t send letters telling me the grand virtues and benefits of a rigid heddle loom, they have their place, much like my beloved Structos, but I have a dozen and a half table looms, all set up that are not fun to weave on. My blog, my opinion…

So I continue with my dye studies, and while I baby sit the pots for scouring and mordanting, I work on the quilt. It is all together, and I’m now starting on the 380-piece trumpet vine that meanders all throughout the quilt. This is something I really don’t want to finish, I’m having too much fun…

And, I looked at the calendar and realized I have exactly one month to make stuff for my guild sale. I still have lots of scraps left from my production years, though thankfully the pile is getting smaller. The pieced jacket I finally finished used up a nice amount. It will be for sale at the Jockey Hollow Weavers Show and Sale in Mendham NJ starting November 1.

I sold all those adorable bunnies I had last year, (blog post that shows the finished bunnies, scroll down…) and took the last of the mohair fabrics and scraps I had, and cut out four more. Mulder was doing his best to help.

So my days are full, garden for an hour, watch a module in the dye class for an hour, work in the dye studio for an hour, weave for an hour, do correspondence for an hour, practice cello for an hour, and fit in housework, processing a bucket full of tomatoes, basil for pesto (my freezer is filling up). Yes, I’m ridiculously busy, but having a blast, now that I am truly honest with myself and admitted I hate working on a table loom…

Stay tuned…

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…

Nevertheless, They Persisted…

I’m learning how to say no, it is coming quite easily at this point in my life, but people don’t want to hear it… Just saying… They can be persistent, these people…

I’ll start with the biggest thing first. My retrospective at County College of Morris, probably one of the best experiences of my lifetime, came down yesterday. It was an amazing 6 month run, I’m so very very grateful for the college that sponsored this event, for the gallery director who was the most amazing professional I’ve ever worked with, and for all supporters that came from near and far, some flying in from California, St. Louis, Florida, and some driving in from upstate New York, Virginia, and all points in between. Even friends from High School made the couple hour trek from southern NJ. I got a lot of free lunches out of it! The overwhelming positive response made me feel like my life and my work (because they are intertwined) made a difference. If you missed the show, and want to watch the documentary we put together, click here.

But all good things come to an end, and yesterday, helped by a fellow guild member, we had the show completely disassembled, and loaded for the first run home. I held onto about 35 of the 41 dressforms I purchased for the show, various venues requested some for their own exhibit spaces. My guild, the Shakespeare Theatre of NJ, Peters Valley, and actually, the Handweaving Museum in Clayton, NY.

So one of the persistent themes throughout this exhibit, was the amount of people who encouraged me, or sometimes demanded of me that I take this show on the road. I couldn’t make them understand that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity, a beautiful swan song to an amazing career, but I am done. No more… No more exhibiting, no more teaching on the road, no more. Nevertheless they persisted…

As it turns out, one of the people who attended the exhibit, who drove a long way, had a connection to the Handweaving Museum, part of the Thousand Island Arts Center, up on the St. Lawrence River in NY. I know of the museum, haven’t visited myself, but they put on an amazing conference on weaving history, which has been remotely accessed the last couple of years. I’ve already signed up for this October.

One thing led to another, and emails started flying back and forth, and there is a very positive possibility, that the museum will take part or all of my collection of work. It is still in the early stages, and they are building a new facility to house their ever growing collection, but knowing that my work can live on after me, in a way that people can handle the pieces, research the pieces, and learn from them, makes me really really happy. So fingers crossed, I’m hoping within a couple of years, this large collection of handwoven garments and wall pieces will find a permanent home. Plus they want 10 dressforms…

Meanwhile, three carloads of stuff is now in my living room. Or was until late last night.

I managed to haul all of the dressforms, and all of the assorted containers and bags up to the middle guest room, and even one of the very very large suitcases, which I used for years teaching, dragging 170 pounds of luggage around the country. I never thought I’d need these suitcases again, but I dug them out of the attic Thursday night. I emptied one of them this morning. There are still five in the living room. One a day?

Meanwhile, the largest one, finally said enough. As I wheeled it from the car up the steps, the wheels broke apart, and left a trail. It has been an old faithful friend, and now it can truly retire…

I’ve talked ad nauseum about my gardens, which I had planted this spring. I’m completely unfamiliar with all the native perennials, since my property largely consisted of Japanese Barberry and Burning Bush. So it is with joy and discovery that I watch things fill in each day, create a grouping and bloom. The diversity of bugs and pollinators has been remarkable. I even think I caught sight of a monarch butterfly at one point. (There is a lot of milkweed on the property). I got a decent closeup of a swallowtail on the Joe Pye Weed. I have a lot of Joe Pye…

The gardens are ever changing, and the restructuring of the footprint, to accommodate intense rainfall that comes pouring off the mountain, worked so amazingly well, that the last two storms which dumped a lot of water, were uneventful as far as the plantings go. The brown spots in the lawn are the dogs’ potty area. They run down the steps and just squat… Because they are dogs… But the lawn is mostly clover and Creeping Charlie, which is fine with me…

And my ponds are full of fish, the one by the deck has a bunch of small koi in it, and they are quite hilarious to watch, full of personality.

The pond by the fence, which we affectionately call “Kevin’s Pond” has some gorgeous bright orange gold fish. They look forward to the handful of food I toss in every morning.

And I have a water feature which I put in after my husband died, it sits on what use to be his favorite spot in the yard. There is always some bird or insect taking advantage of the bubbling flow.

And with all of that, I continue to sign up for classes in all the things I want to learn how to do better. My sister invited me to a class her friend was giving on Flower Pounding. That is pounding flowers onto a treated cloth. I took a workshop in this last fall I believe it was, and though it was fun and the results were beautiful, everything washed out, and left me with a dull dirty looking dishtowel. The second class I took, yielded nothing. No one in the class got a single transfer of image.

This teacher did her homework, and she not only pretreated both the cellulose pounding cloth and the base with aluminum acetate, and I understand a calcium carbonate dip, which I have to investigate further, all of her students created amazing images with her array of flowers from her garden.

I will say I’m afraid to wash my beautiful linen/rayon table runner. But I did wash the pounding cloth, figuring I’d use it again for the same purpose, and the colors are still bright and strong, and I’m using it for a dishtowel in my studio.

And I’ve already talked about my struggles with eco printing. I want to learn how to do this, and why things work, and the chemistry behind it, and yes, I’ve taken multiple classes in this technique but have never been happy with the results. Much of eco printing now involves natural dyes, which is a whole ‘nother field of study, and the use of iron and color blankets. (I’ve signed up for a 10 week natural dye class at Maiwa in Canada, which starts in September, obviously remote) The last class I took specifically in eco printing, again, left me with more questions than answers, and a lot of mediocre to poor results.

I signed up to take another eco printing class with Kathy Hays, a Florida artist, whom I’ve studied with before years ago, and was happy enough with the results to keep trying. She has developed a number of different classes now, available through Gumroad, and I signed up for the one called Art Scarves. It covers a lot of the natural dyeing aspect and goes into using color blankets.

She starts you with just using iron blankets and learning how to pre or post mordant. I tried some of the leaves on my property, ones that aren’t on anybody’s list of known printers, because what the heck. She also encourages you to just make samples… Like in weaving. Making samples… Great way to learn. And it doesn’t have to be anything… Even though my friends are quite persistent that they would make lovely scarves and I could sell them… No, just no. I want to learn to do this, not make more stuff to sell. Sigh…

My favorite thing to dye with at the moment is my precious ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius), a lovely native bush, that was actually growing on my property, who knew, the only native plant I had, covered by all sorts of undesirable things.

I’m learning how to make color blankets, in essence an unmordanted length of cotton which soaks up a concentrated dye, and then releases it onto the base fabric during steaming. I won’t say more than that, take the class if you want to learn… I’m really happy with the results I’m starting to get. The dye blankets used are from the left, osage orange with and without an iron sulfate pre dip, logwood, and lac (an insect), all on various types of silk from my stash.

Again, the ninebark makes really beautiful prints.

And of course, I’m moving right along on the appliquéd cat quilt. This is block 9, the center block. Once I finish the rest of this block, I can start putting all nine blocks together and then finish the blocks I couldn’t finish because paws and tails overlapped the neighboring blocks. Then a 380 piece crossvine (another native) is added and meanders through the entire quilt. This has been an immensely satisfying diversion this year, as I struggle to keep enormously busy so I don’t dwell on my son’s deployment to the middle east.

When people I haven’t seen in a while ask me how I’m doing, I can honestly say, with a huge smile, that I’m great. I feel good (largely due to the diet I’m on, Dr. Weil’s anti inflammatory diet, (as assigned by my cardiologist) and I am super busy and enjoying the adventure. Plus, what’s not to love just sitting and watching the birds and insects flit around all over my yard. I head out to Peters Valley on Friday (with a load of dressforms in the car) to take another class, this one a three-day weaving class called Textural Abstraction & Woven Imagery, which changed a bit from what I signed up for, as the teacher cancelled at the last minute, but someone else is stepping in and I’m sure I’ll take away something from it…

I play bass recorder with Montclair Early Music at a medieval festival on Sunday, at the Montclair Art Museum, so that should be a fun diversion for the day. Most of the music is pretty straightforward, easily sight-readable, Henry the VIII sort of fare, (he was a great composer of recorder music) but the finale piece is quite challenging. It is called Dragonborn, and is from a video game and it is quite an amazing composition.

Fall is approaching. Cooler weather (I hope) and new happenings in the garden, and more classes to take. I’m quite happy not teaching, not making stuff for sale, and just playing. I can be just as persistent. I earned it…