Category: Blog Entries

Milestones

It has been a beautiful busy couple of weeks. Spring is here and it is glorious looking at how my newly planted gardens are coming to life, lots of plants to sketch, identify, celebrate, rip out when appropriate, and appreciate.

The 29th of April would have been my late husband’s and my 47th wedding anniversary. My glorious Kwanzan Cherry (yes I know it is not native) did not let me down. It bloomed once again for our anniversary. The tree means a lot to me, because my husband and I planted it when we first bought the house, in 1982, in honor of our wedding anniversary. All of our wedding pictures were taken in front of a Kwanzan Cherry outside of the church where we were married.

I just returned this afternoon from a bittersweet beautiful weekend visit with my mom, who turned 94 on Friday. I say it was bittersweet, because I adore the woman, she has been a constant in my life, for my entire life, kind, supportive, knowledgeable, and the absolutely best mother anyone could have. Each time I see her, or talk to her, I realize that at 94, she is on borrowed time, and every hour is a gift. My middle sister and her husband came on Saturday and we all went out to lunch at a local restaurant.

I brought my cello and played Happy Birthday for her, I know she will never get to hear me play in concert, so I brought the music to her. I’m not very good yet, but determined. And she was so kind and pleased that I brought the cello, and as she napped in the afternoon, I played each day for more than an hour and a half. She said they were the best, most soothing naps she’s ever had.

The trip to just outside Baltimore, from Northern NJ is long and boring, down most of the length of the NJ turnpike. I woke up Friday morning early, prepared to pack, have breakfast and leave for mom’s, and one of the emails that came into my box, was from a woman from Montana, Janet Szabo, who has a sewing podcast called The Straight Stitch. She wanted to know if I would like to be on the podcast, and of course I said yes. We are scheduled to chat in June. So I listened to a number of episodes (there are something like 77 so far) of the podcast, and the trip down to Baltimore and back just flew by. I thoroughly enjoyed the podcast, at least the dozen episodes I listened to, and look forward to my conversation with Janet. Check it out.

I spent all day Thursday volunteering at the Shakespeare Theatre of NJ, working on restoring the velvet smoking jacket for the lead character in Oscar Wilde’s, The Importance of Being Ernest. I saw this play there a number of years ago and it is hilarious. I get to work on the coolest things when I volunteer there. Last Saturday night was their gala fund raiser, I look forward to it every year. Great food and entertainment and there is always an interesting silent auction. This year I bid on and won a gorgeous pastel/charcoal painting by Edith Moore Hopkins. I had to have this painting because it represents how I feel about the world every time I look at the news. This is my new emoji as I respond to whatever comes across my internet feed.

I continue to sketch most mornings, with the cat patiently watching me. Sometimes he watches from inside the wall unit.

The gardens, like I said above, are glorious. We are getting a good amount of rain, and everything is just glowing. All sorts of critters have taken up residence, including another raccoon, this one unfortunately appeared to have babies, which we didn’t know about until after I had her professionally removed, and we couldn’t save them. I hope the raccoon saga is over for this year, and I’m working hard to shore up the places where raccoons might find residency appealing.

And I’m weaving whenever I can. I finished the two scarves on the leftover warp from Natalie Drummond’s Deflected Double Weave class. They washed up beautifully, and that loom is once more clear.

And I’m almost finished the third of five? scarves on the “cat” warp. These are mixed yarns, all hand-dyed, cellulosic and some silk. Tencel weft. The mixed structure draft is original.

I’ll leave you with my morning view out my music room window, the azaleas, (yes I know they aren’t native) are in full bloom. The Packera has beautiful little yellow daisy like blooms, and is everywhere. That one is native.

And, my first Bearded Iris just opened up.

Stay tuned…

Personal Triumphs

It is a challenging world we are living in right now. It is hard to know what to make of things, what to focus on, where I can do the greatest good. Living in the moment, taking each thing as it comes, putting out small fires, and taking pride in the smallest of endeavors keeps me moving in a forward direction.

Earlier in the week, I had my landscape designer come back with her helper, to remove more Burning Bush (Winged euonymus) from the property. A couple of them were probably 15 feet tall, been in since the 1980’s. She doesn’t use heavy equipment, just a shovel, loping shears, a hand saw, and a pick ax. They are a remarkable team.

She removed all the branches from the four bushes, and her helper set out removing the stumps. To watch someone with that kind of physical strength and determination was really powerful. I wish a bit of that for all of us. When Saul finally got the root system to break free, the look on his face was indescribable. I asked him if he was proud of what he had done, and he responded with such joy, how he lives for this kind of personal triumph. Of course then he proceeded to spend the next hour with a pick ax and a hand saw, taking apart the root ball so they could lift it in parts and get it in the back of the truck with all the branches and the other root balls. I wanted to genuflect at the greatness of perseverance.

I thought about my own life and what things, no matter how small, gave me a sense of personal triumph. No one may even know, no one may even appreciate some of the things that I do on a daily basis that give me real satisfaction. But nevertheless, I managed to do something I didn’t think I could do, or was really challenging, and I managed to pull it off, and those are the things that make us smile and pat ourselves on our own backs and say, well done.

Even when we aren’t even sure what we did to make something happen, against all odds there are five adult frogs living in my ponds. I haven’t had frogs in my ponds in years, frogs are one of the things struggling to survive in these changing environments. But there, sunning itself, was a gorgeous frog, and when my pond guy came and opened up the ponds, cleaned them out and hooked up the filters, he found five. I’m not sure how they found me, but they are most welcome.

I’ve had a house full the last couple of weeks. Natalie Drummond was here last weekend for a workshop with my guild. I adore Natalie, I’ve known her since she took one of my retreats in the Outer Banks, NC back in 2018. I’ve followed her career. She has made Deflected Double Weave her thing, (that’s a structure in handweaving), and we all arrived at the 2 1/2 day workshop with looms warped and ready to go. I blogged about setting up the loom last month, knowing this past couple of weeks would be challenging.

Natalie encourages the use of hand painted warps, I chose to use a variegated yarn wound circular to create an ombré effect. I was fine with it. One of the things she teaches is how to substitute a warp, or group of warps if you want to change things up. My warp didn’t really lend itself to that, I liked the value contrast in what I had, but I followed along, always willing to learn something new. We used a lot of cell phone camera previews, checking value by using a grey scale mode.

There were two of us who picked one of the eight shaft pattern samplers, and I started in on the sampler the morning of the second day. I happily sat and did my thing, making sure Natalie was fed (since I was the hostess) and by the end of the day, I had woven all three samples and an additional one, the last two were yarns that would shrink differentially.

We were then supposed to cut them off and wash them that night, and bring them back to class the next day to evaluate.

What surprised me was how much I loved the subtleness and patterning of the second sample from the bottom. I wanted to weave a couple of scarves out of that.

Once I was home, I had gardening and yard stuff to attend to, but alas, it was pouring rain all day, and so I decided to pull the remaining four yards or so from the table loom, because we have already discussed how much I don’t like working on a table loom, and put the whole thing on one of my floor looms.

Which I did. By the end of that rainy Monday, I was weaving away on my first scarf. The yarn, in case anyone is interested, is vintage Contessa, rayon and silk, from Silk City Fibers. No longer available (I’m still in mourning) I hoard whatever I can find at weaver’s estate sales. I have a lot of it I’ve dyed. I love the matte finish of this particular rayon with a silk fleck. Deflected Double Weave will deflect and collapse once it is washed, so the patterning will look quite different. And when I transferred the warp to the floor loom, I brought back in the original warps I had substituted out. I’m very proud of myself…

Meanwhile, after all this rain, my lawn was looking seriously like it needed mowing. Last Wednesday, after having decided not to renew the contract for my lawn service, I dug out the electric mower, made sure the batteries were charged, so I could mow. I couldn’t even find the batteries in the trashed wood shop from the racoon debacle. They had fallen under the workbench.

I got everything charged and set out to mow, and alas, I couldn’t get the poor mower started. I loved that little electric mower my husband bought me before he died. It worked last year, when against all odds, before my lawn guys came, I charged it up and was out mowing with a broken foot in a boot. Talk about proud of myself.

But this year. Nothing… So I spent some time looking at options on the internet, and ordered basically the same mower from Amazon, which arrived on my doorstep the next day.

The house guests I have this week, and old college friend and her husband in from CA for a family event, have been wonderful to visit with, and spend the evenings fixing puzzles, restringing my guitar, and going out to dinner. Her husband agreed to help me assemble the lawn mower, which I will admit, I would have probably had trouble doing on my own. I charged up the battery, and of course it rained. Three quarters of an inch, all day yesterday.

So today, after reading the directions for starting the new mower, I went to the old mower, which had been sitting out in the rain, and I tried it one more time before tossing it out at the curb for bulk pick up tomorrow, and to my complete shock, it started right up. Of course… So I mowed the back lawn. It performed admirably. I wasn’t going to return the new one, I’d already taken it out of the packaging and set it up, and so I mowed the front with that one. It is a little heavier and blows the grass out the side, so I have to learn the best way to use that feature. I don’t bag my grass.

Anyway, my lawn is mowed, and I’m pretty damn proud of myself.

Stay tuned…

Highs and Lows…

I grew up in southern NJ, not far from a town called Clementon. They had an amusement park there, and a few times a year, my dad would take the three of us to the Clementon amusement park for the day. ( I checked, it is actually still in existence). I would patiently wait, because I couldn’t go on any rides that spun me around, some structural inner ear issue, I’d immediately start hurling. Motion sickness haunted me as a child. Now there are drugs for that, but mostly I just sat and watched my sisters spinning around in tea cups, the Tilt-a-whirl, and all the other magical rides that make up an amusement park. The merry-go-round was iffy. If I sat on a non-moving horse, and stared straight ahead, I might make it off the ride with my lunch intact. The only real rides that were safe were the Ferris wheel, which only went in one direction, but NO ONE could swing the seat, and of course, my beloved old wooden roller coaster. I loved the roller coaster. That slow climb to the top, barely making it over the crest, and then straight down, breathlessly screaming all the way!

That’s sort of like my last couple weeks.

The day after my last post, the reconstruction guys came and my beautiful music room with the view was complete. I was so very happy, and grateful that something really wonderful came out of a miserable situation. I still have to stain the wood around the new window…

The next day, yeah, not so much. My dryer broke, and when the service man came, he said, Yep, can’t get the parts, you’ll need a new dryer.”

This is something I’ve been dreading for years. I’m a textile artist. The Washer and Dryer are an important part of my design team. I need total control over the function of both. I don’t want appliances smarter than I am, I need to control the water level, I need to be able to open the lid periodically to check on how the fabrics are doing. Wet finishing handwoven fabric is critical.

I’ve heard horror stories from other weavers who have had to replace their washers. In addition to wanting a simple top loading washer, and even though it was the dryer that broke, the washer, actually the pair, were put in when we built the addition, in an alcove off the second floor bedroom, in 1989. So yeah, both were hanging on by a thread. I knew this day was coming, but really, did it have to be the day after the reconstruction was finished? (Ok, fair point, it could have been during the reconstruction…) Sigh…

Further complicating things, according to the repair guy, was that the alcove that housed the pair, was very shallow by today’s standards. He wasn’t hopeful I’d find a dryer that would fit the space. At this point, I’m bordering on having a heart attack…

I went to my local appliance chain, and looked at options. There were washer/dryer sets, like Speed Queen, that would do what I wanted, and not do what I didn’t want, but they didn’t fit the space. They sent a surveyor out the following week to check the space and see if there were any options.

Turns out, my original units were GE Profile. And who knew that GE still made roughly the same pair, same features, and roughly the same size. I ordered, and yesterday, an incredible pair of service technicians hauled my old set away, down two flights of stairs, and had the new set installed, in about 25 minutes. I cannot tell you what a huge relief this is, something I dreaded for years. I’ve done a couple loads and so far so good.

Last weekend, I drove a couple hours up to Newtown CT, where I had agreed to judge The Handweavers Guild of CT biennial fiber show. Denise Kovnat, the other judge and I arrived Saturday evening, and our lovely hostess Jennifer, whom I had never met before, greeted us, showed us around, got us settled, let us preview some of the work, and then we just sat and chatted. Can I tell you what a joy it was to be back with my tribe? Denise, whom I knew of, and had some online interactions with, but didn’t really know well in person, was just a delight, full of stories, adventures, humor and grace. My hostess was the same. We were like old college friends who hadn’t seen each other in 40 years. I needed this weekend away. (And Denise told me that there is a site that ranks blogs, and I’m number 7 in the country for handweaving blogs according to Feedly.com. Who knew!)

Judging is always tough, a huge responsibility, and I needed to give critical feedback on more than 60 pieces. I had a couple of scribes assigned to me, they were hard workers, very accurate, and helped me move the process along. I saw photos today of the exhibit, which was just a beautiful installation, and in one corner, there was a grouping of a couple of my pieces and some of Denise’s work.

I didn’t provide a link to the Handweavers of CT Guild, because apparently their site has some malware my software apps picked up. I’ve let them know. If you can get to the show, it will be up for a month, it is a lovely array of what handweavers do, this is why we do it.

Meanwhile, yesterday was my late husband’s birthday, he would have been 74. There are so many times I wish I could just sit and talk with him, get his opinion of this crazy world we are living in, he was so grounded and informed and thoughtful. In honor of his birthday, every year, I go out and buy pansies, and plant them. First planting of the spring. Such happy little faces on such colorful plants.

And this afternoon, I went into the vegetable garden, and planted a couple flats of spring greens, the lettuces, spinach, arugula, etc. along with collards, kale and chard. And of course peas and parsley. The universe is sending rain tonight, or maybe it is my late husband, since it is still too early to turn on the hoses outside.

And of course, because my life is about putting out fires at this point, we have a raccoon that has moved in, completely trashed the wood shop, and we are doing battle with it trying to catch it and remove it from the property. My vet tech daughter has some experience with this, so she is in charge. We put chicken wire on the underside of the eaves of the shed to prevent reentry, but there is a huge task ahead trying to clean up what looks like a drunken frat party in my woodshop. Every box of nails and screws has been shredded, contents dumped on the floor. Could have been worse, it could have been my yarn.

Each morning I sit by my window, eat my breakfast, and look at the yard, and see the little bit of green that increases every day. I’ve always wanted to do a daily sketchbook journal of sorts, I envy those who, have a committed practice. And though I can draw, I have a degree in fine arts, I don’t find it appealing. I don’t for me see the purpose. Even though I keep buying art supplies, sketchbooks, and take classes.

I participated in something last fall called the Sketchbook Revival. I even paid so I could continue to access the content. There was one session that really struck me as something I could do regularly. Melinda Nakagawa, the session leader uses a fountain pen, which was right up my alley, since I spent 8 years in parochial school writing with a fountain pen, and have actually very fond memories, and she would sketch a plant, a bird, add simple water colors, and write all over the page, thoughts, definitions, plant names, whatever was important that day.

So I sit every morning, with my breakfast, and my sketchbook, and my cat, and my tea, and I sketch something in the yard, something just poking its head up, and I research the common name, the Latin name, the traits, thoughts, and I’m starting to fill my sketchbook…

Oh, and yes, I’m still a weaver! I managed to clear another loom, and I’m keeping this one, a little Rep mat for my dining table.

When I used to travel, I’d always pray that my trips were uneventful. Now I just hope I can get through the days uneventfully. I would like to get off the roller coaster and just walk for a while. It has been going just a little too fast for my taste.

Stay tuned…

On Making Lemonade…

At least I can reasonably state that the last two weeks have been if nothing else, entertaining…

I got a notice that my custom Pella Window was ready to install and they made an appointment for 10 days ago. Pella installers came, and did a fantastic job replacing the old, short double-hungs, and now I have a beautiful window facing east, to catch the rising sun, and look over my fantastic gardens, as they carefully begin to come to life after the long winter. Sounds almost magical doesn’t it?

I stood looking out of my beautiful window and think, if I hadn’t had the flood, if the day after Christmas they hadn’t completely gutted my den, where it rained broken pipe water from the room above, through the ceiling fan, if I hadn’t experienced any of that, I wouldn’t have this incredible view, and I wouldn’t have met all the fantastic workers who were kind, efficient, knowledgeable, and though we could rarely communicate with English, we managed to get the important concepts across. I genuflect in gratitude.

The restoration crew came in with a vengeance, the day after the window was installed. Insulation, drywall, spackle, more spackle, sanding the spackle, they were like a crew of bees busy in the hive. The painters started two days later.

All of this required me to be around. The whole time. Partly to answer questions, and partly to make sure that the animals didn’t interfere with any of the messy jobs they were doing. I stayed most of the time in my weaving studio, where I could let the dogs in and out and not disturb the workers. Which meant I got a lot of work done.

Though, I did, on the one day between drywall people and painters, help with a loom rescue. A weaver in the area, well over 100 years old, had passed, and her relatives wanted to donate what weaving supplies there were, to my local guild. In addition, there were two looms, and all of us, do what we can to rescue looms, as the house will be bulldozed within a couple weeks, including the contents. One loom, in the basement, an old Swedish style barn loom, my friend Susan has been sending around notices to area fiber people/guilds in hope that someone has room to rescue a large loom. But Susan and I drove over, with tools in hand, to rescue a 25″ Macomber, left on a porch, covered in mouse poop, hence the mask and gloves, in sad condition, but with some TLC, and a lot of elbow grease, my friend will bring it back to life. There is always good loom karma when you go to the effort to rescue a loom.

This all seems fantastical within the last 10 days, but I’m rather impressed at my ability to make good use of time.

First up, I’m taking a workshop through my guild with Natalie Drummond in Deflected Double Weave, the first week in April. Which meant I needed an empty table loom with 8 shafts. Which I didn’t have… Around 40 looms, and the one I needed wasn’t empty.

I’ve gotten real good at moving warps from one loom to another. The loom I wanted had the last remaining yard of a Rep class from last April, with Rosalie Neilson. I really didn’t want to waste it. So I spent an afternoon moving it to my floor loom.

Problem was, within the reems of documentation, I couldn’t remember exactly how to do this structure. I know it is alternating thick and thin wefts, but the myriad of designs in her handouts, all worked off Profile Treadlings, which I did easily in the class on a table loom, but couldn’t for the life of me remember how to interpret them. I spent a lot of time just sitting and staring and trying to work out what was there, right in front of me. At some point, working in my office (with the animals in tow) on my desktop computer with my weaving software, I finally figured out how to interpret the profile treadlings and create a treadling sequence I could follow. Should have taken better detailed notes…

So I will have this lovely mat, and this loom will be cleared within the week.

That left prep for the Natalie Drummond workshop. She requires a complex warp, hand painted with additional solids in varying values. Honestly, we only got the instructions just about the time I had to lock myself away with the animals, not her fault, and with only a month till the workshop, all the construction, gardening chores starting soon, (where I live it is time to start planting the lettuces, spinach, etc.) and the herculean task it will take to clean spackle sanding dust from every corner of the house, if I didn’t get the warp on now, it wouldn’t get done. Complicating things is I agreed to house Natalie, because she is a good friend.

I didn’t have time to paint a warp, and I didn’t have exactly the yarn she suggested, but I have a lot of yarn. And I’m determined to use what I have. So I pulled some old vintage Contessa, a long discontinued yarn from Silk City Fibers, mostly rayon with a silk fleck, which I have lots of, especially hand dyed. It comes in at the same 2100 yds/lb as the 5/2 Tencel she suggested. Along with the solids, I have a few variegated cones, and though she specifically said no variegated yarns, I understood why, because she wanted the colors to line up, like it was hand painted. No problem as I know how to do this, and Contessa variegated was mostly engineered to repeat itself. I grabbed my music stand, wiped off the dust, and propped my little warping board onto it, and wound a circular warp, lining up the colors as I went.

I added the solid colors, a light, a dark, and a bright, and then went to the loom and started sleying.

And threading.

And now I have another warped loom, ready to go…

Meanwhile…

I decided, while I was trapped in my studio, with the animals, to finish up the 10 yards of 8/2 cotton I tied into my fall run of towels. I ran out of the light grey weft about a yard from the end, and grabbed a small cone of dark blue, which is gorgeous, but I didn’t have enough of the dark blue to weave the whole 10-yard run, and wanted to use up some of the various cones of light colors as weft.

Washed and dried.

Since I will be scrubbing everything I own in the coming weeks, I decided that the now cleared loom needed a good dusting and wipe down with Howard’s Feed and Wax. The loom is patiently waiting for my next adventure…

That night, making dinner, this happened. The blender bowl just slipped out of my hand, taking out the lid for my beloved mini Oster food processor…

By the time dinner finished cooking and I’d cleaned up all the glass, I had gone on Amazon and ordered replacements, which were there the next morning on my doorstep. The new mini food processor, my favorite tool in my kitchen is even better than the old one.

Meanwhile, I moved to another loom, that had 5 yards of hand-dyed warp in a four-shaft combination draft, the same draft actually, as the towels. I had just started the fabric last year, so the loom could sit in a corner of my retrospective at County College of Morris, to give viewers an idea of cloth on the loom. The weft was a medium grey alpaca/silk from Webs.

So I dove in, playing around with different shuttles to get the maximum speed, and resorted to my old favorite, my AVL end-feed, the smaller one. I flew through that yardage, periodically checking on the workers and tending to the animals who were at this point really confused… But mom, there might be someone in there who will pet me, or even better, feed me…

That fabric is off the loom, washed, dried and rolled onto a tube.

And I dusted and wiped down this loom as well, with my friend Howard’s Feed and Wax.

I spent all day yesterday scrubbing everything in the book case in the den, and the moldings, which are awaiting installation tomorrow. I scrubbed the tile floor. I set up the little bistro set I ordered from Wayfair, so I could sit at the table and have my breakfast and watch the sun come up. My little bit of heaven, with a lot of elbow grease.

The cat of course, my constant companion, seems to like our new set up. He can watch out the window while patiently waiting to lick my bowl after I have my morning yogurt and granola.

So tomorrow, all the reconstruction should be finished, window trim installed, ceiling fan, and my cleaned wool rug that has been in storage since the end of December. If I can get my daughter to wake up on her day off, I’ll see if she can help me move the piano in there. The cello is already moved, and I have all my recorders to bring in as well. There is music in many corners of the house which will all be moved into the bookcase. (Once I dust them…) I will have my music room with a view… the best lemonade I could have ever imagined…

Spring is coming, stay tuned…

A deep rabbit hole…

I just love when I get so into a project I don’t come up for air. It helps to block out everything that is happening around me, and bring a sense of calm and determination to my life. There is always a huge mourning period when I reach the goal and finish the project. Until the next bus comes along…

Spring is coming. I can feel it. I just opened the sliders onto my balcony to let the dog in, and had this glorious warm sun on my face and I just stood there thinking that no matter what happens, the seasons keep moving forward and the sun eventually will shine.

Anyway, back to the rabbit hole…

When I ended my previous post, I had finished a puzzle and became obsessed with the colors, scanned a piece of the poster, ordered three more puzzles on Amazon from the same company, and started winding cakes of yarn, scouring through my shelves and bins for what I thought would work in the warp sequence. This is the original puzzle from a company called Pickforu.

I cut a 2″ strip of foam core, and divided up the scan vertically, since my warp would be a little wider than the paper I printed the scan on.

This was just too much fun… It was hard to attend to all the things on my to do list and my calendar commitments, because all I wanted to do was the next wrap.

I felt like I was playing in my sandbox when I was a little kid, just color and fun everywhere.

I then went to the computer and in my drafting software (Fiberworks in case you want to know) I chose general colors that represented the main color areas, and assigned structures to give some surface dimension. This warp would be combinations of plain weave and twill, with two additional shafts assigned to the supplemental warp ribbons that would float above and below.

Then it was time to wind. I was able to use a T-pin and mark where I was, an advantage of using foam core to support the warp wrap. And I followed the draft, to make sure I hadn’t made any mistakes in count, and yes there were a few, and I was able to correct them as I went.

I had such fun winding this twelve-yard warp, which I did in four sections.

I warp front to back, and one of the greatest advantages of doing that, with a warp like this, is that there is a constant check for errors.

So I tied the four 12-yard warp chains on the breast beam and sleyed the reed.

Apparently I didn’t grab a photo of that, but within a short period of time, all the warp ends were sleyed, additional ends were added where I found additional errors, or changed my mind about something, and soon I was threading, which goes super fast.

I use a Harrisville tensioner between the castle and the back beam, which works extremely well for me, and in no time at all, I had beamed 12 yards.

People have asked me what this will be. I had planned 5 scarves, but I change my mind all the time. Anything that is leftover will be woven, washed, and probably cut up for a tote bag or zip bags or greeting cards for the guild sale next November. Nothing ever gets wasted…

So of course, once I’m beamed, I have to tie it all on the front…

And then I have to start weaving, no matter what is calling me, because that first inch is always the best. This is all a cellulose warp, that is cottons and rayons and combinations, along with some silk yarns, about 90% hand dyed with fiber reactive dyes. The weft is 8/2 Tencel from Webs. There is a similar draft available as a download on my website.

Once I did the hem stitching at the front end, and wove about 10″, I put the original scan up against the warp and was really really happy with the exercise of referencing a photo for inspiration, or in my case, a puzzle. I feel like my month of dyeing in January paid off…

Meanwhile, yesterday, my guild sponsored a day of just gathering, free to members, whoever wanted to get together and participate in some interesting tutorial, something we use to do before Covid, called the February Freebee. This year we brought it back, and brought in Judith Symonds who teaches visible mending, which is a hot new textile technique du jour, repairing clothing that needs it, lovingly and creatively. And very visibly…

I brought in a pair of my favorite jeans, which got a huge hole across the knee, and yes, there are people who buy distressed jeans like this on purpose, but I just can’t… I stitched up the split across the knee with machine darning, so it didn’t get any worse, and in winter I don’t want my poor knee exposed to the elements, and then ordered an additional couple of pairs to replace them from Amazon. So wanting to repair beloved and well worn jeans in a creative way appealed to me. I used some engineered striped sock yarn and a patch of plaid cotton provided by the teacher, placed on the bias because the knee has to give and the denim fabric has lots of give, and started stitching.

Just gathering with friends on a random Saturday in February, talking about everything except the current world order was just what I needed. One of the women at my table had just joined the guild, coming over from my connections to the Native Plant Society. We talked a lot about plants and spring cleanup, since I’m new at all of that. Another woman at my table, a fairly new weaver instantly bonded with plant lady, and it was just lovely to watch new friendships form and old ones to be cemented. We need that so much, that sense of belonging and community.

Friday I drove to my friend’s house, and we hopped on a train, and made the trek into Manhattan, and then to the upper west side, had dinner, and then on to a small concert venue in a mansion/museum called the Nicholas Roerich Museum. A young Russian pianist Arseniy Gusev and Canadian/American violinist, Shannon Lee, are collaborating with music exploring the destruction of the stained glass in Winchester Cathedral in 1642 from Oliver Cromwell’s soldiers. Townsfolk picked up the shards of the broken windows and created something new from those fragments. The selection of works for the concert from their collaborative album, Witra? – Album by Shannon Lee & Arseniy Gusev made the connection to what’s happening in the modern world, with the invasion of and destruction of Ukraine. I have never seen such gifted musicians in my life. The most fascinating concert I’ve ever attended. And the concept, even as far back as 1642, of ordinary people coming together to rebuild something that was destroyed by war, and creating something new from the ashes, is something I need to hear every day. It is through community, friends and connections to others that we will keep moving forward.

So here are my patched jeans, it was such a fun day. And spring is coming…

Stay tuned…