Category: Blog Entries

No rest for the weary…

First, let me say that at this point in my life, everything I agree to, everything I participate in, and how much I participate, is completely my choice. I’ve spent my life overbooking myself, because it is what I do, and my twilight “retirement years” are no exception. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m absolutely not the kind of person who sits on the couch watching TV, I got rid of the TV after the flood.

And in my twilight years, especially now that I’m widowed, it is super important to be with a community, or multiple communities, as is the case. I will always have my textile community, my friends, my guild mates, my former students, I love them all and try to gather with them as often as I can. Now there is the early music community, and my beginner cello opportunities, plus the native plant people who are even more generous than the handweaving community, if that’s possible.

And of course there are lots of volunteer opportunities, like at the Shakespeare Theatre of NJ, where I get to hang with the most amazing and talented people. Who knew with 60 years of sewing experience behind me, I could still learn so much.

So yes, my life is crazy busy, and right now way overbooked, but I have a reason to get out of bed each morning and deal with the most critical things, and learn, and celebrate, and create, and I’d say, there is nothing I’d change about my life.

Where to begin…

When I posted last month, I was just beginning to figure out what I wanted to make for my guild sale. My plan, which worked spectacularly well, was to gather all the leftover fabrics, swatches, samples, etc, from the last couple of years, and create stacks of kits so I would know what I had for inventory. The inventory sheets were due ahead of the sale, so the committee could generate bar coded tags. Then I could sew like the wind…

So I cut out tote bags… with just a dusting of scrap left…

And I took a pile of sushi containers and made tons of ornaments…

And I cut out something like 18 zippered project bags, and five ginger jars.

I took advantage of the timing of the Weaving History Conference, sponsored by the Thousand Island Arts Center in Clayton, NY. It was held the end of October, and it was three days of Zoom lectures, which were fantastic. I highly recommend it. I was so very impressed at the passion of the speakers, to devote their lives to the research on some pretty obscure topics, much to the delight of the audience who listened to them. This is the same art center that houses the handweaving museum, which is in the process of building a larger space to house/exhibit their vast textile archives and holdings. They are the ones that if all goes well, sometime in 2026, they will take much of my work from my retrospective exhibit last year at County College of Morris. Anyway, I sat for three days watching Zoom sessions and hand stitching my little heart out… By the end of the conference, all the handwork was done.

I had bunches of ornaments… (many of which sold at the guild sale, the remaining few are now at the Shakespeare Theatre of NJ lobby shop at the Kirby Theatre)

I had 5 ginger jars, all of which sold within the first hour of the guild sale, to the same person. She would have bought more if I’d had them…

I made three stuffed bears, in addition to the two remaining rabbits I had from last year. I sold one of the rabbits and the bears and remaining rabbit are at the Shakespeare Theatre shop. The bears are so freaking cute…

I made a pile of new tote bags, one is missing from the photo as it sold within hours of my making it, to one of my musician friends. I think there are only two left, they are at the Shakespeare Theatre.

I added more greeting cards, many of which sold…

I put two of my woven scarves in the sale, and two of the scarves I wove on the remaining deflected double weave warp from the Natalie Drummond class my guild sponsored in the spring, along with four botanically printed scarves, and all of the scarves sold.

And I created, like I said, something like 18 zippered project bags, in addition to what was left from last year, many of them from Botanically printed silk scraps. This was one of my favorites, with a base of kimono silk from my trip to Japan a couple years ago.

I think there were only about five left when I packed up Sunday night of the sale, they are at the theatre lobby shop.

As you can probably surmise, I did really really well at the sale. It helped that I was there, working the floor the entire three days, and it helped that my friends from the plant communities and the music communities, and my weaving friends from afar all came to buy my work. It is fun to go to a musical gig and see one of my totes carrying someone’s music.

Just before Halloween, I volunteered to work the Shakespeare Theatre costume and prop sale, an annual fund raising event for them. Of course one can’t help but look at what’s on the rack, and I came home with this amazing vest, which was custom made for one of the actors in Romeo and Juliet, but came out the wrong size. It was tiny. I could technically fit in it, but I needed more arm movement for playing the cello, so I thought, “What would we have done in the costume shop?” I ended up creating extensions in black microsuede, which encased loops, and stitched them to the zipper tape, to camouflage the zipper, and give me a couple more inches across the chest. And with a shoelace, I had an instant closure. I was so freaking proud of my solution.

And I took a denim split pant I picked up at the costume sale, remade it and wore it, with the vest, to my performance Sunday at a local Viking Festival, Gormanudur. I played cello and bass recorder. Someone grabbed a photo of me and my friend Ken, who plays all of the recorders, and bass clarinet. In addition to early music, we played some wonderful series and video game music, from Lord of the Rings, Skyrim, Valhalla, etc. And I was delighted to see in the audience one of my weaving guild friends. Her husband is a professional musician. My world overlaps in the best ways!

And though at first glance, my gardens have gone to sleep, my son came and helped me bring in the hoses, put away the mowers, and cut back some of the more prolific Joe Pye Weed and Rudbeckia, to keep the pathways clear for winter walking. It poured rain the day he came, but we persevered and took care of my list anyway, getting completely soaked, but ultimately triumphing and accomplishing my agenda.

I had to pick all the tomatoes left on the vines, we had a hard frost that night. My window sills were full, and I’ve made a lot more sauce and froze it, and oven dried a lot more cherry tomatoes to add to my bags in the freezer.

There are so many berries out there on the bushes, some are native, and some are not, but my gardens are still a work in progress, and I’ll probably remove more invasives next year as the native plants fill in.

And on my walk around the yard this morning, I couldn’t believe how many things were still blooming… I especially loved the rose bud way up in the air against a brilliant blue sky.

And so, now that the guild sale is behind me, and remaining inventory delivered to the Shakespeare Theatre (I let them keep all the money from anything they sell), I can concentrate on all the upcoming performances, and the more than 100 pieces of music I need to learn for them. Yes, it is really hard work, and yes it is probably way too much. But I am learning so fast, and practicing really hard, and making such wonderful supportive friends, and having a blast playing dress up, that saying “no” isn’t going to be part of my vocabulary for the foreseeable future. And I just ordered a 3D carbon fiber cello, because I’m a handweaver with about 30 looms, (down from 64), why would I only have one cello… (The real reason is apparently I’m a klutz, and I’ve had three accidents with my wood cello, all from things falling on it while I was playing another instrument… I still have to send it in for repair from the previous accident).

And so, I probably won’t post again until after Thanksgiving; for all of you that use the time for quiet recharging, or spend the time with family and friends, for better or for worse, I hope that the holiday brings you a chance to give thanks, for what we have, community that supports us, and in spite of the curious world we are living in at the moment, with whiplash at every turn, there are always trees and bushes to tell us that spring will come again, and that life is renewable…

Stay tuned…

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…

Life Happens…

I finished up my last blog, and headed “down” the shore (a NJ expression) for an overnight, meeting up with an old college friend and her husband, who had just flown in from the West Coast. It was a lovely day that Sunday, and then hurricane Erin stirred things up, and Monday was a cold, rainy day, thrilled to get rain, but sadly not at home two hours north, and definitely not a beach day. I headed home Monday night.

Tuesday I spent the day with my sister at the NY Botanical Gardens, finally getting to see the Van Gogh’s flowers exhibit. It was pretty incredible. But more importantly, my sister is a superior gardener and well versed in native plants. We poked around, examining labels, identifying plants with my trusty app, and acted like two horticulturists, or in my case really, a horticulturist wannabee… We discovered all the different variations of Rudbekia (hirta, fulgida, and triloba, if you are interested…)

Tuesday night I started feeling sniffly, and by Wednesday morning I was sick. I was so sick, feverish, I got really suspicious. 48 hours before, I was with a whole group of people… hmmmm.

So I wanted to start this blog post with all the glorious pictures of my new costume, and my cello debut at the Montclair Early Music Medieval fest. Turns out, I couldn’t go because, I TESTED POSITIVE FOR COVID! Damn… Bad timing. So basically I cancelled my life for the next 10 days, until I tested negative once more. I was really disappointed, so many things planned for the end of the summer. Fortunately I was sick for just a couple days, and stayed in bed, and did what any weaver would do, took a loom to bed with me.

I cleared one of my Inklette Inkle Looms of a Supplemental Weft piece that has been on there for too many years.

I was on a roll, and couldn’t go anywhere, so I cleared another Inkle loom, this one set up for turned Krokbragd. Both looms were donated to Jockey Hollow Weavers for their loaner loom program. Two more looms out of my studio.

Meanwhile, the gardens, in spite of no rain, (in spite of being sick, I still went out and watered the critical things) my tomatoes are prolific.

So I made a pot of sauce…

And that warp from hell? The one that wouldn’t end? I was determined…

6 yards of 20/2 fine cotton. I initially worked through the Robyn Spady overshot sampler from a back issue of Handwoven Magazine, switching back and forth from Rose fashion to Star fashion, and then I just said, “Screw it”, and picked one of the patterns that appealed to me, and just wove. And wove. And wove…

So now I have this incredibly long sampler I will have to do something with. I think zip bags? At least a portion of it.

Which meant that I could move another warp onto that loom from my dwindling collection of Structos. I chose to move over an 8-shaft Quigley, the original pattern on the Structo I got from Tom Knisely’s book of Table Linens. It was designed by Diane Click and is a four-tied Unit Weave.

It is complicated to weave, and when I originally posted it on my blog, a couple of years ago, Diane actually wrote me, told me she taught a workshop in this structure at the 2015 Florida Tropical Weavers Guild conference (I’m pretty sure I was there teaching) and generously sent me her handout. Since I had already set the loom up, I didn’t do much with it, but now that I had the opportunity to rethread, bingo! Now I can work through her handout and really study the structure.

I was on a roll, and though I finally tested negative for Covid, I decided to move the warp on the 4-shaft Structo I had set up with Doup Leno. I wanted to prove to myself that I could weave Doup Leno on a Structo, but table looms are painfully slow, so once I moved the warp, I blew through a half yard in a sitting. This is 10/2 cotton.

Then I decided to move the warp on another 8-shaft Structo with a Honeycomb draft, from Malin Selander’s Weave a Weave. Here is the original piece I cut off the Structo before I moved it to my 8 shaft 36″ floor loom.

This probably wasn’t my best idea, I should have waited for a smaller floor loom, but I wanted to reach out to my contact at FIT in NY who is patiently waiting for me to clear Structos. I wanted to make it worth the trip for her.

This is going to be a bit technical, so if you are not a weaver, just skip to the picture and move on. Malin Selander’s book is written for a sinking shed loom. I have rising shed jack looms. In a sinking shed loom, in Honeycomb, only one shaft gets pulled down at a time, the rest stay up. Easy treadling. (Though I’m curious because I’ve never seen an 8-shaft loom with a sinking shed, at least from the era the book was written). I have rising shed jack looms, like I said, which means, to have one shaft stay down, I have to lift 7, 36″ wide rock maple shafts. This is quite the workout. And yes, I could weave it upside down, but trust me, you don’t want to do that in Honeycomb. Cause I’m kind of designing as I go… Not only that, one of the designs in her Honeycomb sampler calls for 18 treadles. I have 10. It is easy to weave on a table loom, you just pull levers and engage the shafts you want. (There are 254 combinations of shafts in an 8-shaft loom) Not so easy on a floor loom. So I jumped down a rabbit hole, determined to figure out a skeleton tie up so I could use more than one foot, and get the tie-up down to 10 or less treadles.

There is an old program on the internet called Tim’s Treadle Reducer. I went there, and either it is no longer functioning, or I blew it up. If anyone knows its status, please let me know, it was a really handy tool. So I was on my own.

I sat with the draft for an hour or so, after transferring the tie-up for a rising shed loom. And slowly I worked it out to be able to use less than 10 treadles, two or three at a time, but set up in a way that one foot could press two at once, having the treadles adjacent to one another. I was pretty damn proud of myself. (I tweaked it further, shifting the plain weave to the middle, the photo shows the middle of my calculations.)

I haven’t woven that one yet, but this is a different design in her Honeycomb sampler, it is a very cool weave structure, but I’m going to be with this one for a while, since there are something like four yards on this 16/2 cotton warp.

Yesterday was an interesting day. First, it rained. We have been under extreme drought conditions here, I’m struggling daily to keep my plants alive, and Wednesday we planted another four dozen native bushes and perennials. It started raining Thursday night, resumed on Saturday, and well into this morning. I’m thinking we got more than 2″ of rain. For that I got on my knees and gave thanks to the universe for taking care of its own.

Secondly, if you own a PC with Windows 10, you probably know that October 15th is D Day. Microsoft will no longer support Windows 10 with security updates. Which is really problematic, leaving any computer with Windows 10 vulnerable. My tech guy came over yesterday, I was not going to try this myself, to upgrade my two computer systems to Windows 11.

Yeah, so the first computer, my laptop I use for teaching online, which I can annotate with a pen, set up in my studio, the processor in it won’t support Windows 11. So $1000 later, I have a new laptop on its way. Apparently the processor in my desk top computer will also not support Windows 11, but my tech guy, who is really brilliant, found a work around, and got everything on my desktop updated. Of course I have high anxiety knowing by the end of the week, I’ll be ripping my hair out making sure all my programs work on the new laptop, finding registration codes, passwords, etc., and getting a new code for Fiberworks. Which I definitely need that critical piece of computer software.

So one computer is safe and updated. And it rained. And I’m Covid free. And my sister didn’t get it. And my garden continues to delight and astound me. Leaves are starting to turn, things are beginning to die back. And I just cleared a number of looms, all going to good homes who will use them for teaching.

And I looked at the calendar and my eyes got really big, and I realized I have six weeks to make as much stuff as I can for the guild sale, inventory sheets are due the end of October. OMG! Fortunately I have a 5-yard plus Overshot sampler to start with…

Stay tuned…

My First Love…

This is going to be a long one, grab a cup of tea and settle in…

It is incredible to me how full my life is right now. Too full if that’s possible. I’m doing all the things I love, almost to excess, because, why not, I am a free spirit, exploring new worlds, new communities, and I know how fragile life can be, and how it can all be gone in a heartbeat.

So it is August. My least favorite month. I’m so tired of the heat, 90-100 degree days, no rain in site. It is painful to be out tending my gorgeous gardens every day, but I committed to this and I wouldn’t change a thing, except I pray for rain hourly, and check the radar like a crazy person. I’m assured that native plants can handle drought well, and I’m trusting that. But I’m getting tired. I’m glad I live in NJ, where we garden for six months of the year and things go to sleep for six months. I have an indoor life, so I’m happy to let things rest.

I’m going to visit a friend down the shore tomorrow, so I wanted to make sure I got the lawn mowed, and the ponds topped off and critical plants watered, etc. I’m always rewarded by the most remarkable happenings in my yard, I have a Monarch Butterfly and sometimes his friend that love to follow me around the yard, doing long lazy figure 8’s, buzzing by my head, taking a quick drink of nectar and off again. He even flew by my big window while I was eating lunch, wondering where I was?

I have all sorts of insects in the yard, besides the huge population of native bees and wasps. There is the swallowtail butterfly…

The Spicebush Swallowtail…

A hummingbird moth… (I had to look that one up!)

And I watched two dragonflies tied together doing their dragonfly thing…

And today, I was watering the newly planted Persimmon trees, and a hummingbird buzzed around me, checking me out, and looking for I’m not sure what, but I understand they find spiders and feed them to their babies. After he checked me out for awhile, he flew up into the curly willow tree and watched.

The flowers are beautiful, even though everything is stressed from the drought.

And of course, my fish greet me every morning when I come out to feed them, they are voracious little piglets…

And I have the most beautiful pond lily…

Last Saturday, I went, with two members of my weaver’s guild, to a memorial service for a beloved guild member, Hedy Lyles, who passed away last month. It was a beautiful memorial service, her handwoven fabrics were everywhere, and the stories of her life were beautiful and poignant and a testament to the full life she led. After the service, there was a repast back at her house with a lovely spread by her family. It was comforting to be with weavers from the Philadelphia Guild, the New York Guild, my own guild, the Bucks County PA Guild. Hedy was beloved by so many people.

At 1 o’clock, they opened her studio and all of its contents, yarn, books, fleeces, warps, more yarn, handspun, weaving tools, sample books; most of the things were reasonably priced, but I looked around and there was nothing I needed or wanted. I’m finished with the acquisition stage of my life, and being in Hedy’s studio, amongst all the things that made her the fantastic weaver she was, I thought again, how fleeting life is, but how weaver’s stashes get spread out through the weaving community like dandelion seeds, and was happy knowing that life will continue with the next generation of weavers.

However, there was a table in the lower level that had commercial fabrics on it. With a sign, best offer. The fabrics were mostly upholstery fabrics, brocades, decorator fabrics and all I could think of was, I could make costumes out of these! And what I can’t use, I can donate to the Shakespeare Theatre where I volunteer as a stitcher in the costume shop.

So all of this came home with me…

Mulder picked his favorite right away. The grey raw silk.

Meanwhile, on the trip back, one of my guild mates asked me about a native plant place near where we were, as we headed back to NJ from PA. I mentioned Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve, the largest native plant preserve in the US, and they sold lots of native plants. A quick check on the phone, and it was 16 minutes away. How did we ever get along without a GPS?

They had to drag me away, because I filled two carts with plants, and the driver of the SUV was convinced they weren’t going to fit in the car with the loom and all the bags of yarn and my fabric purchased from Hedy’s sale. I was determined, even if I had to sit with a button bush shrub and a couple of Elderberries on my lap in my handwoven dress for the two hour trip home…

I think it funny how my priorities have changed. Now I buy plants, not yarn. I have too much yarn, you can never have too many plants, especially if you find one that is hard to find! So I have to get all these planted, in August, in a drought, which isn’t the best idea, but they were available and I don’t often get to Bowman Hill Preserve.

So the costume thing. Every Friday I go to the Shakespeare theatre costume shop and they give me some outrageous assignment, you want me to do what with this? I’ve gotten really good at taking apart things and remaking them into other things, borrowing parts from other things, and engineering a way to make it all work. It has made me look at my own closets and stash. Truth it, I don’t need any more clothes. I have a killer wardrobe, almost everything made from my own hands. But I love to sew, it is my first love, and the world is at peace when I’m one with the sewing machine. Which is saying a lot.

So next Sunday, the 24th, Montclair Early Music is sponsoring a medieval fest, and I’m going to perform with two groups, starting at noon, cello with the beginner group, and bass recorder with the regular early music group.

I have a hankering for a new costume. It’s a week away, I’ve got time! I took one of the fake suede upholstery fabrics from Hedy’s stash and some trim I bought last year from the going out of business sale at M&J trims in Manhattan. I made this…

I chose to use cording to make loops, instead of grommets. I’ve never been very confident with grommets, I don’t have good tools to apply them, but I can always devise an alternate method for pretty much everything in the textile world. So I took apart a commercial frog, and used the cording for loops and bought a pair of shoelaces for the ties. Now I have a new vest. But I kept thinking about a dress I’d seen, long and slender, lace up the front, and I started poking around my closet…

I found this…

I had made this dress, and hand beaded vest to stand for my friend Candiss Cole at her wedding in England to Roger Footit. I wore it again when I stood for my mom when she remarried in 2006. The dress was a bit legendary, but it has been hanging in the back of my closet for a long time. I haven’t figure out yet what to do with the vest, but the dress was exactly the style I had envisioned for a medieval costume, laced up the front over a full skirt, hopefully full enough I can get a cello between my legs.

I thought about it all day while I was watering and watching my insect friends. Basically I needed to cut the dress right up the middle. Armed with my new found confidence to make anything work, thanks to my vast experience now in the costume shop, after dinner tonight, I cut right up the middle of the dress. I needed something to work for the loops for the lacing, and I have bags of frogs, but none of them were the right color. I took a bunch that were shiny white, and stuck them in a pot of green tea. They came out perfect.

I used some yarn from the studio, and made a twist ply rope for the lace cord. And voila! I have a new medieval costume to wear! Still have a lot of handsewing, but I have a week!

I’m poking around in my closet to see what I can put under it. It is an outdoor event, and I’ll be sweating my butt off, but I’ll look pretty spiffy and medieval as I play early music with my friends.

Meanwhile, as plant season is drawing to a close, I’ve spent little time printing with the plants. So I grabbed some PAS mordanted silk, from maybe two years ago, and some of my favorite leaves, and created a couple of very cool pieces of silk, leaves dipped in Fe, with a logwood blanket and the second one, an osage orange blanket. The green leaf in the second one is from a nine bark cultivar, best printer on my property.

And yes, I’m still weaving, though this is getting kind of old… I have currently on my small 8-shaft floor loom, the warp that never ends. Kind of like that girl scout song, about a song that never ends… Yeah, I have a warp like that. Originally when I set up a bunch of Structo looms for teaching, I put on some ridiculous warp, like 6 yards, of 20/2 cotton, which was never going to be woven off, because students would just weave samplers to explore the technique. I want to clear all of those looms, as a number of institutions want the looms for teaching and I don’t want to do that anymore. So I’m transferring the warps, one at a time, to a floor loom so make the weaving easier. Sooo much easier… This is an overshot sampler from Robyn Spady.

After a couple yards of the sampler, I decided to change colors, and just pick one of the samples and weave that. I can use the fabric for making zip bags, or totes, or I don’t know what, but the point is, I want to weave it off.

And there is still an unknown amount on the back of the loom…

And so, between daily practice on the cello, and recorder, and new early music communities I’m rejoining, and the gardens and gardening adventures, and my volunteer work, and my vast studio stashes, there really aren’t enough hours in the day to fit in all I want to do… But I try…

Stay tuned!

A Summer Routine…

My mom mentioned she hadn’t gotten to read a blog post from me in a while. I said, just reread the last post. Life is basically just a rerun during the summer. Get up, have breakfast with my little buddy, and then go out and water.

Last post I talked about how much rain we were getting. This month, not so much. There was that flooding 5″ of rain a week ago, but nothing since. So out I go to water anything that was just planted in the last couple of weeks. Which is a number of plants!

I mow when necessary, weed when necessary, which is all the time… The interesting thing about native plants, is when they fill in, you don’t need to weed under them, but you do need to watch out for things that suddenly appear out of nowhere and are 4 feet tall because some bird pooped out the seeds. Today I pulled out four Northern Catalpa trees. There were a few Tree of Heaven seedlings, which I instantly eradicated. And though the pokeweed is native, and I kept a few bushes because they are an important food source in the fall, I don’t need 485 seedlings. So I’m always on the hunt for things that shouldn’t be on my property, and I use my plant app on my phone hourly.

The gardens are magical.

Even the lily pad in the koi pond bloomed.

My landscape designer ripped out a 40 foot tall non-native trumpet vine, and we replaced it with an American Wisteria (Wisteria frutescens), who knew there was such a thing, not to be confused with that monster non-native thing that destroys buildings.

I had additional path lighting added to one of the new planting areas. It was magical to sit in my window and look out at the lit path as dusk set in, during a rain storm.

The insects are everywhere, except mosquitos, for some reason I don’t have them. Dragonflies are everywhere. I hear dragonflies eat mosquitos…

There must be 50 different types of bees in my yard, all different sizes. Here is one on the Rattlesnake Master.

Lest you think that my life is one giant play in the dirt kind of existence, which it mostly is right now, I’m heavily into the early music world, playing recorder with a couple of different groups, and now the cello, with the early music beginner group. We had a performance at the Tenafly Nature Center last Saturday night, I wish I had a picture. It was for a Faeries and Fireflies festival, and there was a quintet of us, along with a drummer and a couple vocalists, all set up in a life size eagle’s nest built on a platform. We were in our medieval costumes and it was just the greatest experience. We even had a mama doe and four baby fawns stop to listen to a few songs.

Our Medieval Festival is coming up the end of August, and I’ll be playing bass recorder with Montclair Early Music, and cello with the beginner group called the Musettes.

I think a lot about this new path I’ve chosen, especially on the cello. I’m not particularly good at the cello, but I am always prepared, organized, and I show up. And I practice a lot. That in life, counts for a lot. Talent is a gift. But the professional part of showing up prepared and practiced counts for more! So I practice, and I show up with my music ready, in order. And I play my heart out. And each time, I get a little better.

Meanwhile, my local library in the next town has a botanical drawing class once a month. True botanical drawing requires precision. Especially on location. Laying on the ground using calipers and measuring devices, to sketch accurately a particular flower or leaf, isn’t quite my most favorite thing. I much prefer to draw from a picture that remains static, and isn’t influenced by a breeze, or by changes in lighting. One of the things I tried was to take a great flower picture. and then trace it onto my sketchbook. That way it is accurate size wise, and then I could fill it in with watercolor. But that sort of becomes like a coloring book. Which I use to love as a kid.

But now, I just want to look at the picture, figure out how things are shaped, and do a quick line sketch, toss in some color, research what I’m drawing, and call it a day.

July is my least favorite month, I hate the heat, obviously I’m a sweater girl, because I make them. But July is filled with loud thunderstorms, and fireworks, and I have a couple of animals that get traumatized easily with loud unexplained noises. So I always plan to sit on the floor of my basement, during July nights when there are fireworks or thunderstorms, with my dogs, one of them has to be sedated, and have my knitting at hand. I started a new sweater, because September will be here before you know it.

And yes, in spite of my crazy busy life, I’m still weaving. I have a powder room on my first floor, off the kitchen. It is located in the interior of the house, no windows, and therefore some protection from things like fireworks, etc. One of my dogs lays on the tile floor in there a lot.

I was using the powder room the other day, sitting there, like one does, with the dog curled up around the sink, and noticed that there was some kind of rubber debris scattered around the floor. Right away I assumed the dog chewed up something. I looked at the little bathmat on the floor, not remembering at all where it came from or how old it was, and it looked intact, so I was confused.

I turned the rug over and yikes! The rubber backing was disintegrating before my eyes.

Damn, that means I have to add to the list a trip to get a new rug for the powder room.

As I sat there, I started to think… Which one can do easily sitting a powder room…

I had just transferred a warp from a table loom, onto my floor loom, or one of them anyway. It was a colorful Rep Weave, about 25″ wide, and would be much easier to weave off spread over 8 shafts on a large floor loom instead of struggling trying to separate a dense warp on 4 shafts on a table loom. I had blown through half the repeat in just one sitting already. Yarns are vintage Silk City Fiber Contessa, Rayon/Silk, variegated, circular wound on a board to create an ikat effect.

So I got to thinking… I wonder if I could just finish that little Rep rug, and if it would fit in the area in front of the sink in the powder room. I went out to the studio, turned on some music, and got to work. Within a few hours, I had woven off the rug, stitched the ends, tossed it in the washer and dryer, and bound off the edges with some silk noil bias I had laying around.

It is my new favorite thing in the house. I love that I can instantly fix a problem with something that comes from my hands.

Oh, and the original rug? My daughter told me later, when I showed her the replacement, that the original mat had been given to her by a former co-worker 9 years ago when the co-worker was leaving the vet practice and cleaning out her locker. The co-worker kept it in her locker for her dogs when she would bring them to work with her. It didn’t owe us anything.

So my days are full, of flowers, of music, of yarn, of animals, I only wish there were more hours in a day. Fortunately I live in a climate where by late fall, the gardens will go to sleep, and I will have a few months of inside time, and by March, when I’m tired of the inside time, things outside will start to wake up. Meanwhile, there are vegetables to harvest and eat, and we are coming into tomato season, and there are a lot of tomatoes out there!

Stay tuned!