Blog Entries – Page 138

Memories

On Sunday we made the laborious 3+ hour trek to Maryland, just off the Baltimore Beltway, to my mom’s house, where she is now living with her husband of a couple of years, a man she dated in High School. A number of years after my dad died, my mom attended her high school reunion, and reconnected with someone she had dated, and six months later they were married. They adore each other, and it is really sweet to see a romance bloom with two people who will turn 80 next year.

There was a family picnic, for the holiday weekend, and I was glad to have made the trek, I was able to reconnect with some family members I don’t get to see too often, because of the distance.

In July, my mom sold the house she owned at the Jersey shore, it was getting to be too much for her to keep up both houses, especially knowing what kind of superb housekeeper she is. They don’t make ’em like that anymore! Back in April, I met my sisters at the shore house, for one last fling knowing mom had just listed the house, and in spite of the current financial markets, knowing it would more than likely sell quickly, it was in move in condition. And of course the house did. Anyway, my mom had begun back in April, divesting the house of all its debris, in my mom’s case it was well dusted and carefully preserved debris, but never-the-less, it was debris from the past, and I was dreading having to bring some of it back to my already overstuffed dwelling. I blogged about what I did bring home that April weekend.

On Sunday, my mom had her usual shopping bag of stuff, waiting for each of her three girls, these bags could have anything from books she is passing along, to cast off yarn or fabric, coupons, packaged food, or articles I should see or read about. Always something of interest, I look forward to seeing what my mom has collected for me. I was blown away by the bag she had for me this weekend.

My mom was always into needlework, as any 1950’s well trained housewife would be. And of course she was a fabulous dressmaker/tailor. I’ve blogged about our matching dresses, and my tailoring lessons. (At least I think I have…) Mom pulled out of the bag my first comforter, which I clearly remember, but not as something that was made for me, but for something that covered my little sister, who was five years younger. I always loved it, one of those comfort images from childhood, and I was thrilled to see it had been preserved, and cleaned, and the needlework had held up through three children, and it was going home with me. The quilted cotton was smooth, well worn, and the colors just as bright as the day she embroidered it. Gotta love that DMC cotton!

I nearly fainted when she then pulled from the bag, my first book. I remember reading it to my little sister, but hadn’t remembered it as being mine, until I looked through it and a flood of recognition of images and colors, and memories came flying back into my head.

Again, mom had carefully soaked the yellowing stains away, and the book was beautiful. The edges were frayed, and well used, like any good book, but the images inside were bright, vibrant, and funny.

This was a book about the alphabet. I learned my alphabet by reading and associating images from this book. I learned that things had names and that the names started with letters from the alphabet. And I definitely had some favorites.

I think my most favorite was ‘D’ for Doll. But I never looked at it that way. I remember pretty quickly figuring out that ‘D’ was also for Daryl. So I always thought this was an image of me! I was so cute… I might have even had a dress like that… And of course I was blonde.

My poor middle sister on the other hand, had dark hair, and her name was Marta. I clearly remember not liking this image, and being really glad my name didn’t start with ‘M’. There was something really creepy about this organ grinder monkey begging for money. I always thought the orange ruffle was odd. This was probably the beginning of my fashion sense!

Not to be outdone, there was another fashion forward creature, ‘O’ for Ostrich. This colorful thing even had mismatched shoes. (Which I never really noticed until now, probably something to do with shadowing, but they really don’t match!)

And of course, there were the images which I’m sure started my love for fiber. There was ‘L’ for lamb, and my other favorite, ‘Y’ for yarn!

And I clearly remember loving the colors on the ‘K’ for kite!

I spent hours learning my colors, and then teaching them to my sisters, from all the colorful bows on the kite tail.

This was such a beautiful treat, to have this book. My mom said it was for my first grandchild. No offense, but my first grandchild isn’t touching this book. I love this book, and I’m glad to have it back. I’m being selfish and keeping it for myself.

Today is Tuesday, school started today. My daughter dyed her hair purple for the occasion. She matches her tie-dyed t-shirt. She ran off for the bus with the same enthusiasm I remembered as a kid when the first day of school would roll around. I really loved school, and there is a part of me that wishes I were back in the classroom. But for today, I have my first book, that taught me the alphabet, and showed me yarn, and gave me a sense of what not to do in fashion.

Small Towns, Supermarkets and Change…

Even though I live in Northern NJ suburb, about 20 miles west of Manhattan, I live in an old town with a population of about 11,000. We live in a house that predates the tax records in 1914, on a tree lined dead end street. We have about a half acre, two lots, where we have ponds and perennial gardens, and a little bit of private space. We can walk to the center of town, which at the moment is offering less and less. In this poor economy, there are more shops empty now than are actually operating.

But I can still walk to the bank, the post office, the library, and best of all, a fabulous, huge, fully stocked Shoprite Supermarket. The store draws from surrounding communities, and has been there in this new space, almost 20 years. When we moved to this town, 27 years ago, the Shoprite was in a smaller, very old and cramped space, with no parking, and we all cheered when when the new sprawling shopping mall opened. Most of the stores attached to the Shoprite are now empty, there is the liquor store (you can’t sell alcohol in a supermarket in NJ, and we can’t pump our own gas either!), and of course the pizza place and Chinese restaurant, and oddly enough a Radio Shack, but not much else.

Recently, the owners of the Shoprite, decided to undergo a much needed overhaul of the store’s layout. The physical structure of the store remained intact. Earlier this year they relocated the floral section to the entrance, and in its place build a huge cheese counter/display, costing me an extra $20. whenever I walk by it, it’s the samples you know… this overhaul of the layout was much needed, and the purpose was to make the flow of merchandise more logical and to allow more brands, and more choices within a category.

I will admit, the old layout made no logical sense. The organic section was at the back of the store by the dairy, and the dried fruit and specialty nuts were next to the fish counter. Some things were stuck in odd places, and if you wanted salsa, it was found in four different places in the store. It reminded me of the illogical organization of my personal fiber library, which I reorganized last month, over the course of a few days. Well, this 20 aisle Shoprite was a lot bigger than my half dozen bookshelves, and you can’t imagine the total chaos of removing every single item from every shelf and relocating it.

What surprised me most, and why I’m bothering to blog about this, is the community reaction. You’d think the entire town had been relocated and put on another planet. It has been a major source of amusement watching the reaction of the supermarket shoppers both in and out of the store, this has been the biggest topic of conversation, not the current state of the economy, school starting, the NJ governor’s race, but the changes in the supermarket layout. To wander down the aisles is first of all, dangerous, and secondly, very humorous, and thirdly very frustrating.

The danger comes from all the shoppers craning their necks to desperately search for where the item they are looking for might be found. I was bumped by a shopping cart six times in my last outing there. The poor employees, strategically placed in the aisles for customer assistance, armed with maps of the new layout, are being accosted by disgruntled shoppers like a sold out Bruce Springsteen concert. Their venom at this total inconvenience is sort of scary. And of course, I get the frustration when I have been searching for the case of Annie’s Macaroni and Cheese for the last four trips to the store, because the entire organics section has vanished, and no one knows where the items went. I was finally successful on Saturday when I logically looked at the newly relocated Macaroni and Cheese section and there it was, on the bottom shelf next to, well, next to Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. Duh…

As a marketing strategy, this is actually brilliant. This little stunt has caused every shopper in this store, to look at every item in search for their favorite brands. I’d love to sit down with the numbers when this is all done, and see how much people spent beyond their regular purchases buying things they never new the store carried. And, if you are environmentally conscious, and trying hard to buy more organic products, they are right there next to the regular products, increasing the choices and making you more aware of the options.

The neighboring town, where we send our kids to High School (our district is too small to have it’s own High School) had it’s annual Fireman’s Carnival this past weekend. I had to really refrain from laughing out loud when the topic of conversation over by the beer tent switched to the chaos at the supermarket, and how frustrated everyone was because they could no longer just run in and grab what they needed and run out. Whole aisles have been moved! The book, “Who Moved my Cheese“, came instantly to mind, we as a species don’t tend to do well with changes in our routine and our world in general. Even if the change is logical and important. Flexibility is not an innate trait in most humans. It isn’t in my nature either, but I’m really trying hard to be more flexible and open to the changes that the universe brings me on a daily basis, even silly ones like the reorganization of my supermarket.

This would include such things as upgraded software, changing where I put things in the studio, (because I’m sick of things falling out of cabinets whenever I open doors), new fall school and activity schedules for the kids. And of course moving hundreds of contacts in six different locations to Google Contacts so I can sync with everything. I’ve spent most of the weekend trying to figure out and use my new iPod Touch. I finally had to call in the special forces, my techie husband, who had to bail me out. But I successfully downloaded a book on tape (with his help), from my library’s free service, and listened to it all the way to Maryland and back yesterday for a Labor Day party. So I learned to be patient, and that change is sometimes good. Last night my husband updated my blog software, there was a reported worm attacking all non updated WordPress blogs, so he stayed up really late last night to make this change while I blissfully slept. I love my husband…

So now my next upgrade is to change from Office 2003 to Office 2007. There will be more hair pulling and gnashing of teeth, as I learn this new piece of software. Change is ultimately a good thing, usually, once I get use to it, I feel like there is something new to explore, and I even have a refrigerator full of new foods I discovered in my rearranged supermarket while looking for the Annie’s Macaroni and Cheese…

Felting Extravaganza!

Are you exhausted from reading these posts yet? I think yesterday’s post, which clocked in at 1700+ words, was my longest yet! It has been a busy week month, and I am so glad September is here. I’m looking for a tiny bit of a break!

On Wednesday, Liz woke up and opted to not go back into NYC, the original plan was to head to the Brooklyn museum to see the permanent installation of the Judy Chicago “Dinner Party”. Liz and I are the same age, and remember well the impact on the art world when the Dinner Party first debuted in San Francisco in 1979. It was permanently installed in 2007 at the Elizabeth Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum in a space that is befitting, and reverential to this iconic piece of women’s history. But we opted not to do that on Wednesday.

So, Liz showed me her vast stash of teaching samples, and I was instantly inspired. Liz wrote the book on Nuno Felting, available through Amazon (she promised to send me an autographed copy of the book from the UK), and her sample collection was huge! I could have spent the whole day just taking notes. The upshot is I started to look at my fabric stash in a different way. “Could this be felted, could that be felted, what can I do with this fabric?”

Poor Liz, I must have asked her 20 times, while she was puttering in her room, “How about this?” Well, the only way to really know is to try, even I know that! So we decided to spend the day just playing with felt. The weather was glorious, so we dug through everything in my studio that could possibly be felted, all the bins of wool fibers, and the fabrics that were thin enough for the wool fibers to penetrate, and we made a total mess. No matter, I could clean that up after Liz flew back to the UK.

Some of the wool I had purchased when I was in the Pendleton outlet store last May in Portland, when I flew to Seattle to hang with my fiber buddy Robyn Spady. Some of the fabrics I pulled out had been purchased at one of the stores we hit as well, Nancy’s Sewing Basket, in Seattle. I feel like this is one big circle of fiber…

I had actually pulled out some of the wool I had been dyeing in the crock pot all spring, and on Monday while Liz was playing in the garment district in Manhattan, I did a small sample of felt, just to see how well I could do, I am really a novice felter. The one thing I’ve learned (well I learned a lot of things actually,) but the one thing I learned that was most appropriate to what I actually do, which is make clothing, is that the felt should be thin and pliable, but very well felted. So I used only two layers of wool, but felted them more than 50%. I got a sample that was beautiful and flexible and well suited to cloth for clothing.

So we hauled everything outside…

We set up our space, under one of the covered gazebos in my yard, brought hot water, olive oil soap, leftover from my felting experience last year with Loretta Phipps who flew to my studio to work with me on the Challenge piece for Convergence. Am I prepared or what?! I had a couple of large plastic trays, which did well to contain the soapy water during the felting process. Liz worked on floral brooches, starting with a cone of wool and a resist, and stupid me forgot to take pictures of what she was actually doing. When my husband wandered down to offer to make us burgers for lunch, we took the opportunity to grab him for a couple of photos, since we were all wet! My daughter wandered down as well, and soon grabbed a pan and started to play herself.

We took a quick break for lunch, and dove right back into the felting. I made a number of samples, trying all different things in my studio, including the dyed silk from the hankies I bought in Michigan at the conference there last month (was it only last month?) We arranged things on the deck railing to dry, Liz put her things on the lawn to dry in the sun, since she didn’t want to pack her samples wet for the flight home that night to the UK.

My daughter played with using a river stone as a resist, and wrapped the wool around it. I had learned this technique in a class a couple of years ago with Loretta Oliver at Convergence Grand Rapids in 2006. Once felted, my daughter sliced the felt into two sections to dry. Those would be the two pick ovals on the right. She also played with a plastic resist and made a heart in the middle of a blue ground. The rest of the samples drying are mine.

Of course we worked too late into the day. Suddenly I realized I needed to get ready to head out to the guild meeting for the Jockey Hollow Weavers, and Liz had to do her final packing, and we were all in a flurry to clean up the mess on the deck and pack up for our respective journeys.

I took my slightly damp samples to the meeting that night, for show and tell, and what I didn’t know, was my daughter went into my zipper stash, and took out a heavy zipper and was seen sewing her two pink felt ovals together with the zipper, while at the meeting, making it into a change purse. I just adore this child!

Brianna also made a log of felt, and did a good job getting it dense enough that she was able to cut it into small rounds, like the ones she had seen when we went to the Fashioning Felt exhibit last spring at the Cooper Hewitt. The ones in the exhibit were larger, more industrial ones, but the same technique could be used for smaller buttons and adornments.

My samples are on the right, all but one are laminated, felted with a layer of silk or lace. My favorite is the orange one, I had a layer of wool roving on the back, and a layer of orange wool I dyed in the crock pot, and on top a thin stretched layer of silk from one of the hand dyed hankies. I’d like to follow up on that sample. I really want to be able to make a jacket from my felt, for teaching purposes, and I think it would be a good stretch for me!

Coming: Four whole days with nothing on the calendar. YeeHa! I get to catch up on my blog, learn how to use my new iPod Touch, which has been sitting on my desk untouched for a week, and finally catch up on some much needed sleep!

Surrounded by felters…

Seems like a year ago, but it was only a week ago that I was settling back in from my trip to MA, to Snow Farm where I taught garment construction to the felters. I mentioned in a previous blog I felt like the only instructor not from the US? Milliner Jean Hicks was from Seattle, and Lisa Klakulak was from Asheville, NC, and Gail Crosman Moore was from MA, but many of the instructors came from great distances to bring an aesthetic to the conference that was fresh and inspired. I left the conference at the mid-point, because I had finished my class, and I really needed to be home. I longed to stay and play, but knew that after 5 conferences in a row, I had kids to get back in school, and a house to sort out, and business to attend to, and I needed to get on the road. As fate would have it, the conference followed me, so to speak.

Liz Clay, renowned felter from the UK, chair of the IFA (International Feltmakers Association) needed a place to stay near NYC for a couple of days, so she could easily access public transport for some appointments she had, before returning to England Wednesday night. After much logistical preparation, it was decided that Gail would drive Liz to my house late Sunday night after the conference concluded, since Gail lives another hour south of me. A couple hours after I returned from Millbrook Village (yesterday’s post), I welcomed Liz to my home, where we had a cup of tea, and decided on a plan for the next three days.

I put Liz on a NJ Transit bus to NYC on Monday, where she poked around a number of shops in the garment district, some on my recommendation, like B&J fabrics, and NY Elegant, M&J trim, etc. Others, like Paron Fabrics, Liz found from a recommendation from someone from the conference who sent a great link for a walking tour of the garment district. http://www.paulanadelstern.com/fabric/guides/index.php Paron apparently has an annex where you can get fabrics for half price. And of course there is always a trip to Mood, of Project Runway fame. Liz returned exhausted and loaded with bags of all kinds of silks to felt with.

On Tuesday, I decided to take advantage of Liz’s knowledge and connections, and accompany her to NYC. I knew the routes, and the transit system, and she had a lot of ground to cover, even though I’ve seen many of the things that were on her list. We left NJ early, and headed uptown to the west side of Central Park, on a subway, getting off at the 86th street entrance to the park. I have only crossed at 81st street, in the past, because my destination is usually the MET. The Cooper Hewitt Museum of Design is further north on the east side of the park, closer to 90th street, so it made sense to cross there. We started on the road, and Liz said, let’s not walk on the road, lets go through the real park. I had no park map, and fearful of getting lost in Central Park, I followed her. She took a couple of instinctive turns and ended up on the pathway around the Jackie Onassis Reservoir, which was a spectacular body of water, full of joggers, walkers, baby carriages, and city life out for some R&R. We excited the park on the east side, right in front of the Cooper Hewitt.

We arrived at the Cooper Hewitt, way ahead of schedule, entering through the employee entrance, we were to meet up with Susan Brown assistant curator of textiles for the Cooper Hewitt, who organized the Fashioning Felt exhibit, which I saw last spring. Susan was gracious, and knowledgeable, and very excited about the show, the catalog, in its second printing should be available soon from Amazon.com. If I understood correctly, the catalog was one of the best sellers of any show at the Cooper Hewitt. She was also in negotiations to have the exhibit travel to the west coast, she wouldn’t divulge the location! Susan took time out of her day to give Liz and me a private tour of the exhibit, before it opened for the day. It was great to view the exhibit again from the curator’s perspective, and I saw things I completely missed the first time around. Janice Arnold’s yurt in the conservatory was of course, beautiful, but I got a better understanding of the installation complications with such a massive structure in a historical space. As it turned out, Janice had just flown in on the Red-Eye from Seattle, to do something with a videographer, and we had tea with her as well.

Our next stop was a 10 block walk south to the MET. The MET would take a month long vacation to see all of it, but there are a few grand spaces which are my favorites, where I take people who haven’t seen the museum at all, and the lunch in the basement cafeteria is one of my favorite places to eat in NYC. So we grabbed lunch, and I took her up to the rooftop, spectacular views of Central Park, where there was a wonderful installation by American artist Roxy Paine. We left the roof, and wandered down to the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas. This is one of my favorite departments, I love the primitive expressive quality of the work, and the simplicity of the forms. I could spend hours in just this department alone.

Much to my complete surprise, an entire wing had been added onto the exhibition in the past year or two, that I had completely missed. We spent a lot of time there and I learned about The Asmat Bis Poles, “The most spectacular sculptures of the Asmat people of southwest New Guinea, the ancestor poles known as bis.” They were created as the vocal points of a memorial feast that honors individuals who have died recently and become ancestors. Each figure on the poles represents and is named for a specific individual. In the past, the poles also reminded the living that the dead must be avenged. In Asmat cosmology, death was always caused by an enemy, either directly in war or by malevolent magic. Each death created an imbalance that had to be corrected through the death of an enemy. So traditionally, a bis feast was held in conjunction with a headhunting raid. Now a bis feast may be staged to alleviate a specific crisis or in connection with male initiation.” (Text summarized)

That would explain the very well endowed male figures!

We were allowed to take non flash photos, so Liz and I ran around with our little cameras, grabbing shots at whatever interested us. I was totally taken with all the masks, the imagery, expressions, primitive interpretations of the human form, and in many cases, colorful sculptures, and playful characters.

I especially loved the woolly bear mask at the end. The addition of stones, fur, ivory like materials, all added to the characters and their expressions. I could see many of these masks as greeting cards with wicked sayings on the inside! I’d love to know what the artist was thinking when they carved these creatures. Especially the first photo of the male and female.

Liz and I ran through the Temple of Dendur, and the new Greek and Roman sculpture gardens, and then we set out for the 20 block trek to Julie Artisans Gallery. Julie Dale has had this wearable art gallery on Madison Avenue for as long as I can remember. Liz had some work there, and had an appointment to show Julie some of her new felted brooches, and scarves. As we arrived, the gallery got very busy, so we waited for awhile before Julie could see us, which gave me lots of time to really study the work, the techniques, and watch a wearable art gallery in action. I was blown away by how effortlessly someone spent a thousand dollars on a garment. It has been many years since I did the craft fair circuit, and I have no reference point for fine American craft, especially in the textile world. And I was really thrilled to see a venue like Julie’s survive in this very poor economic climate. Julie selected a few of Liz’s floral brooches to try for the fall.

Liz and I hopped on an M-4 bus, and headed down 5th avenue, all the way to Penn Station. We had an appointment to meet a client of hers, or a potential client of hers, an absolutely charming woman, who, as she describes herself, works to feed her craft fair habit. I instantly fell in love with her. This woman had apparently traveled all the way to England to see a well known craft exhibition called “Origin” in London, the first two weekends in October, and had seen Liz’s work there. We met up at the museum of FIT, a short walk from Penn Station, on 27th and 7th Avenue, where Liz got to see the Isabel Toledo exhibit, and the Fashion and Politics Exhibit. We were quite exhausted at this point, so we were no longer absorbing anything we saw, but it was good to wander through the exhibits again, and share them with someone from the UK.

Afterward, the three of us went around the corner to a quiet pub, and had a beer. It felt so good to just sit down, and relax, and Liz showed her client the work she had brought to show Julie Dale. I haven’t done a craft fair since 1989, and it was fun to reminisce about the old days, the old shows like WBAI, and some of the key players in the textile arts. And I was thrilled for Liz when her client purchased one of her ethereal felted scarves (pictured at the right, on Liz). It was hard to see in a dark pub, but her client happily kept darting outside to see the colors in the sunlight.

Liz and I made the trek home, back to NJ, just making the transit bus, and hitting virtually no traffic. We were completely exhausted. We raided the refrigerator for leftovers, had a feast, and fell happily in bed.

Tomorrow: felting with Liz! (Can you see why I’m so exhausted?)

Earth to Daryl…

You know that feeling, the one where your wheels are spinning and you aren’t moving forward? My wheels have been spinning so fast for the last few weeks, and I feel like I am not getting anywhere, I’m making mistakes, I’m struggling to keep my head above water, and I look at the clock and declare, “Oh no, the time”!

We are busy here, wrapping up the summer, getting the kids back to school, but there is so much else going on I’ll be blogging around the clock for a week!

Last weekend, my daughter Brianna (16) and I did our yearly volunteer stint at Millbrook Village, near the Delaware River in Western NJ. It is an 1850’s farming village, that has been kept alive by the National Park service, and has a wonderful weaving and spinning house, Hill House, kept alive by an industrious group of volunteers supported by the Frances Irwin Handweavers and the Jockey Hollow Handweavers, organized by Sally Orgren.

We dressed up in costume and showed off the myriad looms and spinning equipment in the house. My daughter elected not to wear the dress she wore last year, one because she hates dresses, and two because she decided that she needed a cap to cover her blue hair (yes, I know it was fuchsia, but now it is blue, happened some time while I was away this summer).

Here Brianna is demonstrating on an 1850’s Weaver’s Friend rug loom, which totally fascinates her. She figured it out pretty quickly a couple of years ago when we first started demo-ing, it is a two shaft loom with a mechanism like the top of a carousel, where the horses ride up and down on a revolving cog, when one is up, the other is down. When she beats the rag weft into place, a cog mechanism rotates the two shafts so the opposite one jumps into place. It makes an incredible racket, and she loves to warn the little kids to put their fingers in their ears before she uses the beater.

In the second photo, Brianna is figuring out the overshot pattern on a nearby table loom. She loves patterns and figuring them out.

I’m growing fond of the big barn frame loom, that sits next to the rug loom in this very cramped tiny building. The beater is worn so smooth, it is like glass, and members of the guild re-threaded the loom at the beginning of last season, so we would have something to weave since a few critters found that the linen warp made a nice warm winter bedding making it tough to weave with so many broken threads.

So I demonstrate this old 1700’s barn frame loom, which is clunky and graceful at the same time. I often think, if only this loom could talk. Where has it lived, who has woven on it, what children have played around it, and how many beautiful functional items for the home have been woven on it?

While we were at Millbrook, we stopped next door and chatted with the coopers, two woodworkers who were demonstrating making barrels, very technical work, and they are both trying to perfect the technique.

Sidebar: Last summer, I taught a class at Peters Valley. This particular class, which was designed to give an overview of basic fiber techniques to anyone interested in teaching fiber in a classroom, or using fiber techniques in their work, is one of my favorites. Every three hours we move on to a new technique, it is a whirlwind of activity and creativity, and I bring a carload of equipment and supplies for it. One of the techniques is of course, spinning on a drop spindle, made from a couple of CD’s, and when they have a sufficient amount of yarn, they wind it off onto a Niddy Noddy, an old measuring device used to skein yarn.

When I was first dating my husband, in the early 1970’s, his mother, an avid lacemaker and spinner, would suggest gifts for me for Christmas or my birthday. One year, he bought me a beautiful Danish lace pillow. Another year, Kevin bought me the most gorgeous hand carved Niddy Noddy, which I have cherished over the years. I have no idea who made it, but it was purchased at a weaving store on Croton on the Hudson, somewhere in NY State. The store is no longer there, I’m sure.

Last summer, one of the students in my Peters Valley class, wound off their yarn onto the Niddy Noddy, and failed to hear the part where I explained how to remove the yarn from the Niddy Noddy, over the smooth spoke, not the curved spokes. To my horror, and I’m sure her’s as well, the Niddy Noddy snapped off at the neck, and I nearly cried. Later, after the workshop was over, I wrote to a woodworker I had met the year before when I was demonstrating at another historic festival, who had remarked on the uniqueness of the design and loved copying old textile equipment. He had made a lovely lucet and had given it to my daughter who proceeded to become quite the expert on the lucet and will give a program on it for the November meeting at the Jockey Hollow Guild. But I digress.

Wayne Grove, and Steve Wenzel, two very enthusiastic woodworkers, told me to send the niddy noddy to them, and they spent a few months trying to find the best way to repair a very splintered neck, too thin to be doweled for strength. They ended up epoxying the neck back together, and repairing the finish, so the break is nearly invisible, but they used the opportunity to really copy the design and create a few new ones, with a slightly thicker and doweled neck that won’t be so fragile.

Wayne and Steve were the coopers demonstrating barrel making on the porch of the building next door to where Brianna and I were working in Hill House. Wayne had brought my now flawlessly repaired Niddy Noddy, and the improved copy, and presented them to me, I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to have my cherished Niddy Noddy back, and a new one I can actually use without fear.

I bought a dozen lucets from Wayne, for the November class, and I also bought a Turkish drop spindle, which is a fascinating tool, it comes apart, into three pieces, leaving a wound ball of yarn.

Bri and I were exhausted by the end of the weekend, but had a great time, and I was thrilled with my new and repaired spinning equipment!

If anyone is interested in having one of the Niddy Noddy’s that Wayne and Steve made from my original, they cost about $150. and you can contact Wayne Grove at swgro78@embarqmail.com. Wayne not only makes beautiful textile tools, he is better known for his Windsor Chairs.

Tomorrow: My adventures with Liz Clay