Blog Entries – Page 146

Iowa Day Three

I had a free morning, my next class wasn’t until after lunch, so I took advantage of a rare opportunity to actually sit in on a class, and I am embarrassed to say, I chose this class because I liked the title and there were no materials we had to bring (which is really important when you are already at max limit with checked bags). I actually didn’t know what the class was about. Sherry Konya, a delightful teacher, who I hadn’t crossed paths with before, taught a morning seminar called Bodacious Boas. For a nominal materials fee, Sherry handed us everything we needed to make a needle felted boa, from dyed locks of wool. We got the wool, the needles, and the foam base.

I sat next to my buddy Amy Norris from St. Louis, I met her when I taught there last year, and we instantly hit it off, we chattered for three hours while we stabbed a foam block, making a Bodacious Boa from dyed wool. It was sooooo much fun. And Amy passed along tips for dyeing in a crock pot, which I am “dying” to try, especially now that I have acquired about 30 pounds of new fleece. I have a feeling my crock pot from the kitchen will now move and live in my studio…

During lunch, I skipped over to the vendor hall, to see if I had won any of the door prizes. Sure enough, I won a small baggie of Camel Hair, suitable for spinning, which was very exciting, but it ended up being a costly door prize in that I accidentally passed by a booth with a bin of 50% off all South West Trading Company Yarns… Well what was I to do? I bought one of everything in the bin…

While I was in the vendor hall, I took advantage of the reduced crowds and got a look at the guild exhibits. They were all wonderful, but there was one guild, the Sand County Shuttle Guild, from Central Wisconsin, whose display was amazing. Everything in the booth was woven from recycled plastic bags. And everything was really well done. I was totally impressed.

My final class (that I taught) was a terrific one for conferences, and great for the end of the day. Everyone is really tired at this point, and on total overload, and I had 24 very eager but exhausted women, all gathered around the table and I dumped little quills of yarn all over the table. We just had a blast, I gave them little challenges, and they wound warps based on my parameters. We got to play with Color-aid papers, and magazine photos, and they all came up with palettes based on those photos, and then tried to interpret them with yarn and a warp. And of course I gave my presentation on Color and Inspiration, which is available in a color monograph. The images in this presentation are based on all the color forecasts I wrote for Handwoven Magazine. We made such a mess, there was yarn everywhere, but there were lots of smiles, and more than one person at the end told me that I had freed her to run amok! Well done…

My wonderful class assistant had me packed up in no time, and I headed out to dinner, one last chat with my buddies Robyn Spady and Ruby Leslie and then off to set up for the teacher sales event. I had my monographs available, and I was really happy with the enthusiastic sales, I sold out of the one on Fitting, and was able to bring home some additional income.

Late Saturday night I caught a ride to an airport hotel in Des Moines, since I had a very early flight to Houston this morning. As I was boarding the plane on the Houston/Newark leg, the gate agent handed me a new boarding pass, yippee, first class. So I sat in a lounge chair, drinking a margarita, all the way to Newark. Life just doesn’t get any better than this…

Iowa Day Two…

So I finally got to teach today in my miracle classroom. The class was wonderful, enthusiastic, and a joy to work with. I had sixteen women of all body types make a jacket pattern from my basic jacket design, that would fit them. It was a long day, but they were all great sports, and I can’t wait to see the jackets they make from them. There was a small glitch when I couldn’t figure out how to get the projector to work, odd since it worked the day before, and reluctantly I called for tech support, and while I was waiting for them to arrive, I figured out I was pushing the wrong button to power it up. Duh…

A hurried late afternoon, I had to pack up, get over across campus to eat a quick dinner, race over to the Theatre for the fashion show rehearsal, and then the actual fashion show. I love fashion shows at conferences. And I love it when the weavers/makers wear their own work. So here are a few highlights while we were all milling around the dance studio waiting for line-up.

Here I am once again, modeling my Frosted Florals dress, which made it back from Kansas City and the Surface Design Fashion Show on time to bring it to Iowa. This dress has seen a lot of mileage so far. Literally.

I just loved this Victorian Walking Skirt by Christy Berry from Kansas City, MO. It has a gray warp and yellow weft, from 20/2 perle cotton, plain weave. The design is original.

This is an Anita Luvera Mayer of Anacortes, WA, garment titled “Woman Warrior”. It is a vest of Melton cloth with rows of beaded and hand sewn mosaic pieces. It was inspired by a bone warrior vest from Sumatra. Anita was one of the instructors here at the conference.

Speaking of warriors, this piece was amazingly original, from Melinda Raber McCain, of Indianapolis, IN. The piece is titled Warrior Princess, it is handwoven armor, in a Shadow Weave, 5/2 cotton, black and gray. It is an original design. And it was modeled by one of the Grinnell College tech support students.

And I loved the colors and textures in this vest by instructor Collyer Ekholm, from Swisher, IA. This is called Shaman’s Vest, and is woven from cotton and silk, in a variety of weave structures for the panels. Japanese braids done on the Marudai, Takadai, and Ayatakedai are all couched onto the fabric. Collyer teaches kumihimo on the Marudai and Takadai.

After the fashion show there was a lovely reception in the rotunda outside of the Faulconer gallery. I had four garments in the fashion show, and my finale piece was one called Aurora Borealis, which I made draping a couple yards of an old plain weave fabric I had floating around, on my dressform, making heavy use of the bias, and holding it all together with one seam. We were asked to mill around the reception in the garment we wore for the fashion show, so I wore Aurora Borealis, and was thrilled to grab a shot with John Mullarky. John was also an instructor here, he is a fabulous tablet weaver, and author of a terrific book of tablet woven patterns, known for his amazing braids, and I just had to get a shot of him in his jacket, which he made in a workshop with me, using the same pattern I fit on sixteen women today. I love the versatility of this jacket! And he trimmed the whole thing with his own tablet woven braids. The jacket is really beautiful.

This next shot needs some explaining. Wednesday night when I gave my gallery talk at the Small Expressions Exhibit, I was actually standing in an adjacent gallery when I gave my talk, where they had an exhibit of images of butterflies and other natural wonders. I happened to be standing to the right of the screen and was unaware of what was on the wall behind me. Later, one of the audience members came up and told me that I had wings behind me the whole time I talked. She pointed to the large butterfly print behind me on the wall, and was able to grab a photo of me in front of the butterfly print after the reception tonight. I thought it was pretty funny. Course I wasn’t wearing this dress, but never-the-less, the wings added to the whole aura of the evening.

Stay tuned…

OMG!

I just got an alert, my dress, Frosted Florals is on the front page of the Threads Magazine website! Thanks Tien!

The conference is going well, course I haven’t done anything all day but hang out, chat, and set up my class room. It is beastly hot here. I’d say 110 degrees in the shade. And the poor vendors, are in an airless gym with no AC, and people are dropping like flies. Still, it is a feast for the eyes, enjoy the photos, looms, yarn, shuttles, books, too much to look at!

The cute looms are from Glimakra, I spent a lot of time in their booth, though I’m not in the market for a new loom, I can’t help but be impressed by their ability to keep up with new trends in looms, always thinking and redesigning, and they are always a joy to chat with.

I spent some time with Joanne Hall getting a real demo of their band loom. I like this loom, and I think I’ll put it on my wish list, it is for making inkle bands, and has a warp and cloth beam so very long lengths of bands can be done without having to rewarp the inkle loom every couple of yards. Hmmmm…….

I was able to get back to the Faulconer gallery this afternoon to take a better look at the Small Expressions Exhibit, and grab a couple of gallery shots. This is a beautiful space, and I enjoyed the intimacy they were able to achieve with all of these very small works, if you can believe, my tiny post card size works are in the first photo all the way in the corner furthest away from the camera. Sort of the last pieces on the wall on the left. You can’t even see there are two pieces side by side.

So I don’t cause you any further eyestrain…

I got my classroom set up, and I have to say this, I have died and gone to faculty heaven. I want to be buried in this classroom. It is high tech, just popped my little pen drive into the system (and after much fiddling, etc.) my presentation came up on the huge wall, I played with the little wall switch for awhile, making the window shades go up and down electronically, the table space is huge, and there is a nice wall in the back to hang my garments for display.

And as I walked across campus, I grabbed some shots of the gorgeous colors in the gardens, I think these would make beautiful palettes for fabric, especially the ones with the greys.

The keynote address is tonight, it is always a joy to listen to Madelyn van der Hoogt, editor of Handwoven Magazine from Interweave press.

I have to say, I adore mid-western weavers. They are so great to work with, so helpful, and so kind. Lots of smiles, and lots of hugs, though we are all doing virtual hugs because of the heat… And there isn’t a lot of handwoven stuff being worn today, I can assure you.

Stay tuned…

I Made It!

I’m sure you are all sitting on pins and needles (pun intended), wondering if I made it yesterday to the gallery talk. In all my years of airplane travel, I was truly surprised at how uneventful the flight was, easily moving in and out of Newark, Houston, and then the tiny Des Moines airport. I landed at 4:15, grabbed all my bags, and was on the road by 4:30, which by New Jersey standards is the beginning of rush hour. We hit the interstate, and sailed along with what I thought was no traffic at all, and pulled onto the campus of Grinnell College at 5:30. A quick dump of the bags, and I was off to the restaurant, where I had a lovely dinner with tapestry artist Kathe Todd-Hooker, who weaves tapestries from sewing thread) and Pat Spark, who is well known for her watercolor felt tapestries. Kathe and Pat have a joint business selling books and materials, called Fine Fiber Press. The Faulconer Gallery director and curator treated us to a lovely dinner, and we all had a fine relaxing time. We made the quick dash to the gallery around 7pm, where a very large assembled crowd had gathered, and I rode in quite the style, the curator’s truck had been glitterized by a group of young people involved in, well, I can only call it something of a performance piece? I give you the “Sparkle Truck”.

The truck was completely covered with glitter. It was very cool.

The gallery talk went smoothly, the equipment all worked, I had some wonderful responses after my presentation, and I have some time today to go back and really look at the show, Small Expressions 2009.

Stay tuned…

Down to the Wire!

Ah, packing day. I leave tomorrow morning for Grinnell, Iowa, and the Midwest Weavers Conference. The day before I leave on a trip is always a little frenetic, getting everything finished I put on my list, things like watering the plants, finishing the laundry, organizing bills so I can pay them the day I return, and filling up the suitcases with everything I need to bring for the trip. And because this is a weaving conference, it means pouring over the notes in my files, what I promised for the faculty exhibit, what I promised for the fashion show, what I need for each of the classes, and any supplies I need to bring for any seminar I am actually taking.

This conference has been a little nerve wracking, for a number of odd reasons. First, this will be the first time in years I’ve traveled without my own LCD projector. I know I longed for the day when I could fly someplace, armed with only a stick drive or CD, pop it in, and start the presentation. I have been assured, at great length, that the different facilities I am lecturing in, all have projectors and equipment for both PowerPoint, and PDF presentations. So, this means back ups of everything. I have a CD copy in one suitcase, my laptop in another, my stick drive in my purse, and another hard drive in another suitcase. One can never have enough back ups, and one has to remember to update all of the back ups when one changes anything on a presentation…

This has been another nerve wracking down to the wire experience because of the proverbial overlap of work, coming from one exhibit, hopefully in time to take to the next. When an artwork finishes up at an exhibit, there is always a lag, as the volunteers or committee get to the packing and shipping of each work. It is an overwhelming job, and I’m not really complaining, but I asked when I shipped the piece to the last exhibit if they could make an exception and get mine back to me sooner than the contract stated. That’s always a crap shoot, and I was really lucky, the Frosted Florals Dress made it back to me from the Surface Design Fashion Show in Kansas City with 6 hours to spare, in time to pack it for the conference.

And then there was the 37 pound box I shipped last week, to someone in Grinnell Iowa. I got an email notification it was delivered, but what I didn’t know, was that the address I had been given was wrong, and someone called today from the conference to say they retrieved the package from a vacant house. I’m really glad I didn’t know this until after the fact. It would have been hard to teach the class without the handouts and the pattern paper, which were in the box, along with hundreds of dollars of Monographs.

The most stressful of all, that I absolutely have no control over whatsoever, is the flight. So, here is the itinerary, I fly out of Newark around 9am tomorrow to the hot spot of air travel, Houston. Home of the summer thunderstorm. I have a couple hour layover in Houston, and then on to Des Moines, Iowa. Thunderstorms are forecast for tomorrow in Newark, in Des Moines, and I’m sure Houston. I arrive in Iowa at 4:17, and have a dinner engagement at 5:15 (it takes more than an hour from the airport to the conference), and then I have to give a lecture at the Faulconer Gallery for the Small Expressions Exhibit reception at 7pm. So you do the math… The chances of me actually making it for dinner are pretty slim. The chances of making it in time for the reception/gallery talk are only slightly better. I’m pretty good at just letting go of that with I can’t control, but I went ahead and followed up with a plan B, I wrote out the whole talk and plugged it into a PowerPoint presentation along with the accompanying images, and emailed it to the gallery. So if I don’t make it in time, my words of wisdom will be projected on a screen for all to read instead of listening to my lovely voice with a wicked NJ accent. It is about the best I could come up with.

I am all packed, except for my personal clothing, and files are all copied and backed up. My daughter has a trombone recital tonight, I look forward to it every year. The sound of brass instruments including the Baroque Sackbut (early trombone) in a vaulted ceiling church is just gorgeous. The kids are wickedly talented, and the music teacher, Bob Ferrel, is one of the best trombone players in the state. Here is a video clip of a performance he did at the middle school jazz festival in our town last year. Skip past the talking part in the beginning.

So, once again, I’m on the road, I’ll be home late Sunday night, I am assured they have wireless in the dorms, oh goody, I get to sleep on a plastic dorm mattress… But the good news is, I’ll be seeing my friend Robyn Spady again, and my oldest and dearest friend, weaver/designer Candiss Cole, will be only an hour away in Des Moines at a craft festival. I’m hoping we can connect while I’m there.

Will Daryl make it tomorrow night, or won’t she, that is the question… Stay tuned…