Blog Entries – Page 162

Following Directions

I remember when I was in grammer school, the first standardized tests were introduced, and we had to color in those little circles with the number two pencil. Couldn’t be an HB, had to be a number two. Following directions is the bain of my existence. I am a creative soul, and want to do it my way.

So of course, I’m in a field where I am constantly writing proposals, filling out applications, entering exhibitions, and everyone wants the information in a different format. Use to be I could pretty much anticipate what the general desired information would be, write it up in PDF format, and attach it to the application, but now many of the shows, and conferences are requesting electronic transmissions through something called Juried Art Service. The first time I set up my profile there it took me two days. Now that I have it, I still have to keep editing, and filling out all the little fields and boxes which don’t always match with what I’m trying to say. Makes me really long for those little circles and my trusty number two pencil.

measure fold hem So the good news is I finished the Big Sister piece. Once I cut it off the loom, I had to hem it into a perfect 18″ square, steaming, pressing and blocking the image so it would full up a bit, and the spaces would close up. There are very specific directions for this exhibit, the Members Show, “Surface Matters” at the Surface Design Conference in Kansas City in May. The prospectus is very detailed, so I carefully read, re-read, and think I have it all in order. There has to be a 1 1/2 inch rod pocket sewn on the back, a half inch from the top and side edges, and a label with my name and the name of the piece safety pinned in the back. I chose to hand sew it on. Hope that was OK. Now I have to go to Juried Art Services online and update my profile with the image of the piece, fill out the application online, pay the entry fee, and then print the application and include it with the shipped piece, which has to go out tomorrow.

I took my daughter to volleyball tonight, and sat for an hour and a half finishing up the handwork on the piece, which worked out great, and then I raced home, threw dinner together, tacos are a wonderful quick dinner, and then we hit the stores in search of stuff for props. My daughter is in the ensemble for the HS Musical, “A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Forum”. Sadly I’ll miss the entire show because of the California conference, but it has been fun watching my daughter, who with a roll of duct tape, can make anything, take on making all the props, including the bust of Domina, an ancient scroll and a giant rose bush. Tonight we had to come up with Roman coins in a bag, washers from Home Depot took care of that. And I had a little draw string bag I kept my glue sticks in, prop so off she ran with that. Next was large feather plumes she could make into a giant fan, the kind the slaves used to fan the royalty. That was a little more problematic and a lot more costly. Armed with the Michael’s 40% coupons, we picked up some white plumes, and a bamboo pole, put a white plastic hanger into the top of the pole after she cut off the hanger loop with a hack saw, and wired the plumes to the hanger in a fan shape. She just has to finish wrapping the base of the feathers with duct tape to secure them. I have to make a run to Party City tomorrow for Gladiator Sandals.

Off to finish cleaning my bathrooms, I accomplished a lot today, and I’m really looking forward to a good night’s sleep….

Progress on Big Sister

I was able to make a lot of progress today on the piece I started yesterday. I made so much progress, I’m 2/3 of the way through. So I’d like to think that I’ll get it off the loom tomorrow, but who knows, life keeps taking all sorts of twists and turns…

I’ll describe how I did the piece, if you aren’t a handweaver and are reading this, it will go right over your head I’m sure, but bear with me, I always get really interested people whenever I lecture on the Theo Moorman technique, and I’m doing this a slightly different way, with a pick-up. First the draft:

I am threading the first and second shaft with gray 10/2 cotton, and shafts three and four are threaded with gray polyester sewing thread. So the ground fabric is a plain weave with shafts one and two, and the thin tie-down threads are on shafts three and four.

step1 First I lift shaft 1 and 3, and weave across with the 10/2 cotton in the shuttle.

step2 Then I drop shaft one, and insert a pick-up stick, which is an 1/8″ dowel that I shaved the ends on to make it pointy. The pick-up stick goes under the threads on shaft 3, the sewing thread, picking up only the threads I want to hold up through the next four rows. That way, the tie-down threads will weave into the background on the sides where the silk strips won’t be woven in. I release shaft 3.

step3 I lift shafts 2 and 4, and before I weave the next shot, I push the pick-up stick up against the reed. That lifts the tie-down threads from shaft 3 up and keeps them out of the way. I weave across with my cotton weft. I beat the weft in place, which moves the pick-up stick back to the fell line (last row of weaving) and then release shafts 2 and 4.

step4

I lift shafts 1 and 3, and weave a shot of weft across, the pick-up stick remains at the fell line.

Then I repeat the previous step, lifting shafts 2 and 4, pushing the pickup stick against the reed, weave a shot of weft, and beat into place. The pick-up stick moves back to the fell line.

ready_for_strip One more shot of weft, with shafts 1 and 3 lifted, for a total of five shots, it is important to weave an odd number of shots, once the strip is placed, the next row will raise the opposite set of tie-down threads.

The piece should look like this, remove the pick up stick, and lower shaft 1. All that remains raised, are the tie-down threads on shaft 3.

I carefully take my silk strip (see the blog from yesterday for information on this part of the story), and place it under the raised tie-down threads.

with_strip I beat that strip gently into place, and change the shed to raise shafts 2 and 4, and start the process all over again, but this time shafts 2 and 4 lead, with the pick-up stick placed under the tie-down threads on shaft 4. You eventually get into a rhythm.

I could really use a boat shuttle with a lower profile, I’ve seen them around, made for the Structo Looms I think. My weaving buddy Sally had a couple at a meeting once, and I thought they would make weaving on a table loom so much more efficient. But for now, since I mostly do yardage on large floor looms, this is what I have to work with and I just scoot it across the shallow shed, until it gets to the other side. If I wanted speed, I’d use the floor loom. An advantage of the table loom is that shafts stay up by themselves while you are manipulating the silk strip. Speed isn’t so important here.

It is late and bedtime is looking like a pretty great concept…

Big Sister Revisited

What an odd day. I had some very sad news this morning, after my celebration yesterday of my 7th anniversary of my cancer diagnosis, one of my very best friend’s was diagnosed with breast cancer. I’m so sad for her, this is such an epidemic, that I almost feel like it isn’t a matter of if, but when… The good news is that it is in a pretty early stage and with careful treatment it should all be fine. But that doesn’t help right now, you still have to go through the misery and fear of a diagnosis, not everyone responds to your news in the best most supportive way, and the road will be a thorny and uncomfortable one. But like I told her this morning, what ever side of the spiritual fence you sit on, I firmly believe that the universe sends angels, lots of them, to guide you through this maze, and they are always there in disguise, you just have to know they are there and look for them. The fiber community really rallied around me when I was diagnosed, I got some lovely cards, handwoven scarves, cookies in the mail from Connecticut, love and support through phone calls and emails. Oddly enough my favorite emails came from Duchess, a lovely black Labrador who had also just had a mastectomy and we corresponded through her owner for a couple of years. Oh, and I loved the email from some wonderful angel who said to me, “You can’t die, because I haven’t taken a workshop with you yet.” That might sound like an odd thing to say, but it gave me a good laugh and kept me going through another couple of chemo treatments, it lifted my spirits in a way that said, I was so much more than this disease and I wasn’t done here yet.

I also had a phone call which thrilled me, the rumor from a very reliable source, is that Pellon will eventually be printing the red dot plates onto a pattern medium they already had in the archives with seems to be identical to the base fabric of the original red dot tracer from HTCW, which has sadly been discontinued. If you haven’t followed this thread of the blog, I’ve been in hot pursuit of a suitable pattern tracing medium to replace the discontinued Red Dot Tracer, and it seems I only have to wait a bit longer. 🙂

I had to switch gears today, I wanted to send a piece to the members exhibit at the Surface Design Conference in Kansas City. The deadline is March 1st. I was under the assumption that they wanted an image by March 1st, but when I reread the prospectus, it calls for the actual piece, 18″ square to be sent to them by that date. I had been planning to use the photo of the 16″ version, and if accepted would weave the 18″ version. But alas, they need an actual piece.

release_backing So I brought my table loom over to the cutting table , which is really convenient because I can stand and cut the strips as I weave them in. The second or third blog I wrote back in December described the process and gave the draft, using a Theo Moorman threading. I weave about a quarter inch of ground fabric, then lay in on top a thin strip of silk, and hold it down with poly sewing thread which is warped in with the cotton ground. The strip is part of a childhood photograph I printed on 10mm silk Habotai, which comes on an 8.5″ x 10′ roll, pretreated for ink jet ink, and mounted on paper for easy transport through the printer. I got this from Dharma Trading. By running two lengths of this silk, 8.5″ x 16″ long, I could print a much larger image, since I’m stripping it anyway, it doesn’t matter if it is in two pieces.

table_loom In the first photo, I found if I score the paper backing with a sharp ruler edge, I can get it started easier than fumbling with the corner. In the second photo, I am peeling the paper backing off the silk. In the third photo, I am remove_backing cutting the strips of silk, I cut them about 3/16″. You can see there are two big sections that make up the image. The last photo is of the table loom, you can see I have two strips woven in already. I’ll describe more about the weaving process later. I figured out a way to do a pick up of the tie down threads so only the ones I need are actually held out, the rest on the side get woven into the ground.

This will be a slightly larger version of one I sold, called Big Sister. The photo is from around 1957, of my younger sister and me, caught in an intimate moment. The photo is the smaller version. In the December blog, I was weaving the same piece, but 24″ wide. My sister saw it on my blog and tearfully requested one for her, she even offered to pay me, but since she is the other child in the slice_photo photograph, it is only fair she gets this one once I have exhibited it.

Anniversary

I had to write a second entry for today, because this is a really important day for me, it was right about now, seven years ago, 2/22/2002, that I woke from anesthesia and my surgeon told me the news, that I had breast cancer. There is no way to predict or describe how one feels or reacts to that kind of news, numb, stoic, shock, indifference because you are groggy and not processing anything being told to you, denial, this of course can’t possibly happen to me. No fear, not yet, that comes later.

Seven years later, though the experience is still fresh, it has clouded over by time, and it has been, properly in my opinion, reduced to just one chapter of an interesting and creative life. To say that this experience changed the way I view life would be an understatement. Ask anyone who has tasted mortality, and they will tell you that each day becomes precious, and that fear dissipates, what’s the worse that can happen, I might die? Well I’ve been there. I remember being on a tiny plane, tossing about in the sky, on my way to the Pendleton ANWG conference not long after I finished my treatment. I was coincidently sitting next to someone who was attending the conference as well. As we were tossed about, there was an odd calm between us, she had also been through a medical issue that allowed her to see her mortality, and we both knew there was nothing to do but ride out the storm. And if it wasn’t in our deck of cards to survive, well then there was the trust that the universe had a plan, and we were a part of it. I know that all sounds like a bit of pontification, but survivors know, it isn’t about what happens in your life, it is what you ultimately do with it.

I did survive, seven more years, and I’d like to think I’ll be around for another 7, or 14, or 28 or more. And I’d like to think that in that time there will be many more pieces to create, and grand adventures to experience. I created a piece of artwork, that made the memory of my experience very visible, yet celebratory, titled Survivor, which I won’t post here because it is a graphic piece, but just click on the title and you can view it. I rewove the piece in miniature for the Small Expressions show and for the Economies of Scale show, both talked about in earlier blogs.

Life isn’t about how many body parts you have or don’t have, it isn’t about the body at all. It is just a vehicle to get us through the life we have at the moment, and making the body we have do what we need it to do to celebrate each day. So every 2/22, I celebrate my own personal anniversary of survival, and remember to seize each day, and make the most of it.

Party

It is a rare day I’m not in the studio. This weekend had some chances for socializing and being with family, on Saturday, my step niece turned 18, and my step sister threw her a lovely party in a facility in western NJ. The drive out west was beautiful, and the party was, well, very 18! Next to my mom, I was the oldest female there. 🙂

party At one point the room full of 18 year olds, emptied as they all went out side on the terrace, and the couple of us there over the age of 40 (over 50 for me) took full advantage of the DJ, dancing like we were 18 again, to things like ABBA’s Dancing Queen. Even my mom at 78 got in there, saying, “If Meryl Streep can do it, so can I!”

This is a photo from the party of my mom, my daughter and me.

I’ll see my mom again today (twice in a weekend is really unusual since she lives in Maryland) when we head down to Philadelphia in a couple hours to see a theatrical production.

Later yesterday evening, we had a visit from the accountant, yes, mine still does housecalls. We have used him since I first started my business in 1980, and he knows how to make sense of my paperwork and bookkeeping. So the taxes for last year are done, all that’s left is for him to produce the final document, sign off, and send off to the IRS.