What do I want to be when I grow up?

This is going to be a long one… Sorry… With lots of pictures… Not sorry…

I went to a concert today, called a cabin concert, popular with singer songwriters, in someone’s house, way out in the woods, where people gather, to listen to invited artists play. It is intimate, and entertaining, and I usually enjoy myself when I go. One of the artists featured today is a good friend. She is a wonderful song writer, her songs are based on things that happen to her in every day life.

I sat next to a woman, who is also friends with this artist, though we didn’t know each other. When in musical settings such as this, there are standard questions, “Are you a musician yourself?”, and other kinds of openers. I shake my head, and mutter something about playing recorder with an early music group, but I was there to support my friend, and enjoy the afternoon. The conversation kept going, and this is always where it gets awkward, because what I really do for a living is very complicated, there are no easy ways to describe succinctly. I mention I’m in the arts, or I’m an artist, and right away, there is the assumption that I’m a painter. Which I’m not. Eventually I mention I work in fiber, and that sets off a whole other series of questions, ending with I’m a weaver. Well what do you weave? Clothing. The conversation with this fellow concert goer then dropped into amusing territory, huge assumptions on her part, and I end up just smiling as this person has no clue what I do and what I’m interested in, and I’m really not in the mood to explain. Since this person has experience with reenactments, of all sorts of wars, she felt certain that I’d make a killing taking my handwoven clothing to reenactments, especially the one in Fredericksburg, MD, where there are knowledgeable people who want handwoven anything, and are willing to pay for it. Sigh…

I’ve come across many people in my career who think that they know what’s best for me and my work. Who wouldn’t want to make a killing in the right market? I was glad the music started up again, because the thought of setting up a booth with my handwoven clothing, which I did all through the 1980’s, made me slightly nauseous. This is definitely not the direction I am headed.

So where am I headed…

I’m in a unique position where I’ve done a lot with my life, and I’m proud of what I’ve done. I’m proud of the students I’ve empowered to create from their hands, and I’m really looking forward to fiber as a hobby. Imagine that…

I live in Suburban Northern NJ, about 20 miles west of Manhattan. I have a small half acre of land, which my husband and I meticulously landscaped in the late 1980’s after we added a sizable addition to the house, and needed to create decking and tiered plantings, and so we hired a professional landscaper to draw out plans. We did the work ourselves, but what plants to plant where, was all designed by this professional. I need to mention that in the late 1980’s, landscaping took on a completely different direction, because all the new exotic imported plants from Japan and Asia were becoming available and they created lovely color and texture all year round. We planted profuse amounts of Japanese Barberry, Kousa Dogwood, Burning Bush, Continus or Smoke Bush, and a number of other things that now are considered invasive, not native, and in the case of Barberry, destroying the understory in all of the forest parts around where I live and really, the planet. The push is on to remove everything that is not native.

I recently attended a number of lectures, and listened to a few podcasts, all on invasive species. Some of the lectures were on foraging these materials for textile use, making baskets, weaving, eco printing, natural dyeing, and even papermaking. Some of the lectures were on planting native pollinators to attract caterpillars which attract more bird species because we all know the planet is in trouble, and all I can do is fix my own backyard. I went to a lecture last Sunday at Greenwood Gardens, an estate garden open to the public in Northern NJ, featuring author Doug Tallamy, University of Delaware Professor of Botany and other things.

Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard by Douglas W. Tallamy

It was probably the best lecture I’ve ever heard and I came home miserably depressed because my beautiful yard is destroying the planet. Well I’m being overly dramatic, I can’t fix the rest of the world, but I can try to fix my own.

So this is just one corner of my front yard. Note that every other bush is a Japanese Barberry. I have a gardener, and I’ve finally convinced him that each bush eventually has to go, but in it I can research native plants, and possible plants that can work for natural dyeing, basketry, weaving, eco printing, etc. So I have the smallest of hope here that I might make a difference with my little corner of the planet and add to my textile fun.

I’m pretty expert at making handwoven clothing, but I’m enough of a novice at everything else to know I don’t know anything. Except what we touched on in college in the 70’s. So I’m taking things very slowly. My gardener removed two of probably a dozen Barberries this week, and I’m getting opinions as to what to replace them with. Meanwhile, he has a black walnut tree in his front yard and brought me a huge bucket of black walnut hulls. I made a dye with them. Both skeins are dyed with black walnut hulls, the darker one on the right has an iron modifier, rust water from a bucket of rusty iron found throughout my house added briefly to the end of the dyebath.

And I did scamper across the street, to a huge patch of overgrown weeds between two properties, and didn’t think anyone would mind if I stole all the pokeberries from the two bushes there. And yes, I do know that anything purple with anthocyanins is not light fast and will fade with washing over time. Still, it was fun, and for now, I got a really pretty magenta on this skein of silk and wool.

And another area, which has always fascinated me was plant tinctures, because before big pharma, we had herbal medicine. I usually obtain Sweet Annie (Artemisia Annua) tincture from my herbalist friend (coincidently the singer songwriter I heard at this afternoon’s cabin concert, who wrote a song when her Artemisia didn’t come up that year) but this year, she gave me a couple of plants and apologized because it will take over my yard. But I made my first tincture from Artemisia in 80 proof vodka and it is sitting on my counter curing. I look forward to my home remedy for curing colds, flu, and I’ve even heard it is great for Covid. (I did use it when I had Covid this time last year, and my symptoms were so mild I didn’t realize I had it, which could be coincidental)

I took a class last weekend in Eco Printing through my guild, using the dirty pot method. I’ve taken workshops before in Eco Printing, and am a fan of an iron blanket, but this was the workshop, and the results were OK, I wished for more clarity in the middle. The scarf blank is a silk/wool from Dharma Trading.

We also, while the bundles were boiling in the dirty pot (a pot of water, preferably aluminum, with iron chunks, and a copper pipe, and some onion skins, and whatever else she dumped in there), played around with flower pounding. I’ve never done this before, so this was fun and entertaining. I had an old cutting board and a hammer and we were given cotton towels, pre-mordanted with Aluminum Triformate, and I got a bit carried away.

Of course when I went to wash it a couple days later, after I heat set it with an iron, all the purples (from anthocyanins of course) washed out. Still, I have a fun dishtowel, and I can still see the ghost outline of the amaranth.

And we experimented with a heat press, pressing leaves and flowers onto treated watercolor paper. I don’t own a heat press, and have no intention of buying one, but it was fun to experiment. I have seen more interesting prints from Jane Dunnewold, but I love first time trying anything… You never know.

I went back to Greenwood Gardens on Wednesday, for a day of artistic sketching, painting, and photography. Bring any medium you like to work in, and park yourself and your easel and get to work. I picked the hardest building on the property, the two story summer tea house, with stone wrap around steps down both sides, and all sorts of sculptures, and proceeded to sketch.

I work in pencil, mostly because I’m rusty getting proportions right, and I erase a lot, and then I ink the important things. Then I use water color pencil, and later add water with a fine brush. Here is the result and it was a gorgeous fall day and I met so many interesting artists, oil painters, watercolorists, and a woman, probably in her 50’s who has been journaling every day since she was 10. I envy her commitment to a daily practice, though I’ve been writing this blog since 2008. With more than 900 posts, I’ve done OK for myself. I don’t care who reads it, because it is a personal journal that happens to be full of pictures and is available on the internet.

Anyway, the discussion of native plants and pollinators was part of every conversation with people involved in gardening. Turns out woman with the journals has a neighbor into natural dyeing and they just did some indigo. Small world…

Meanwhile, I have until the 24th to finalize all the stuff I’ve made for the Jockey Hollow Show and Sale, November 3-5. That’s when I submit my spreadsheet and get my bar coded tags back.

More bunnies…

More bear ornaments…

Zippered kit bags…

Zippered regular bags…

A Ginger Jar…

Tote bags…

And I’ve found an easy way to insert a separating zipper in the top without feeling like I’m wrestling an alligator…

And of course I have my constant companion laying in the middle of whatever I’m working on…

So what do I want to be when I grow up? A good steward of the land? A weaver that uses what’s available and is constantly learning new fields in botany, chemistry, and medicine, all with what’s available in my own backyard? It isn’t important for me to define my goals at all, because I’ve always been about the journey, and this is no different. I’m using up stuff from my old life, and repurposing it and creating something to help support my guild. What doesn’t sell will go to a pop-up shop in the theatre lobby of the Shakespeare Theatre of NJ’s final production this December. Giving back is important to me. I try to walk into town every other day, pick up the groceries for the day, and carry them home. The other morning, in a foggy dew, the spiders were busy creating webs for Halloween, captured by the morning sun. I didn’t have the heart to tell them I’m going to be ripping all those plants out…

Stay tuned…

But mommy, I want him…

I’m continuing on my attic cleaning and making more stuff for the guild sale with my mother lode of scraps of handwoven fabrics from the archives. I made two more squirrels, from leftover bits of mohair, and while I was working on the second one, I plopped the other one on the ironing board.

Mulder the studio cat of course had to check out something that looked suspiciously like what he hunts in the middle of the night…

And typically had to check out the back end.

Satisfied said squirrel did not pose a threat, and being of a soft mohair and cuddly surface, Mulder decided to curl up next to him.

The face pleading, can I keep him, can I?

Sadly he can’t keep him, because the dogs would destroy the squirrels and anything else I have that’s stuffed in about 10 minutes. They gleefully dive right into anything with stuffing. So Mulder can’t have his little buddy…

I’ve been able to create another jacket from the mohair scraps of a different colorway. I had a well meaning friend tell me they were really ugly, and that kind of stung, I rather liked them, and they were fun to make, and super functional, I’m hoping there is someone who will appreciate them at the guild sale.

Almost ready for the final pressing…

I worked out an alternative to the white mohair stocking ornament tops. I ran out of the white mohair fabric, so found a soft white yarn and just crocheted round and round…

And I cut out a dozen little bear ornaments for the guild sale. I spent hours looking through my vast button stash, trying to find three of something that would work for each of the bears, and getting them sewn on, making little “kits” so I can sit and put them together while on zoom meetings or listening to a podcast, or Textiles and Tea, whatever…

Of course my trusty studio assistant had to leap onto the ironing board and keep everything in order… Sigh…

I managed to make two of them…

On Sunday, a local sheep farm, part of the NJ Fibershed, held a community dye day. A lot of work for the teacher Pamela Jenkins, a natural dyer from Maryland, and we had dyebaths to use with our pre mordanted yarns, (alum and cream of tartar) plus a station for botanical printing (results were disappointing, I think better compression would have helped) and a chance to use an indigo bath using Polygonum Tinctorium Indigo, which can grow in this climate. Interesting thing was using fresh leaves, and puréeing them in a blender with ice. This is appealing to me, since I never wanted to start a fermented indigo vat. I don’t have indigo on the property so I’d have to plant some. I waited to rinse my skeins which were 65% silk and 35% wool, for about 48 hours, a suggestion by the teacher. They are now dry, and some of the color did wash out, but I’m sure the volume of dyestuff vs the amount of yarn/fabric we dyed, really wouldn’t yield strong results. Still, it is a pretty palette. Willow, fresh indigo, butternut husks, elderberry, hollyhock flowers, and artemisia.

The day after I posted my last blog I got this gorgeous bench in the mail. Or rather shipped. I ordered my custom bench from Walt Turpening exactly a year ago. I wanted the gradation in the woven seat. Walt custom winds the cotton cordage to achieve the gradation. We spent a lot of time with measurements, loom and body, to determine the best bench height. Unfortunately the two looms I expect to use the bench with, are both empty. It is on my list this winter to get them both warped so I can try out the bench.

Meanwhile, I did finally clear the table loom with the Bateman blend. I didn’t get a lot of yardage, and it was really tedious. I’m happy with the results, and am thinking of designing a laptop slip case. I have one from Peru and want to copy how it was done.

The loom next to it had a 4-shaft doup leno structure threaded on 8 shafts. I wrote an issue of Heddlecraft Magazine, (Issue #19) on doup leno, a technique where using half doups on shaft two allows the loom to crisscross certain threads creating an open airy structure that is very stable. The warp and wefts were hand-dyed cashmere so this is super soft. It seemed like the warp that never ended, and I finally got up and looked at my original drafting notes and realized I put five yards of warp on this little loom. Nearing the end of the warp, and wanting to squeeze in a couple fat yarns for headers, I discovered this cool tool that now I can’t live without. It is called a “Poke” Shuttle. I never heard of such a thing, but they were selling them in a few lengths at Red Stone Glen for their open house last June, made by Bluster Bay Shuttles. They just felt so lovely in the hand I bought three. The yarn just grips around the end of the shuttle allowing it to be able to poke through the narrow shed. It may have a different purpose, but I loved it for this task, and of course all Bluster Bay shuttles just melt in your hand…

I managed to get a long scarf and a pretty cowl from the handdyed cashmere.

Meanwhile, my daughter is finishing up the edits in a video we shot last month, a one hour studio tour, which can be shown as a guild program. I wanted to recreate the studio tour I did for the HGA back in the fall of 2020 for Spinning and Weaving Week 2020, and wanted to document all the looms with warps. I am getting frequent texts with screen shots from my daughter down the hall with absolutely hilarious Transcription malfunctions. She first allows Adobe premiere to close caption the video, and then goes back and corrects. Textile terms in a transcription program are absolutely hilarious, looms become loons, and limbs, and lamps. Really, my diction is pretty spot on, you just have to increase your vocabulary sir! But the best Transcription malfunction I’ve ever seen is this…

It is supposed to read, “I would have sectionally warped 30 yards of mohair at a time”. There are no words…

And to wind up this blog post, I’ve had a lovely wonderful thing happen this past week. Something I can’t even wrap my head around, and keep pinching myself to see if I dreamed it or not. Long story short, assuming this all happens the way it is spelled out in the contract sitting on my desk, next spring, County College of Morris will feature my huge body of work both artwork and garments, dating back to the 90’s in their Main Gallery, a retrospective of sorts, along with video, audio, and a hands on component (aren’t you glad I have all those Structos) for about 6 weeks, transitioning to a smaller gallery for their year end student exhibition, and then back to the Main Gallery to coincide with the Morris County Teen Arts Festival in May, where I am to be the keynote speaker. Then the exhibition of my work will continue on until the end of August. It is especially lovely that this is my county college, and that both of my kids took classes there, and I even taught there for a semester way back. I have hosted two externs from there as well. So this feels like a perfect conclusion to a lifetime of work in the field. I’m especially touched that they asked me to give the keynote to the next generation of creative people. I have a lot of work to do on that address.

I hope the fall brings you beautiful colors, cooler weather, fun things to do with fiber, and friends to do those fun things with… And no Mulder, you still can’t have the squirrel…

Stay tuned…

Ducks in a Row…

This has been a wild week in the studio. First, a little back story…

If you have been following this blog over the past year or so, you know that I set out on a quest to warp all of the 64 looms in the studio, many of them table looms, Structos, or inkle looms. I blogged about them all over a few blog posts.

I’ve set out on a different quest to clear those looms, and rethink my life as to what I want to really hold on to moving forward… The floor looms, at least those that are mine and not my daughter’s, are all cleared. I am a yardage weaver and like nothing better than to sit and weave like a galloping horse. 10 yards, not really a problem. Though I can’t clear off the amount of yardage in one sitting like I could in my 20’s.

So now, I have a bunch of table looms to clear. And if I were really truthful, I hate weaving on a table loom. It is slow and tedious. Especially if there is a complex structure. Like a Bateman Blend, which I set up for a sample for an article I wrote for Heddlecraft Magazine. (Issue #38)

There is nothing like a table loom to explain structure, because you have to hand manipulate each shaft (and in this one there are 8), and though you can achieve a rhythm, it isn’t the same as when your hands and feet are all working together. I found myself bored and distracted. Constantly jumping up to do anything but… At one point I even redid the shaft tie-up system, as this was a used loom, and though I have six others like it, the previous owner did something odd that I thought prevented me from getting the shed I needed. So a trip to the hardware store, and some fine tuning, I was happy with the shed and struggled to get back to weaving.

Meanwhile, at the end of my last post, I talked about this cat appliqué quilt block I inherited from my mom, and I found that I was getting quite obsessed, almost addicted. It was all I wanted to do…

I’d set timers, ok, I’ll work on this section and then weave a few repeats, and then work on the appliqué some more as a treat. It worked for a while since I now have the knots over the back beam, there is only about 6 inches more to weave.

Mostly I would just sit and let my mind wander while I was stitching, and my mind wandered to the calendar. I looked ahead at the next couple months, and there is a lot coming up, private students, some teaching remotely, garden tours and lectures, interesting things, but what made me sit up and stop stitching, was realizing that my guild show and sale is only 2 months away.

Part of my musings are around the amount of equipment and stash that exists in my life. No one is complaining, but there comes a point when is it fair to me to keep holding stuff that is 40 years old? I’m not talking about usable yarn or fabric, I’m talking about scraps in my attic from my 1980 production years. I’ve worked over the last couple of decades to reduce the 18 bankers boxes filled to capacity. But there is still a lot up there. And a lot of it is mohair. Which isn’t so easy to use up in small pieces.

I took a stroll in my attic and started opening drawers, and pulled out one that had some mohair scraps, rather large ones, in a couple color ways, and brought them down to the studio. I got the idea of creating a sweater jacket using the same pattern as my beloved Noro jacket I wove a couple years ago.

I found the pattern and started playing around with what I had on the table. At first, I thought I’d just do a vest, but it was clear I could add a couple of sleeves with some careful piecing.

A couple of small balls of mohair blend in my knitting stash would work well for the crocheted trim around the perimeter of the jacket and the pockets. I’m about half way around.

Which left me with this pile of small scraps.

I reached out to some of my weaving buddies, and asked for ideas for what to do with small scraps of mohair. One of them suggested stuffed animals. I really haven’t made any stuffed animals, I always joke that I don’t do crafts, but the idea was intriguing. I have a data base of all my patterns, including the 20 years of Burda Style Magazine. I quickly found patterns for a squirrel and a rabbit.

There weren’t large enough pieces left in this pile of mohair to do either one, but I had also pulled out some other mohair scraps, thinking I could get a vest or jacket out of those, and they ended up perfect to cut this adorable squirrel. The issue of Burda Style was May 2014.

Meanwhile, I started to think about ornaments I used to make as teacher gifts when my kids were little. I dug out the box I had in my closet, along with an article in Handwoven magazine November/December 2003 (which I wrote, duh…) and thought, wow, some of these like the little bear would be great in mohair.

So I cut out a few bears, and a couple of birds, using a pattern I found along with the box of ornaments.

And I started playing around with a stocking. I didn’t like the first iteration, the one on the right, and my daughter helped me refine the pattern to the one on the left. I thought the body of the stocking was just a little to high, so I’ve cut out probably a half dozen just a little bit shorter.

Meanwhile, I grabbed some non mohair scraps, including a bag labeled, scraps for coiled mats. Most of the work was already done. I made a coiled mat out of one of the piles.

And then made a second one, using up a ball of filler cord. I have a huge spool in the attic, so there is plenty more mats in my future.

Meanwhile, I pulled this bag of non mohair scraps, it is a color way I always loved, and there wasn’t a lot left. One of my private students told me about a base fabric she uses for bags and totes, she is from the quilting world, called In-R-Form foam from Bosal. She actually sent me a few yards to play with. It is a foam with great stability, yet more flexibility than the Peltex I have been using. So, much easier to work on. I laid out a tote.

And finished it off yesterday morning.

Meanwhile, I took the scraps left from the tote, and cut more ornaments. I can’t tell you what a mess I made of my studio, pulling ribbons and floss and Ultrasuede scraps and most important, buttons. The cat parked himself right in the middle of it all to supervise.

So here are a bunch of ducks… All in a row!

And I have little project bags for each of the couple dozen ornaments I’ve cut out. I can grab one and start assembling.

And yesterday afternoon, I made a rabbit from another colorway of mohair I had up in the attic. This one is from a Burda Style Magazine April 2014. I’m completely in love with this rabbit, and would love to keep him, but I’d have to keep him in the closet because my dog likes things with stuffing. It would be destroyed in 10 minutes. And I would be heartbroken. So it will find someone else to live with at my guild sale in November. It needs a ribbon around its neck, perhaps an inkle band, and I might redo the mouth with a full six strands of floss.

I haven’t been this intense in the studio in years. I just want to be down there, working until midnight, forgetting to eat, pissed when I have an appointment to interrupt me. It feels like falling in love all over again. That Bateman Structure on the loom, I still have about 6″ to go, and I still have to finish the last 3 letters of the name of the cat in the quilt block. (And there are 8 more cat quilt blocks in the set). They will get done, but I’m just having way too much fun thinking of things to make with this bonanza of leftovers from the 1980’s.

There is a monograph showing all of the techniques I used, available on my website as a download. And I have 3 or 4 videos on my YouTube channel, The Weaver Sews, on the piecing technique I used for the tote bag. They were some of the last ones we shot.

My favorite month since I was a little kid was September. The change in weather, fresh pencils and notebooks, the chance to learn new things; September is always a shot in the arm for me. I’d say I dove in to this month head first…

Stay tuned…

Busy Hands…

Periodically I go through my phone and dump all the photos into my computer which then get backed up in the cloud. It keeps my phone storage reasonable, and then I can pull from those images for a blog. I feel like I only put up a blog a couple weeks ago, and there were so many photos in my phone to upload this morning. Meaning I’ve been busy…

I had a couple of private students booked for this past week, they arrived, and we got right to work. They were here to learn to weave yardage, and design with combination structures. They brought bins of yarn, and we supplemented with whatever I have. And I have a lot.

So here are my two students working on two of my looms, and the yardage they were creating. I adored both of them, we had a great time together.

What this all actually meant, was that I needed to have a couple of looms for them to choose from for their projects. If you’ve been following my blog, you know that all my looms have warps on them. I’d been systematically clearing the looms, leaving the finished cloth on them, so they didn’t feel naked, and because Mulder, the studio cat likes to use the fabric on the loom as a hammock. He has his favorites…

I had warps on five of our floor looms, I can’t do anything about my daughter’s looms. But I worked systematically and in the days leading up to the students’ arrival, I furiously wove off the chenille yardage. This meant that they could pick which loom served their physical needs best. Once they arrived, they tried out each of the looms, and I cut off the finished yardage so they could use those looms, while they wound their warps.

We needed to resley one of the projects, it clearly needed a denser set, so that meant I had to clear another loom they weren’t using to get the only 9 dent 25″ reed in the studio. It has been on my list for awhile to get a couple more, but I can never find 9 dent reeds used. Which means a lot of money…

And so, while I was at it, having already cleared three looms, I went ahead and cleared the remaining two. I had a nice pile of handwoven yardage on my ironing board.

I’ve washed and dried everything but the combination structure fabric, on my list to do this week. The chenille log cabin yardage is gorgeous.

The ice dyed warp I wove in a crackle structure is really beautiful and I’m mulling ideas for both of these yardages.

I haven’t washed the mohair yardage, I may climb into my bathtub with it as I left the fringe at either end, and I’m not sure what I want to make yet.

Mulder is pretty pissed that I’ve cleared the looms. He doesn’t have his favorite hammocks anymore. He is waiting…

And I pulled the finished kitchen set, four placemats (I had enough yardage to make a fifth), four plain weave napkins, and a long table runner, 6 shaft summer/winter, from a Webs design, Complete Kitchen Set. They are so gorgeous. I’m particularly proud of these. Apparently the design is from a Jacob Angstadt coverlet book, which I have, and I’m really hoping to get a chance to sit down and play with the profiles in that book and see what else I can come up with. Meanwhile, I just followed the directions in the draft book I bought from Webs. The reverse side is just as much fun.

Interesting thoughts running through my head though, as I washed and dried the entire roll, and then planned to cut apart after the fact. The directions say to weave a sewing thread seam allowance for the header. I know this is a common practice in a handwoven turned hem, to reduce bulk, but since I typically weave yardage for kitchen towels, and then cut apart based on the length of the finished yardage, I hadn’t actually tried this method. When I took the roll of fabric from the dryer and went to cut apart on the red line, I realized that I had grabbed polyester sewing thread, in a perfect match, and that poly sewing thread (which is what I use for sewing garments) doesn’t shrink, so the sewing thread seam allowances for the hems were wrinkly.

They still hemmed fine, but in my head, I’m like… “Stupid me, I should have used cotton…” But over the week I’ve been starting to hem by hand, I thought, wait a minute, cotton sewing thread isn’t designed to shrink in the wash, it is sort of pre-shrunk. You can’t sew a garment and not be able to wash it… So I’m sort of wondering what others do, the poly mushed up fine in the turned hem, but I’m thinking that a 20/2 cotton would have made more sense in a mid grey, rather than sewing thread. The body of the piece was 8/2.

In my last post, I mentioned the horrific mistake I made when I started the runner. I forgot to weave the header, I just wove the sewing thread seam allowance. I posted a photo of the situation.

A reader asked in the comments if I would elaborate on my planned fix, since they weren’t a garment maker (I mentioned a false hem), and so here is what I came up with. In all fairness, I did weave the seam allowance, so that was there, and I was able to recognize my mistake early enough, that when I finished the runner, I wove a section for a header with a sewing thread seam allowance on either side.

I pressed under the seam allowance on both long edges of the false header, and then encased the seam allowance from the runner.

I carefully pinned.

I sewed both sides of the false header by hand and seriously you absolutely can’t tell it was an add on. So the runner is finished, and one placemat and napkin are hemmed. Lots more to do. I love to sit at night and listen to classical music and do busy hand work. So I’ve been itching for a good handwork project.

Side story. My mom, who is 92 and gave me the foundation in sewing garments that led me to where I am today. Over the years as her life and lifestyle changed, no longer needing a fresh new seasonal wardrobe and having no children left to sew for, as we all grew up and sew for ourselves, she moved onto other textile techniques that could fill her creative needs. When my dad was alive, and they drove back and forth to Florida, she picked up counted cross stitch, since it was portable. I have some of her gorgeous counted cross stitch pieces all over the house. When my dad passed, she took up quilting, since she stayed in one place and could easily spread out. My dad hated clutter. (I always wondered how he tolerated our dining room turned into a sewing room for all those years I was growing up…)

Anyway, mom was pretty into the quilt block of the month club at Joann’s and many of her finished quilt blocks of the month cover my beds. I will admit, buying a kit does prevent stash acquisition build up, and it made sense for her. Years ago, she invested in a 9 block quilt block of the month that featured very detailed appliqué work of cats.

She had finally pulled out the first block and started figuring out how to actually trace off the small pieces and cut them from the assigned fabrics, when she fell right before Thanksgiving last year, and broke her shoulder. It has been a long year of recovery, and I completely get it, having gone through it myself a year before, but I’m in my 60’s and bounced back pretty quickly. At 92, she now needs aides at night, and she had to put all her projects away, so there was a room for the night aides to live. She understood that this cat appliqué would never get made. On my last visit, she handed me the whole bag and asked if I would make it…. Sigh…. You can’t be serious, was the first thing that popped in my head. I showed my daughter, who showed some slight enthusiasm, but she has so many creative irons in the pot, I can’t see her making any progress, at least in my lifetime.

Coincidentally, my students this weekend were both needleworkers. One of them looked at the quilt block packages and thought she had made one of the blocks and didn’t sound hugely enthusiastic. There are about 50 appliquéd pieces for each one, some as tiny as a pin head, and frankly, though I know how to hand stitch, and enjoy it, this isn’t my forté. My student suggested a method of cutting the pieces out using a file folder template, coating the edges with spray starch, and then ironing the seam allowances over the template to allow for easier appliqué. She even showed me a Clover iron with tiny tips specifically for this purpose. I ordered and it came the next day.

So spurred on by a way out, I studied everything, redid the tracing and how I would transfer the markings to a file folder, and actually started. The pieces are numbered in the sequence you have to apply, because they overlap in most areas. I managed to get the first flower appliquéd on, and have pinned the second flower. I dare say I’m enjoying this. I’m a fixer of puzzles, I do one every week, and this is really no different. I didn’t design this, I’m just executing it, like my kitchen set above. Following someone else’s directions is a challenge all on its own, and you learn a lot. I don’t know if I’ll ever finish all 9 blocks in my lifetime, but I’ve always been about process, and not the finished product, so this satisfies a need to just sit quietly and hand sew…

I actually managed to get together with friends on a couple of occasions and enjoy an outing. My college friend Carol, flew in from the west coast for a week down the shore and I joined her and her husband for an overnight. We went to Barnegat Light, at the end of Long Beach Island, and took a lovely boat ride around the light house and off into the Atlantic.

And we went to the beach late at night to watch the moon rise over the water.

I got together with a couple of friends more locally and one of them had an extra kayak. I’ve never been kayaking. I know, my son tells me I have to get out more. So here I am on a still lake, in northwestern NJ, with friends I care about in a Barbie pink Kayak. It doesn’t get any better than this…

And in-between all that other business over the last couple weeks, I managed to mordant some wool and some silk/wool commercial yarn and dye it with marigolds from my garden. I’m looking to see what else is around I can harvest.

And I dug through a box of kumihimo disks and projects which I kept for teaching purposes. I would start a pattern, and leave it in progress so I had something for teaching. It is time to clear all those disks and move that equipment on. So I’ve finished one braid…

…and picked up another disk with a pretty square one on it. This took me a bit to figure out how to do it, but I’m nearing the end of that braid as well.

I have some writing projects to get through, and some guild work coming up (rewriting the ops manual, always a challenge), but the weather is starting to cool, and I’m looking forward to the fall.

I’m so stressed for all my friends who live in areas that are currently scorched or flooded, and am hoping that you are all OK and that your lives will come back together again. In NJ, where we are used to flooding, we have had something like 13 tornados already this year, we never get tornados. Each one has wreaked havoc on a community. I’m frightened for the future of the planet, and wish there were an easy fix. So I do what I can in my own corner of the world, and keep my hands busy, the best antidote to the stresses of life we can’t control.

Stay tuned…

Dog Days of Summer

The dog days or dog days of summer are the hot, sultry days of summer. They were historically the period following the heliacal rising of the star system Sirius (known colloquially as the “Dog Star”), which Hellenistic astrology connected with heat, drought, sudden thunderstorms, lethargy, fever, mad dogs, and bad luck. They are now taken to be the hottest, most uncomfortable part of summer in the Northern Hemisphere. -Wikipedia

Hahahah! Yes, it is summer, and yes there are sudden thunderstorms, this is July in New Jersey. I’ve had just a few visits to the basement with all the animals as they quake in terror at the thunderboomers, but that’s July in NJ. I’m not experiencing lethargy, but a gentler period in my life, where there are some fun things on the calendar, (we just saw the Barbie movie last night!) but mostly my days are figuring out what to do with all the produce from my garden, weaving off my many many looms, visiting with friends, and staying inside where it is air conditioned. We haven’t had the extreme heat of the southwest, but it is July in NJ, and temps in the 90’s are part of the deal. I’ll take it

I’m a methodical worker. Slowly but surely long term projects are completed with dogged determination an hour or so at a time. I finished the 144 slide presentation on my trip to Japan, and already have two guilds who want me to show it. I’m happy to share the experience, my only thought is how am I going to cull 144 slides to a reasonable amount to show in a 1 hour guild presentation…

Here are some more images…

Meanwhile, Handwoven magazine, (I used to be their features editor back in the day) asked me to record a podcast, they are in season 7 now of the Long Thread Podcast. Long Thread Media now owns Handwoven Magazine. So last week, I had the most lovely chat with Anne Merrow, co-founder and Editorial Director of Long Thread Media, and midnight Saturday, the episode launched. Listen to it here.

It was fun to revisit some of the articles I wrote for them over 35 issues.

I’ve mentioned in past blogs that I joined an early music group, where I play bass recorder. We have frequent concerts, and I get to dress up and play cool music. We had a lovely outdoor concert at a historical site in Northern NJ, out on the lawn, during a Revolutionary War Reenactment day. We played all kinds of 18th century marches and colonial period music. One of the recorder player’s wife took this photo of her husband and me. I was also the commentator for the show, challenging juggling a microphone and a bass, in the 95 degree heat!

I know the costume isn’t 18th century, but for an hour on the lawn, my Folkwear pattern Walking Skirt and Gibson Girl blouse would have to do. I started making the silk cap years ago at a workshop in a reenactment conference, and never finished it. Found it in a basket of UFO’s. So I did finish it and it protected me from the sun and at least gave my costume some authenticity.

I am methodically working through the looms in the studios, weaving an hour or so a day, clearing looms, but leaving the finished cloth on them, so they don’t look so naked.

I talked about finishing the mohair yardage in my last post, but I’ve since finished the 10-yard ice-dyed Crackle warp, and the 8-yard combination structures on 8-shafts from my hand dyed yarns.

And then there is this project… I’ve mentioned it before I think in a blog post from April 7th, 2023. This is a Webs Complete Kitchen and Dining Set, 4 Summer/Winter placemats, 4 plain weave napkins and Summer/Winter runner, all on 6 shafts. I posted this photo talking about it. I was admiring the photo and looked more carefully and immediately saw that the last couple of picks were in error.

Those were easy to fix. But on closer inspection, and looking carefully at the warp in front of me on the loom, I realized that the pattern wasn’t weaving square, especially in the beginning, and this was pretty important for such a lengthy project. Whatever I did, I had to replicate throughout this warp, and it was clearly wrong to start with. I spent a week trying to decide what to do. In the end, I took out the half mat I had woven and started over, adding a temple, which the original directions called for, which I despise using, but when someone else designs a project, you really need to follow someone else’s directions if you want the same results. In addition, I was able to switch the doubled 8/2 pattern thread to a doubled 10/2, slightly thinner, and I was able to get a perfectly square beat without much fuss.

So I continued along, through the four placemats, through the four napkins and on to the runner, which they suggest to weave last, so you can adjust length based on how much warp was left.

I posted a photo of my progress last night, on Facebook, very proud that I was nearing the end. I was about half way through the runner when I noticed some comments coming in and I picked up my phone to read them. I scrolled back up to the photo and as I was admiring it, to my complete horror I saw an error, some 2 feet at this point, back at the beginning of the runner. There are no words…

Here is the photo I originally posted…

I’ve indicated the error with an arrow.

Somehow, transitioning back to the Summer/Winter pattern from the plain weave napkins, which had a different type of header, I failed to put in the header for the Summer/Winter runner. There was only a 1/2″ seam allowance turn under from Sewing Thread. I was appalled at the stupidity and right away decided I was not ripping out two feet of Summer/Winter runner. I played out all sorts of scenarios in my head, very disappointed at my stupidity, and then it hit me. I’ve dealt with situations like this in sewing. Unfortunately a lot, especially when commercial patterns are incorrect. I know how to add an invisible false hem, and I already had a built in seam allowance to attach it to.

So I finished the runner, with plenty of warp left. And I wove an additional piece that will act as a false hem… I didn’t feel quite as stupid…

Meanwhile, I got hearing aids on Thursday. The entire world opened up. I don’t really have a hearing loss, my hearing issues have been lifelong, more processing issues, if there is any peripheral noise, I don’t understand conversation and can’t can’t process words to music, dinner table discussions, etc. I’d been told over the years that hearing aids really wouldn’t help my situation. I recently went for a hearing test, which showed very minor age related loss, but the technology has changed immensely for hearing aids, which apparently are using AI now, in some higher end models, and so, $6,000 later I have some incredible technology stuck in my ears and the entire world is brighter and the clarity in conversations is just awesome.

Meanwhile, I wrote a script for a Studio Tour I’ve been wanting to do, since October of 2020, when I was asked to participate in HGA’s Spinning and Weaving week. The original tour was recorded on Zoom, clarity is challenging in a Zoom recording, but it was never made available after the Spinning and Weaving Week was over, and I’ve had a lot of guilds ask if there was any way they could show it.

Now that all the looms are warped, I thought it a good time to record the studios at this time in my life, but my security and tech support guy thought it unwise to just post it on YouTube for anybody to view. He is right. So we shot the tour last weekend, with a separate audio track, and now it is all in the hands of my daughter, when she can fit into her schedule a massive editing and merging many many pieces. My goal now is to offer it as a guild lecture, for a nominal donation to the HGA Fiber Trust. Since this whole thing was their idea in the first place. I’ll let you know when this becomes a reality. It will be a YouTube video, but with restricted access.

So that’s my summer so far, I’m heading down to the kitchen to make some hummus for lunch, and put on a pot of tomato sauce, since I have a large bucket of tomatoes from the garden. I’ll come back up after lunch and add all the photos and links.

Stay tuned…