I’m back up in the Bay Area of California, I give a lecture tonight to the Black Sheep Guild and then a three day workshop over the weekend.  Home Sunday  night on the red-eye..  🙂

The last couple of days have been slow and leisurely, full of things I don’t normally get to accomplish, I wrote letters, real letters, caught up on emails and blog posts and finished my book.  (Kate Morton Forgotten Garden, good read!)  And I got a terrific massage from Becky who belongs to the Central Coast Weavers, also masseuse extraordinaire.

Patricia Martin, extraordinary dyer and fiber enthusiast drove me north from the Central Coast on Tuesday for an interim stay with Linda, a member of the Black Sheep Guild, before heading off to stay at the workshop site.  We met Linda for the handover at Exotic Silks, most of you dear readers know this to be the retail outlet for Thai Silks, OMG!  It is so amazing to me that places we deal with online actually exist in the flesh and are near where people live, (like I’m ten miles from Silk City Fibers…).

Well my credit card burned a bit on that little visit, but I’m bringing home some fun things to play with, both for sewing some colorful silk tops, to a dyeable base for nuno felting which I swear I’m going to get to before this year’s NY sheep and wool festival in October… (She says with total confidence that her schedule will allow such playfulness…)

Anyway, I’ve said in previous blogs how much I love to travel.  One of the things I love about traveling to new places, is getting to know the people I stay with.  They are always so generous of spirit, allowing me to take over a space in their house, and there is always much sharing and comparing and raiding of libraries and tools.  Weavers have terrific libraries and wonderful yarn stashes, and really really interesting husbands.  Most of them are engineers.  That’s pretty typical.  And they are always fascinating to talk to, many are involved in the problem solving in the fiber studio, leave it to an engineer to figure out a way, every weaver should have access to one.

Once in awhile I come across a husband that has a different background, and it makes for great dinner table conversation, they are always appreciate of an enthusiastic listener.  I learn about things I didn’t know I didn’t know anything about…

Linda’s husband Paul is a retired geologist.  So the discussions related to the east coast vs. west coast fault configurations, pre Triassic faults on the east coast, which explains the recent earthquake there and why the effects were felt all the way to Toronto.  I really do enjoy learning about this kind of stuff, it fills in some of the huge gaps in my education because I was too busy in the art department to focus on anything else. Then the conversation switched to sun flares that can paralyze the earth.  Pretty cool stuff…

Paul also has a passion that rivals any fiber enthusiast I know.  He raises cacti and succulents.  From seed.  From places I’ve never heard of…  Or never been to anyway…

He has a green house full of them, all carefully labeled and documented, right off the kitchen.  He takes amazing photos of them blooming and posts them on a Flickr page.  Some of the specimens are the size of a nickle, some are huge and older than his grown children.  All of them are the most interesting shapes and textures and I wandered for an hour through the greenhouse, sometimes on my hands and knees to get a closer look.  Some of the blooms are the size of a pin head.  I would have missed them if Paul hadn’t pointed them out.

All of this is source material for inspiration.  Nature provides some amazing color palettes and textures, some unbelievable shapes and proportions.  I record what I can and tuck it away for future reference.  We can’t design in a vacuum.

Last night I had the great pleasure of having dinner with Tien Chiu and her husband, if you’ve followed my blog for awhile, you’ve probably also followed Tien’s, she spent the better part of a year weaving her wedding dress and coat, and it made the rounds of major conference fashion shows last year.  She is currently on the cover of the latest issue of Handwoven Magazine.

Anyway, they love sushi, and I love sushi, so it was an easy decision to go out for sushi.  I’ve photographed sushi platters before on this blog, each restaurant has its own style and presentation and they are always colorful and photographable. (I know that’s not a word, work with me here…)

I was surprised when the bowl of fried shrimp heads was placed on the table, I didn’t know you could eat shrimp heads, but heck, I love softshell crab, so if I just closed my eyes, it tasted about the same…  Still, it did stare at me…

Back in Tien’s studio, it was great to see all the projects she is working on, the term “slow cloth” probably originated in her studio, I adore her mind and her tenacity and the way she approaches design.

And so tonight, I jump into the final part of my California grand adventure (the part where I get paid to do a job instead of having grand adventures…), and will make my way back to the east coast, where hopefully flood waters have receded and the sun will be shining and my neighbors and friends will be able to begin to clean up their drowned lives.

Stay tuned…

This is actually a follow up post from one I wrote back in April of this year.  You may recall that I was the keynote speaker along with Anne Field from New Zealand at the Ontario Provincial Handweaving conference in Canada.  You may also recall that Christchurch, New Zealand had a couple of horrific earthquakes, and apparently still continues to experience aftershocks more than a year later.  Most of the town of Christchurch is still uninhabitable and the famed Art Centre that housed three separate weaving guilds along with Anne Field’s studio is sill inaccessible.  With all the natural disasters, wild fire, extreme flooding, and other general atmospheric misadventures, it is hard to know who to help first.

I got a lovely note from Anne, author of a couple of excellent spinning and weaving books, just as I was leaving for California.

Here is the current situation. The guild equipment is still in the Arts Centre. Because of the June 13th quakes, which further damaged lots of buildings, no-one is allowed in to retrieve them. As the equipment  is all stored in boxes and no part of the building actually fell on them, there is some hope that they are undamaged but the big question is whether we can ever get in to get them out. But because the buildings are not accessible, the insurance company is now working with the guild and hopefully they will pay for replacements. At the moment we have nowhere to put any stuff, and are still moving around to temporary rooms for our meetings. Because so much of Christchurch is unlivable in, whole suburbs will be re located, and every one else in in the same boat.

I was allowed into my studio in the Arts Centre for two hours at the end of May and did get out my weaving and yarns, but as, with the guild, I am not allowed in to get the looms and other big stuff out. However, the insurance company have paid out and I got replacement value thank goodness. So I got a new Baby Wolf loom from Schacht (they were very generous) and also they gave me the new sidekick spinning wheel. I have ordered a 30in, 24 shaft computer-assisted AVL, and will continue weaving at home.  My ‘Learn to Spin With Anne Field book is just out and the publishers now want a Learn to Weave one so that gives me a project to work on. I do miss the studio though and the daily contact with people.

It is odd to think we are still having quite large earthquakes a year from the first big one, no one expected this and life has changed for most of us.  But I guess the East Coast of the US didn’t expect their recent quake either.

I am returning to teach in the US and Canada Sept/Oct 2012 so am beginning to arrange that now.  Everyone has been so kind and supportive since the earthquakes and it was such a kind thought of yours to help the guild.

Anne Field

The fall 2011 issue of Spin-Off Magazine has a short article written by Cindy Hill that talks about the earthquake and the three Canterbury guilds that have lost so much.  “The Guild shop (that was in the historic Arts Centre in Christchurch) has been destroyed twice, three of the Canterbury guilds (Christchurch, Heathcote, and Styx) have lost their meeting rooms, the Society’s equipment cannot be accessed as it is in a building that may collapse, and six members’ homes have been destroyed”, according to Elisabeth Ashford of Ashford Handicrafts, 53 miles from the city of Christchurch.

Online donations to help the fiber community of the affected area can be made on the Ashford website’s secure payment page; just identify the payment as an earthquake donation. http://www.ashfordclub.co.nz/newsite/secure-payments.html

If you belong to a weaving or spinning guild, perhaps the guild will consider making a donation to help those in need in another part of the world.

What a terrific group, I just finished up a three day workshop with the Central Coast Weavers Guild in a Straw Bale constructed barn, with walls three feet thick filled with straw bales.  Amazing group, amazing structure, and amazing vests.  This is one of my favorite classes to teach because each participant builds a story of scraps and samples from their stashes.  The room is full of some of the most fantastic textiles, much of it handwoven, there is lots of trading and sharing going on, and each participant made something that was very personal to them.  Sadly I never really see them finished, unless they show up at a future conference where I’m teaching.  But I got a few progress shots, and the room was just full of color and light and smiling faces.

So today I had a much deserved day off.  I got to chat with my husband in Saudi Arabia, got to check in with my son, catch up on some laundry, help my friend Nancy who has graciously been hosting me here in California for the last five days, move some of the last of her furniture into the new house.  We caught a movie this afternoon, The Help, I’ve been dying to see it, since I so enjoyed the book.  And we enjoyed yet another gorgeous sunset from the dining room while we enjoyed our glass of port and some delicious dark chocolate after dinner.

Tomorrow I head back up to the bay area, one of the guild members is driving me up, but first a stop for a very much needed massage.  My life may be frenetic and crazy and full of adventures, but I can stop once in awhile and take care of me… (with a little help from my friends…)