Or two or three…

Not that kind of bar silly…

The Verizon Wireless bars, you can’t get cell service when there are no bars…

It is hard for me describe how cut off I felt all week.  The only WiFi available was during class hours with a weak signal from the General Store across the street.  Since we worked most days until 6-7 in the evening, it wasn’t realistic to hang for another hour and post a blog. There was absolutely no signal from the cabin where I was living…

I was teaching all week at Harrisville, I blogged about them last year, Harrisville,  a quaint turn of a couple of centuries ago mill town in NH was like a step back in time, to a place where textiles were the engine that ran the town, and due to amazing preservation of historic structures, the center appears like it did in the late 1700’s.  I think, I don’t actually know since I wasn’t around back then…

i·dyl·lic/??dilik/

Adjective: (esp. of a time or place) Like an idyll; extremely happy, peaceful, or picturesque: “an idyllic setting”

It was sort of fitting that there wouldn’t be cell service in this area, which means I couldn’t use my own MiFi, I couldn’t use all my sophisticated computer devices, online yoga classes, software tutorials, or access my blog, email, etc.  Phone calls from home were sketchy and lasted about 40 seconds, texts came in and out sporadically.

Still, for a brief week, I had to do without, in the evenings I read and knitted, and enjoyed the most idyllic views and scenery and gentle air and focused on my enthusiastic class as they made garments from their handwoven cloth.

The view from the deck of the cottage where I stayed provided hours of viewing, I knitted and drank wine and thought, life doesn’t get any better than this.  The village of Harrisville was like a postcard of old New England, and the classroom, huge, well lit, and comfortable with fans, was full of cheery hardworking students, and considering my last miserable teaching experience in Michigan, I felt like I died and went to teacher heaven.

Surrounded by yarn, and color, and textiles and looms, I helped five wonderful students find their path and make some remarkable jackets.  The great thing about this particular class, a five day sewing intensive, is the repeat students.  I’m doing another one at Sievers (in Wisconsin)next weekend.  For those who have never studied with me, I have an agenda where they make a jacket, from their handwoven or commercial fabric, and they learn everything I can cram into their heads and fingers in five days.  Repeat students are great because they challenge me to think outside my comfort and knowledge zones, and help them achieve success at whatever they planned to accomplish during the week.

Four of the five students had handwoven cloth, and the cloth was as different as the student’s personalities.  I’m really proud of all of them, and can’t wait to see final photos.  All left yesterday with hours of handwork ahead of them, but glowing with pride over their accomplishments.

So now, I’m sitting in another idyllic setting, at my sister’s cabin in the Catskill region of NY State.  My two sisters met me here yesterday afternoon, and we are enjoying cooking together, drinking together, rafting in the stream, and just being girlfriends.  I am so blessed to have two sisters whom I adore, and that I trust with my soul, and that can laugh with me and be brutally honest, and that no matter what I do, will love me unconditionally.  It doesn’t get any better than that.

I’ll eventually return home, and spend a crazy week getting ready for Sievers and the American Sewing Guild conference in Los Angeles right behind it, and then my daughter’s “heading off to college” experience, it will be a busy month, but the gift of sisters, wine, idyllic settings, and finally enough signal to get a blog post out, well I’m just as happy as they come…

Application to 9x9x3 mailed.

Done.

The Painted Kiss: A Novel, by Elizabeth Hickey.

Done.  (Excellent read)

Araucania wool, silk, bamboo socks…

Done.

Rayon print shirt.

Done.

Silk Feather Jacquard shirt.

Done.

First Online class in Inkle Weaving Pick-up.

Done.

Article for the American Sewing Guild publication “Notions”/ summer 2011 issue.

Published.  (You have to be a member to access it!)

And now dear readers, I’m going to struggle to stay cool and hydrated in this sweltering heat, while I crank up my printer and spit out monographs and handouts and cut and package interfacings for my next round of travel.

Stay tuned…

…I finished.

There were times over the last couple of days, I admit, that I really wanted to quit.  So who would even know if I didn’t enter this show?  The organization will survive without me, and there is no guarantee anyway I’m going to have any of the three pieces accepted.  More than likely I won’t have any  accepted, but that wasn’t the whole point really.  And there were times this week when I said to myself, “So Daryl, what is the point here?  What are you trying to prove?  Is all this really worth it?

It is rare for me to have a two week hole in my calendar, with a couple of cancelled classes, I decided to devote a week or so to doing some actual artwork, something that I always want to do, and never actually make the time to do, that nebulous concept of creating something that communicates who and what you are to the viewer of your work, and I had just the venue, three 9x9x3” boxes for an exhibit with the Textile Study Group of NY.  The  only criteria to fill the boxes was that the artwork must involve fiber materials and/or textile structures in its construction.  That’s it.  For someone who knows just about every textile technique ever imagined, and probably has the equipment to do it, this was really really broad, and where to even begin.

If you read my last blog post, you know I did try from the get go, to narrow down my focus, for no particular reason other than the new acquisition of my motorized drum carder, to felt.  I already had the dyed fleece, and it seemed doable.  So I started to play.  Which is what one does when one is creating from nothing.  Playing with materials, seeing how they interact, contemplating a direction, a voice, a thought, a thread.  It can be really vague and unfocused and not at all the way I like to work.  I felt like I have so little to show for the last two weeks worth of work, yet somehow I learned so much about myself and what I love to do, and actually what I don’t love to do.  So many times in the last few days I nearly chucked the boxes to sit down at the sewing machine or the loom.

But alas, I’m not a quitter.  I’ll stick with something even if it makes no sense, because it becomes a personal mission to finish what I’ve started.  So many of you my loyal readers wrote comments that were so helpful, and many of you bypassed the comments and wrote to me directly, some very lengthy and thoughtful critique.  With a couple of you I continued the dialogue late into the night.  You know who you are…

And so this morning, after yet another rework, I finished the boxes.  I’m not sure I felt the usual elation I get from a job well done, I like the pieces, but they came with a lot of pain and frustration, and angst and sturm und drang.  (Look it up…)  And I still had to photograph them.  And I was already having an anxiety attack over what has to be done for my travel classes in the next few days.  I leave for Harrisville for the week this Sunday.

So I spent the day, the entire day, trying to photograph these little boxes.  This was not fun.  I spent eight hours trying to get perfect images and I really am not completely happy with them, but for better or for worse, this is what I’ve got, the application is filled out, burned the CD and I’ll head off to the post office first thing in the morning so it will be postmarked by tomorrow.  I’ve gone round and round on titles, and I’ve come up with Life Forms: Growth, Destruction, and Rebirth.  All of the boxes are filled with handdyed cut felt manipulated in some way.  So many of you suggested a common element, and I found three old keys in a box of detritus left from one of my mom’s recently sold homes.  I liked the metaphor…

I have these two weeks to just play in the studio, the goal here is to come up with three works to photograph to enter for an exhibit I’d love to participate in, and I’m finding it really difficult to just stay on task and stay focused.  Part of the problem is I am not exactly sure where I’m going, and that’s as it should be, but that isn’t familiar territory for me in this context, and I’m all over the place.

That’s probably why I haven’t posted in about a week, as my dear husband, who is in Saudi Arabia and looks forward to my posts reminded me today.  I don’t like to post when I don’t have anything brilliant to say.  I’m actually just muddling along, feeling my way, and starting to get some direction.  And the deadline is looming.  Pun intended except there is no loom involved here.

I know when I teach, I encourage students to not have a plan or a goal for their fabric.  That actually works really well for me with garments, because there is an underlying goal, the fabric will eventually be worn, but that kind of “not knowing where I’m going” is much easier since I actually do know where I’m going, I’m eventually going to make a garment.  It is different when I’m sitting here with three 9x9x3″ boxes with nothing in them, and I have to make “art” by next Friday, so I can photograph them and enter the show.  I really don’t know what I’m doing here, and I’m using unfamiliar materials, and yet, a vague memory of working like this in art school comes haunting back somewhere in my subconscious.

When I am working in familiar territory, warping a loom, constructing a garment, sending out applications or proposals, I’m the model of efficiency.  But creativity can’t be rushed.  I try a little of this, spend a couple hours seeing if something will work, it doesn’t or I get a better idea, and I shift into a different direction.  And it is really really hard to do this by yourself with no feedback.  This is where I really miss my daughter.  If nothing else, she can come in and state the obvious which I usually can’t see because it is staring me in the face.  I find myself taking frequent breaks, weeding the yard, having a lot of cups of tea on the deck, emailing friends, walking down to my neighbor’s for cocktails, hanging with the boys in the basement (I actually played beer pong one night and won…  Don’t ask…)

I’m finally feeling like I have a direction and for better or for worse, I have my work cut out for me and I think I know what path I’m taking.  Until I get a better idea…

So here is what I have for now.

I completed box number one, cheered on by two of my son’s friends, Jenna and Alli, who stopped in frequently to see how it was going.  The series is called Life Forms, and this box represents earth.  It is cross cut felt, rewoven back together.  It is hard to seem the dimensional quality of the felt in the box.

In the meantime, it was either Jenna’s or Alli’s suggestion that gave me the idea to continue the series with Fire and Water.  So I built batts of carded wool in fire and water themes, and stacked them up.  Then I wet them down, and rolled them for hours sitting on the deck listening to a book on tape.  Once I got them down to the size I needed, I cross cut one of them into strips, pressed the strips flat and started to play with “fire” forms.  The strips are pinned down on a board, and I’m trying to sew them all together so they will hold while I arrange them in the box.  Meanwhile I’m finding elements in my studio that I think might want to play along, some bark, and some deep plum crinkled paper yarn from Habu that I’m weaving into a grid or net.  I have no idea what I’m doing…