Daryl's Blog

In spite of a really unfortunate series of events, the week in Michigan ended on a high note.  On Sunday, my friend Ginnie, who began as one of my students at Siever’s, whisked me away from the bad karma at the Midwest Conference and we started the trek along Lake Superior to her home in Marquette.

But before I get into that part of the trip, I wanted to show a couple of photos I took of some of the winners I selected at the Midwest Conference fashion show.  As exhausted and out of it as I was for the judging, the body of work in front of me was probably one of the most exciting, colorful, creative group of garments/accessories, of any of the recent conferences I have attended, and definitely the most exciting I’ve ever seen for a conference in the Midwest.  The east and west coasts of this country, especially the west coast tend to be more influenced by European/Asian garments, sensibilities, design, and designers.  The Midwest has a different palette, landscape, culture, and purpose.  And work there shows that sensitivity.  I was delighted to see so many colorful garments, with multiple processes, dyeing/spinning/weaving/felting/appliqué/kumihimo, etc.  sometimes all in the same piece.

Yet, some of the simplest designs rang out clear and strong.  More is not always better, but I always thought that it is better to throw everything you have at a piece, and then learn to carefully edit, than to be so timid that you never take a chance.  I was limited to only a couple of awards, which was a shame, I could have awarded so many more.  My favorite piece, was one by Peggy Bowman, from Beavercreek, OH.  I’ve followed Peggy’s career for a long time, she is so gifted, and what I loved most about this piece was the inspiration, her cat Spike and how this piece was dedicated to her fiber soul mate.  It is a sweet story and it is clear that the feline imagery is carefully integrated into the hand spun and hand woven garment, and it looked terrific on her and on the stage.

Then there was an amazing piece from Julie Hurd of Bellaire, MI.  OK, this still makes my head explode.  This sweater is handspun and hand knit.  OK, that itself is pretty great.  But what made me swoon is the fact that the spectacular colors of this sweater are all from mushrooms.  You know those odd fungus things in the yard and on trees?  Apparently they produce some gorgeous colors and Julie has mastered the art of mushroom dyeing.

 

There was a category for Judge’s Choice, and I kept coming back to this lovely simple but really really elegant jacket from Alie Thompson from Harvard, IL, woven in wool, bamboo and linen.  And all fashion shows carry a theme, this one was no exception.  The theme was Lake Superior Seasons, and the show itself followed the four seasons as the garments were modeled across the stage.  When this simple shawl came across my table for judging, this is one of those garments that just causes you to inhale and exhale very slowly and deliberately, because in its simplicity, it achieved perfection.  This handwoven Tencel shawl was hand dyed in a palette that really reflected its title, “Superior Breezes” by Georgie Hurst, of Marquette, MI.

So my friend Ginnie took me from the conference, weak and exhausted, and drove me along Lake Superior, in some glorious sunshine and scenery, exploring some spectacular architecture, like the Houghton County Courthouse, and the beautiful shoreline.

 

We stopped at a cultural oddity, the Shrine of the Snowshoe Priest, Bishop Frederic Baraga (1797-1868) where this 60 foot brass sculpture presides over the bay, up on the cliff, and if I had had a copy of Weird Michigan, I’m sure this would have been on the front page.

Ginnie and I stopped at the Sturgeon River Canyon Falls, and hiked the easy trail to some really interesting sites.  The water here is stained with tannins, so this golden liquid went careening over the rocks, ending in a spectacular splash of foam.

 

Once in Marquette, we stopped at a lovely waterfront restaurant, called L’Atitudes, where we ate white fish tacos and drank Mojitos.  We sat in the sun and absorbed the healing rays. And Ginnie showed me some of her favorite spots including the view from a local park influenced by landscape designer Frederick Olmsted.

We also visited world famous Donckers Candy store in the downtown area of Marquette, where President Obama visited last February.  This was one of those cultural treasures, each jar and tray had some glorious sugar confection from times past, and some new variations like gummy army men, which I bought for my son.  I picked up a box of my most favorite candy, butter almond crunch, and a couple other treasures.

Ginnie and I mostly played in her house, eating some great meals, and wandering through her enormous stash.  Ginnie wins.  I’ve never seen such a lifetime collection of fabrics, fleeces, yarns, and equipment.  Every room is filled, and I think Ginnie was beginning to feel lost in it all, it takes someone else coming in sometimes with a fresh perspective to get you back on track.  I know I have had friends in the past do that with me.  I would feel like I was drowning in my own studio and suddenly a new pair of eyes would bring back all the enthusiasm of why I love what I do in the first place.  We all need perspective like that once in awhile.  I came home looking at my studio thinking I need to get my own house in order too.

So Tuesday night, I boarded a plane, and flew home, the Cleveland/Newark leg in first class.  I had a Margarita, and settled in.  Of course I haven’t stopped since I got off the plane, all kinds of chaos was waiting for me, but that’s all a normal part of having young adults in the house, and a husband overseas, and being the glue that holds it all together.  The glue melted a bit this week, but it is starting to harden back up.  Stay strong…

I don’t quite know where to begin with what happened over the last week, at what should have been a lovely MidWestern conference, maybe the planets skidded out of alignment, maybe it was my turn to get rained on, I’m certainly overdue…

I came into this trip sick, I started taking an antibiotic the night before I left.  The cancelled flight to Hancock MI didn’t help, and then ensuing Amtrak/Greyhound adventure making my travel time to the Upper Peninsula more than 28 hours.  Not being able to sleep for 36 hours straight put more stress on my body that already was suffering from a virulent cold/sinus/respiratory ailment.  But I could have dealt with all that.  I am good at what I do, I arrived in Hancock at 8:30 in the morning, dropped onto the Main Street in town in the rain, and was quickly picked up by someone in the conference, and taken right to the judging area for the fashion show.  I worked diligently through the day, finally coming up with the award winners near dinner time.  I was completely exhausted, and after a couple of glasses of wine with friends, I crashed.  My bags still hadn’t arrived from Chicago, but I tried to reason that there was a midnight flight and surely they would be on it even though I couldn’t get a seat.

Word came the next morning that in fact that only one of my bags arrived, the other was still in Chicago, and it contained all the samples for the one day class I was about to teach.  I went for breakfast, and tried to scramble to come up with everything I would need for the class that was absolutely critical, Robyn donated some floss for heddles for the inkle loom class, and I thought I might be able to pull this off.  The rental looms fortunately were in the bag that made it.  But not the shuttles.

All started well, but I just wasn’t feeling myself.  No surprise.  I’ve taught under some pretty nasty conditions, but I had confidence I could carry on.  I gave the first lecture and felt increasingly bad, to the point where I started getting worried.  I had already made a few unusual trips to the bathroom, and something was definitely wrong.  I started another lecture and realized to my horror, I needed to get to the bathroom immediately where I proceeded to hurl my guts out kneeling on the bathroom floor, I’ve never been so sick, no way around it, I had food poisoning, probably from the rounds of bus/train depots from the previous day.

Now, each of the individual calamities that befell me in that 36 hour period were annoying but not debilitating.  I could carry on.  Lying on the public restroom floor wanting to die, unable to move away from the toilet, I had the notion that it was time to quit, that the universe was trying to tell me something and that for the first time in my 25 years of teaching I wouldn’t be able to finish a class.  I prayed like my life depended on it, to whoever or whatever was with me in that restroom.

Somehow I managed to clean myself up and stagger back to my class, and actually having lost everything from my entire digestive track, I felt better.  It goes like that with food poisoning.

Since the students had carried on in my absence, God bless them, there were a number of mistakes, I set out trying to fix and repair and get everyone back on track.  I spent the two hour lunch trying to redo loom warps that couldn’t be salvaged, and getting everyone ready for the afternoon lecture.  I moved slowly and deliberately.  I was so weak.  One of the conference committee members went out and bought me my favorite family remedy of honey and apple cider vinegar to mix with water so I could start to heal my system and gain back some of my strength, enough to get through the remainder of the class.

By the afternoon I was reasonably sure I was going to live, and one of the students, who knew someone at the Hancock airport, was able to connect with them and I was assured my second bag with all the samples for the class was in the air and would be arriving just before the end of the class.  Life was looking up.

The bag did arrive, and the students in spite of the morning difficulties did actually learn the techniques I had planned, and they got to see everything I had brought to inspire them.  I didn’t eat dinner, and kept sipping my honey and vinegar.

My new coat/dress was in the bag that finally made it from Chicago, and I was able to change and head over to the fashion show.  I was giving a presentation at the end, and the awards.  By this time, the original ailment I came in with had settled in my voice box and I had full blown laryngitis.  Could this week get any worse?

I taught my two three hour lectures on Saturday, with no voice, but I have to say that the Midwestern audience I worked with all weekend could not have been kinder, more caring, more supportive, and more helpful, and it was because of that support I actually managed to do my job and complete my  classes.  I don’t know how I did it, I’m sure all the prayers I said kneeling in front of a toilet in a cold public restroom didn’t hurt, but I got through it, which is something I never wanted to say about a teaching experience.  I love what I do, and I love my students and I felt so incredibly bad for the series of unfortunate events that kept me from doing what I do with my usual focus and enthusiasm.  Thank you to all who held me up and kept me going and trudged right along with me.

I’m following this sad story with a much more happy one, I didn’t return home immediately, I went instead to Marquette, MI with my friend Ginnie to rest and recover for a couple of days at her house.  Stay tuned, it gets better… (And there will be pictures)

 

I’m sitting here in a Greyhound bus depot, in Milwaukee, WI, killing three hours until I can pick up the bus and ride all night to Houghton, MI and hope I make it to the conference early tomorrow morning.  I’ve been up since 5am.  I’m sick.  My day did not go as I planned.  I’m not dealing with it very well…

It all started fine, I got to the airport, caught the 8am to Chicago on United, had a roomy seat thanks to my Elite Status, and grabbed a Quiznos breakfast sandwich while I made my way to terminal F.  About 10 minutes before we were scheduled to board for the flight to Hancock, MI, the gate agent looks out the window and says, “not good…” referring to the roiling clouds forming a typical midwestern storm.  About two minutes later my cell phone rings and says, my flight to Hancock has been cancelled.  The gate agent told me to hike over to the United Service counter, and wait in line with 300+ people and basically good luck with that…

There are only two flights a day to Hancock, turns out they are all sold out for the next few days.  United is the only airline who serves Hancock.  I’m basically out of luck.  I ran into Susan Bateman who owns Yarn Barn of Kansas.  I’ve worked with Susan for many years on the forecast column I wrote for Handwoven Magazine.  Always ready to jump on whatever I needed from her, I was thrilled to have someone to share my misery with.  She and her assistant were also stranded, she went off to find a rental car, while I tried to retrieve my bags from Chicago O’Hare airport.  What was I thinking…

There are no available rental cars, and of course I can’t get my bags back, I was assured the bags would eventually make their way to Hancock, with or without me, so Susan, bless her, looked into trains and buses.

The three of us ended up hiking it to the train from the airport, which is basically a glorified subway, for the hour trip to downtown Union Station in Chicago.  From there we waited a couple of hours and boarded an Amtrak train to Milwaukee, WI, where I’m now sitting with what bags we had from our carry-on luggage.  I have a three hour wait until we board the Greyhound bus for the all night drive to Hancock, MI, where we will arrive around 8:30 in the morning, Susan and her assistant Mary Margaret will have to immediately begin setting up their vendor booths, all four of them, with the 2000 pounds of merchandise they had freighted to the conference.

Once I arrive at the conference, I’ll have to cross my fingers and hope my bags arrive at Hancock airport in time to teach my class on Friday.  My brand new piece is in there, I keep thinking how smart I was to have done some sort of photograph of it before I left.  There is always the chance I will never see it again.

Since my computer equipment is with me, and the handouts were shipped ahead, I can technically teach without what’s in my bags, but I have to just hope it will all work out in the end.

These are the kinds of days that are really rare, but make me think that I’m getting too old for this kind of lifestyle.  I am exhausted, sick, and miserable, and I just want to crawl in my own bed.  This is what being an adult is, to carry on in spite of everything, to put on a good face and give your students what they paid for.  I have to judge the fashion show tomorrow, and hope I’m forgiven if I am not at my complete best.  One foot in front of the other, I can do this… And Bless You Susan, for being an angel in an otherwise perfectly ghastly day.

Stay tuned…

Oh how I wish…

See, the problem with working for yourself is you can’t call yourself and tell yourself you can’t come into work today because you are sick.  I mean actually sick.  Mostly I love working for myself.  I’m motivated, set impossible schedules for myself, kill myself trying to meet them, and because I work for myself, I get to bask in the glory when I pull them off.  It is only when I’m really really down, that I really really want to have someone else carry the load for awhile, not a long while, just enjoy so I can enjoy being completely out of commission while I feel miserable.

I made it through graduation, all was well except I knew something was virulently running through my house, first my daughter, needed major league antibiotics, then the bottom feeders (for those not in the know, they are the 20 somethings that inhabit my basement).  Except they don’t have insurance and can’t run off to the doctors to get drugs.  So I treat them with my bag of folk remedies, mostly which work, except I got too involved and as a consequence, caught whatever was going around my house.

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself…

My daughter had a wonderful time at graduation, she is so done with High School, all she had to do was march across the field in something that resembled decorum, but eventually broke down into a conga line while the pitiful band, minus the seniors struggled with Pomp and Circumstance.  It was graduation Jersey Shore style…

My husband, one of the few perks if you can call them that, of being a school board member for 13 years, got to hand my daughter her diploma.  It was sweet…

I entertained my mom, step-dad (we call him my Bonus Dad) and my sister, it was incredibly good they were able to come up from Maryland, in spite of the horrific weather, indeed they had to sit in my driveway after driving for four hours, in a wicked hail storm.  Amazingly the skies cleared, just before graduation, and the administration decided to hold the ceremony outdoors, which was largely successful, until the very end when rain drops sprinkled from the sky, like wet confetti.

My daughter had friends over for a pool party and bonfire on Saturday and I puttered in the studio as best I could in between the festivities.

Then Sunday morning, I woke up sick.  I’m talking fever, congestion, a miserable summer cold, and I felt like I was run over by a truck.  And of course, all I could think is, crap, I’m getting on a plane Wednesday morning.  I know how long it takes for me to get over stuff like this.  Fortunately I’m rarely sick.  But once struck, I don’t recover quickly.  And I admit, I’m a miserable patient.  Largely because I’m the doctor, nurse, pharmacy, cook, and employer all at the same time.  Sucks…

So I went to bed.  I hoped that by staying in bed for three days I might be able to feel well enough to travel, I’m traveling anyway, but I’d rather not do it with a raging sinus infection/fever, etc.  Not fair to the person sitting next to me on the plane…

Of course not being one who sleeps well, I just laid there, for at least two days, getting up to eat and check e-mail occasionally, and of course that lasted for about an hour and a half, and I resorted to dragging stuff from my studio to my bedroom, since a lot of what was on my to do list required handwork only.

I finished Albuquerque Sunset.  Other than the buttonholes, I mostly had about 8 yards of hand stitching to do.  I didn’t want to put it in the suitcase and fly with it to Michigan without some sort of proper photograph, it would be my luck the suitcase would go missing…  And I didn’t have the energy to take apart my studio and do a formal photo shoot.  So we stuck the dressform in the bushes, not my favorite way to photograph, and captured a couple of shots that will suffice until I can do a real photo session.  I’m really happy with how it turned out, so interesting, so much to look at, such unusual lines, and that makes sense since it is an Issey Miyake Vogue pattern.  If you haven’t been following the construction of this piece, I dyed the yarns, wove the fabric in an eight shaft combination structure, and then made it up in a coat/dress from a Vogue pattern.  I changed/modified a lot of the construction process, basically rewrote the construction sequence.  The buttonholes were hidden in the original pattern, but I thought the front too plain and elongated, and I liked the interruption of the two large buttons, and heck, I had to use a couple of my really expensive buttons I procured from Tender Button in NYC when I was there the end of January.

I also finished my knit tank top.  All the handwork was left, and at Thursday night’s knitting group meeting, one of the members showed me how to actually do a mattress stitch join for the side seams that is nearly invisible.  Who knew?   Of course I had already sewn the side seams together as if I was piecing handwoven selvedges, so I had to rip them out first…

I brought my Schacht inkle loom into bed with me, there is something oddly satisfying about weaving in bed, since for the most part, weaving is NOT portable.  I’m starting to get the appeal of a rigid heddle loom…  I had picked up from a downsizing guild member, an inkle loom from Beka, more out of curiosity, I have more than 20 of my own, and I discovered to my complete delight, that it fits in my suitcase.  The Schacht was about an inch too long, and I’d have to ship it ahead and then back home, at considerable expense, when I flew to teaching venues.  Since I’m teaching an inkle class at Midwest conference this weekend, I wanted the loom to go with me, but wasn’t in the mood to pre-ship it.  Plus I set it up a couple years ago, can’t remember if I was even blogging when I first set it up, and then sat on the warp, one of those too complicated dogs that just didn’t cause me to drop everything and attend to it.

Anyway, when you are sick in bed, you have lots of time to think about stuff like this.  Don’t ask…

I studied the pick up design, two adjacent seven thread pick up areas, offset from each other by half.  I couldn’t pick up any speed and it was really hard to keep track of where I was.  Like I said, I haven’t woven on it for a couple of years.  Mostly I bring the loom for show.  I like the piece, made from the thrums of the Frosted Florals dress, but I haven’t had the brain focus to work it all out.  Until I got stuck in bed with a summer flu.  I got the idea that instead of just putting the graph of the design on the side of the loom, that I could put a graph of the alternating rows of pattern threads, what is up or down in any given shed, and just color in the additional threads I needed to pick up for the design, and X out the ones I didn’t want to show.  I had to get up from bed and scrounge for graph paper and colored pencils, but I managed to make a small two color graph and what a difference it made.  For those who aren’t weavers, I’m sure this whole paragraph when right over your head, but the point is, I could just glance at the chart, and see what had to be changed in any given row, not start from scratch each time. I flew through the warp.  I’m over half finished.  Who knew…

The other thing I was able to work out was how to keep track of what row I was on, without using one of those large metal knit trackers with the magnetic strip.  It was cumbersome and annoying.  So I laid in bed some more and came up with the idea of taping the graph to the base support, of the Beka loom ( I forgot to mention I actually transferred the entire piece from the Schacht to the Beka loom and it fit perfectly).  I put a couple of rubber bands on either side of the graph, and used a small zip tie to slide up the graph marking my place.  I’m pretty damn proud of myself for figuring this out.  I should be sick more often…

So I’m dragging my butt around the studio, starting to pack, resigned that I’ll be on  my way to the Upper Peninsula this time tomorrow, I have to be at the airport at 6 am and fly through Chicago.  I really wish I felt better, but this too shall pass.

I’m hoping tonight to write up a formal proposal before I leave, to teach an online class in beginning inkle weaving for Weavolution, I’ve spent countless hours on the phone with Claudia Segal, one of the principals in Weavolution, and I love the idea of online teaching, not having to get on a plane, not having to wedge hundreds of pounds of materials in two 50 pound suitcases, not having to actually leave my studio, and being able to reach any student anywhere in the world who has a computer and internet access.  I could even teach while I’m sick.  I’d just turn off the video…  They’ll never know…