Daryl's Blog

You know how when a group of women get together, and one of them starts talking about childbirth, and suddenly the room erupts into a huge competition of stories, each vying for the “Can you top this?” prize?  Or it could be a story about one’s children, or the latest weather woes, or even a trip to the grocery store.  There is always one story that tops all, and that person in essence “wins”.

I don’t like those sort of competitions, the ability to tell a great story has a lot to do with who wins, and it sort of dismisses the first person to start the whole thing, as if, “Honey, you think you’ve got something to complain about…”

Anyway, yesterday I had one of those days, you sort of had to have been there, but I think in the competition of life for the “I win” award, it ranks up there.  No one died, and it all sort of turned out fine in the end, well not really, because I’m out a ton of money, but the day went something like this…

I left early in the morning with plenty of time to spare, especially since it would be rush hour down the Garden State Parkway in NJ.  I was taking my daughter to Rutgers University where the plan was to shadow another student in her major, and get a feel for the university and campus life.  Rutgers at this point isn’t her top choice, but any information is helpful in this agonizing choice for her.

We were about 20 minutes into the trip, and the brake light and battery light on the dashboard came on.  Odd.  We pulled over and decided that the battery light didn’t mean anything as long as I didn’t shut off the car, and the emergency brake definitely wasn’t engaged.  We continued the trip.  As I changed lanes I realized I had lost power steering.  Not good.  And then the noise started, a rattling crunching sound from underneath the hood of the car that couldn’t be ignored…

We pulled over to the closest safe place, if there is such a thing on the Garden State Parkway, near exit 144, which if you know the parkway, is right about Irvington.  This isn’t the most scenic part of NJ, and a part I don’t go to on purpose.  We sort of just sat there, my daughter and I, deciding how to proceed.  We looked at the clock, and decided to contact my son, who would still be sleeping since it was his day off.  We had left in plenty of time, there was still a chance if he heard the phone, he could make it in time to pick up my daughter on the Parkway and get her to Rutgers.  He heard the phone as a matter of fact, and flew out the door, catching up with us within half an hour, and he did in fact get her to Rutgers on time.

Meanwhile, I dealt with the car.  AAA doesn’t service the NJ Turnpike or the Garden State Parkway, so I was forced to pay $150 towing charge to get my car off the parkway, and after three tries at small corner service stations in Union,  we located one where the mechanic “would return shortly”.  I waited another half hour, meanwhile my son found me on the return trip home from Rutgers (thank you God for cell phones…) and we sat in the car, in the damp cold, eating Quick Check egg sandwiches and drinking coffee, trying to keep warm.

What I failed to mention here, was that I have the flu.  I had a raging fever.  All I wanted to do was curl up in bed and die.  Here I sat in a desolate station with a broken car and feeling very sorry for myself.  I have never loved my son more than having him sit with me in my misery.  When the mechanic returned, he opened the hood, we all huddled together under the hood, and discovered that of  course one of the Serpentine belts had popped off, but that was because the crank shaft fell apart.  He did one of those eye roll expression “this can’t be good” kind of reactions and got out a jack.  He jacked up the car, slid underneath, and one by one bolts and parts came out from under the car.  Turns out (thank you God more than you’ll ever know) that all parts were accounted for, nothing had actually broken, and he took the next half hour to put all the parts securely back together and told me to take it immediately to my usual mechanic, which I did, followed by my son, and then immediately curled up in bed and just laid there…  I wanted to die…  I can’t tell you how high my fever was, because my thermometer doesn’t work.

I slept for a couple of hours, sort of, not being able to take the drugs I wanted to take, knowing I would be driving again.  I got back in a different car, and headed down to Rutgers by way of the Art Center of New Jersey in Summit, where I dropped off the piece I finished that I’m donating to their Blank Canvas event fundraiser.

I managed to pick up my daughter, after sleeping in the car for another hour once I got there, and brought her home, another hour plus driving in the car.  Traffic was very heavy, rush hour had already started.

So the day wasn’t one of my favorites, but no one got hurt, and my car is drivable, I’ll have my own mechanic take it all apart once my husband returns to Saudi Arabia next weekend, when I don’t need my car for a couple of days.  The crank shaft parts are very worn and with 168,000 miles on the car, probably should be replaced or tweaked, or something.  I’m not ready to give up my red wagon…  (I feel like Mme Romatswe and her tiny white van…)

I made dinner, cancelled a workshop I was suppose to attend today, which made me sad since I rarely get to take workshops and I was looking forward to this one.   My son went out and bought me some Jack Daniel’s and I had a good shot of whiskey, and curled up in bed and slept long and soundly through the night, and woke up feeling like I’m actually going to live.

Meanwhile, in spite of the flu, I did manage to teach my two classes on Tuesday, survive the back to back snow storms that produced beautiful wet chunky slushy snow with back to back delayed openings for my daughter, and finish the commission that I have to deliver tonight. I also managed to finish the jacket with the handwoven trim.

It was an odd week, full of planetary collisions, and atrocities in the world, and for the most part, I felt safe and comfortable in my own studio, except for the flu part, and next year, I’ll get a flu shot.  That wasn’t fun.  My car is temporarily repaired and drivable, thanks to wonderful mechanic from Union, by the name of Joe,  and my daughter got to spend the day getting a feel for Rutgers.  Her first choice is Webs, oops I mean University of Massachusetts Amherst, she will be visiting that school at the end of the week.  My husband will take her because I’d probably spend the day at Webs and spend her first year’s tuition there…

I win…

If you are in the Trenton NJ vicinity, please come by the opening of Uncommon Threads, at Artworks Gallery, 19 Everett Alley @Stockton Street, Trenton, NJ 08611.  I will have one of my art garments as part of the exhibit.

Uncommon Threads

Fiber, it envelopes us, coddles us, entrances us, fires our imagination, stimulates our senses. With this in mind Artworks presents Uncommon Threads, featuring art by a range of New Jersey artists who are decidedly not cut from the same cloth!

The artists in Uncommon Threads work with fiber in many forms, including textile, yarn, paper and straw. Their techniques range from the traditions of quilting, home-spinning and weaving, to modern approaches such as photographic transfer, found object montage and sculptural felting.

Opening Reception: Saturday, March 19, from 6-9 p.m.,

On view at Artworks’ main gallery through April 15.

The new Handwoven Magazine for March/April 2011 is out, and I have a four page feature, “Using color forecast palettes for warp stripes“.   In addition, I wrote the end notes column for this issue.  That column can be accessed online, for those of you who aren’t weavers or don’t subscribe to Handwoven Magazine.  (If you are a weaver and don’t subscribe, you might want to check out a couple of the current issues.  There is a lot of information packed into the newly formatted magazine, information for all levels.  It is colorful and inspirational, and I always learn something when I leaf through each issue).  Anyway, here is the link for downloading the Endnotes column…  You’ll have to click “Download” in a couple of different areas.

I set my alarm clock every morning to wake up to NPR on WNYC public radio, NY.  I listen to a gentle familiar voice, telling me what’s happened and what to expect from the day.  I expected this morning to hear of all the havoc wreaked by the nearly 5″ of rain that fell on northern NJ when the rivers had already crested earlier in the week.  I expected to hear all the routes that were closed, nearly 60% of my town is in the flood zone and expected to be under water.  Our house is on the dry side of the hill, but major routes out of town would be closed.  I wondered how my son would get to work.  I didn’t expect to hear the morning news recounting an 8.9 magnitude earthquake that hit northern Japan and subsequent 30 foot tsunami and the Pacific locations that were bracing for their own tsunami’s like Hawaii, and the Pacific coast of the US.

I realized I had to get up, and was now running late, my daughter had to get to school, fortunately the High School is in the opposite direction of the flood.  There wasn’t much coverage on the news, in reality, our underwater town is a minor inconvenience compared to being swept away by a tsunami.  Eventually with some internet checking, I was able to get a handle on what routes were closed and what areas flooded.  It isn’t good news.  My son texted me from work, to let me know that the basement had taken water.  He lives down there.  He is 21.  The organizational parts of his brain don’t function.  He lives in a dump.  His dump was now wet.  Crap…

More news, protests in Riyadh  Saudi Arabia.  My husband is in Riyadh.  I haven’t heard from him since early this morning.  Though he usually hikes in the desert over the weekend, Thursday and Friday are “the weekend” in Saudi.  He is due to fly home on Monday.  I’ll feel better when I hear from him tomorrow.

Around lunch time I did another check of closed and flooded areas of town, and did a quick surf of Facebook, to find information from friends about who was displaced and evacuated.  I did not expect to see a post from a tapestry weaver talking about the death of one of the most respected tapestry weavers in the country, my friend James Koehler, always quick with a big hug whenever I’d see him at a conference.  He died suddenly last week, at 58.  I am 55.  This really hits home.  He was a brilliant weaver, his academic approach to color and design was spot on, and I had the pleasure of taking a seminar from him a couple of years ago,  on Sacred Geometry/Divine Proportion in Nature.  I’m really sad today.  It is a tremendous loss when we lose one of our own.  I took these photos in his studio when I visited him last summer in Santa Fe on a tour with Convergence.  I don’t know how he died, just that it was unexpected.  He was at the top of his game.  What a great loss.

There were a couple of bright spots today, and I’m holding on to them.  The sun came out.  And it was nearly 60 degrees.  I think I asked for that in my last post.  I didn’t expect nearly 5″ of rain to fall in the interim.  I need to be more specific when I put in a weather request.

My Amaryllis bloomed.  My husband ordered and presented me with this amaryllis before he returned to Saudi last month.  I watched it slowly grow from a stump in the pot to this.

And I did make tremendous progress in the commission I’ve been putting off, probably because the only way to get through today was to just stand in front of the loom and weave.  I started it yesterday, wove about three inches, and decided I didn’t like the proportions and took out the entire thing, reprinted the bottom of the three panels of silk that made up the image, dealt with running out of ink in the printer and a splatter of ink jet ink over the panel as the cartridge gave one last gasp.  Yesterday wasn’t a great day either.

But I managed to get the panel reprinted, and the first three inches rewoven before I went to bed last night, and today I wove more than half the commission.  My sister’s father in law asked if I would weave this piece for him, of his three children, he handed me a ratty faded crinkled wallet photo he carried around with him for more than 40 years.  It was healing to focus on innocent children in another era, it helped me get through the difficult day.

I’m off to put another load of wet clothing into the washer, the mound reached the top of the washing machine, I have many more loads to go.  At least I am in my house, many of my friends are not.  And in Japan, many don’t have houses to return to at all.  And in a studio in Santa Fe, the looms are silent and a great man and his work are no more.  He leaves a legacy behind and it was a privilege to know him.

…our regularly scheduled to-do list for an exhibit deadline that just snuck in there without me noticing…

See, it’s like this…

Every spring, I pay  a $25. entrance fee to have up to three pieces juried for the annual HGA Small Expressions exhibit.  I’ve only once gotten work accepted to it, that was a couple of years ago, but I dutifully write the check and send (donate) the money to the HGA, and fill out the application, burn the CD, and file the application under “pending”.  I forgot about Small Expressions this year, I didn’t have any new work to submit anyway, (just what have I been doing the last six months?), but I had another unrelated exhibition deadline pop up in my Google Calendar last week, for an exhibit where I’ve frequently been accepted, and have actually won awards.  When fishing through the files for the paperwork for that exhibit, I came across the Small Expressions application and crap, the deadline was March 7th, which is today.

I spent the last couple of days, furiously weaving small postcard size images of whatever I came across that meant something to me, especially one of my dad that I uncovered, sort of to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of his death.  It was healing for me to weave it, never mind if it were to actually be accepted to an exhibit, art isn’t about that.

I got the application in with an hour to spare, and I like the images I sent.  I assume this will be another donation, but I have to try.

Meanwhile, there has been much speculation on who actually finished the warp from my last post.  When last we left off, I was quite enjoying the company of a good bottle of wine from an upstate NY winery, while re-beaming a 15 yard mess of a warp at 3 in the morning.  No, it wasn’t Brianna, no 18 year old would get out of bed at 3am for any reason other than a burning house, and it wasn’t the piskies, brownies, mice, tomtar, nissen, or house elves, though they all reside in the studio, and were probably enjoying the show.  I finished it myself, though I honestly don’t remember much of the last yard or two.  But the warp went on, and I was able to weave off a scarf the next day, quite uneventfully.

I’m rethinking the whole idea of sectionally warping these scarves, mostly because the loom I’m using is really too small for a 15 yard warp.  My 45″ loom with a sectional beam is too much loom, and my 36″, which would do a great job, doesn’t have a sectional beam.  So I’m mulling over the possibilities…  Stay tuned on that issue…

Slowly and methodically I’m making progress on the jacket with the handwoven trim.  It is turning out really well, I love the jacket, and it is a challenge to sew, I’ve had to on more than one occasion, sit down and have to really figure something out that I haven’t encountered before in my 45 years of sewing.  I’ve learned a couple of things as well. At this point, I just have to put on the collar, finish weaving the trim, and sew the trim around the collar, sleeve hems, and center front.  Then the skirt.  

The weather here has been either warm and pouring rain, or cold and windy, it is March, but I’m sort of putting in my request for warm and sunny?  Would that be too much to ask?  Part of my town flooded today, not where I am, but it is always sad when your neighbors across the way can’t get in and out of their homes, buses can’t make their routes to get kids to schools, and life gets interrupted for many.  My yard is a soggy mess, but there are only trace piles of snow left, and now just a lot of post winter debris that needs to be cleaned up in preparation for spring.

This photo is for my husband, who is in Saudi Arabia, who before he left, presented me with the gift of an amaryllis.  I keep it in south light, and water it sparingly, just like the directions said, and it is almost ready to bloom.  A sure sign that spring will surely come…

Meanwhile, is it wrong to encourage your eighteen year old daughter who just got accepted to University of Massachusetts Amherst along with a nice scholarship, to attend UMass Amherst because it is probably 20 minutes from WEBS yarn store?  🙂