Boot Camp Day 1

What a blast this class is, I’m having such a good time with them. I am teaching a four day fiber Boot Camp at the Newark Museum, in Newark NJ.   I have a couple of art educators, a couple of artists coming from other mediums, and a newly retired student looking for something entertaining in her new life.  Well she found it.  Not only is this group talented, but they get along really well and it is like adult summer camp!

Day one focused on a summary of all of the basic types of fiber, wool, silk, cotton, and linen, along with the “goras”, Angora rabbit, and the fur from the Angora goat, Mohair.  I passed around the silk cocoon, the cotton bole, and the combed linen.  And we looked at the fleece from a few different breeds of sheep.  I had some baby alpaca as well, the first shearing from “Montana” that I purchased in April at the CNCH conference.

Next we carded a stack of rolags, wool carded into rolls which will then be spun.  I owned four sets of carders, and the museum had a couple of pairs.  One of the sets I brought were my deceased Mother-in-law’s grandmother’s carders, and when we used these centuries old carders, we could feel the spirits of all who handled them fill the room.  It was really noticeable!

My weaver friend Virginia, who came on Sunday to help me with the prep, made all the drop spindles we used in the class from pairs of CD’s and 3/8″ rubber grommets.  She slipped a 3/8″ dowel into the grommet hole and put a cup hook on the end.  Then she tied a leader of yarn onto each spindle.

I brought one of the fleeces I picked up from one of my guild buddies who has sheep, and they all dove in and carded up piles of rolags.  Then they began the process of getting the hang of spinning on a drop spindle.  This isn’t really hard to learn, it just takes patience, because in the beginning, everyone spins a fat lumpy cord, and then suddenly, they get it and are spinning a beautiful yarn.  It takes an hour or so for most to get the hang of it, and there is always the star pupil who gets it in a big way and smiles so proudly at themselves

and is hooked for life.

Once they got a few yards on the spindle, the quality of the yarn didn’t really matter,we got out the plastic cups and my private stash of Kool-Aid.  I had ordered a couple of cases of the green and blue Kool-Aid a couple of years ago, it is nearly impossible to find, but I found a grocer online through Amazon that carried it and I stocked up.  Kool-Aid is great for teaching dyeing, it isn’t really toxic, (I’d never actually drink the stuff) and you can dye in the microwave and use your corning pie plates without having to relegate them to the studio.  The dyes are easy to find, except green and blue, and fun to use.  We mixed up plastic tubs of all the colors, and they used spoons and sponge brushes to apply the dyes to their spun yarn, unspun fleece, roving, and commercial wool yarn I picked up at Michael’s.  The place was cookin’ and it smelled wonderful.  We clearly were all having way too much fun!  A great day in spite of the record breaking 100 degree heat wave! Enjoy the photos!

Blog Post 302!

Well it just snuck right past me, the 300 mark, I noticed when I logged in tonight, that this will be my 302nd blog post.  That’s a lot of writing in a year and a half!  And I have to say, even if no one reads it, I love being able to journal about my adventures, and add photos, and then refer back to what I did, how I did it, where I did it, what I was thinking and even occasionally, “What was I thinking?”.  I’ve journaled for years, and there is nothing like being able to look back and see the photos, and links, and follow the trail.  I can’t tell you how often I refer to my own blog for information.

This morning I finished up all the packing, day four of the museum boot camp class, which starts tomorrow, is all packed, frame looms warped, handouts printed, and yarns and fleece gathered.  PowerPoint presentations are all updated, and loaded into the netbook.  I filled a few more orders for books, and then had lunch.  And then there was nothing left on my to do list, except clean the bathrooms.  I did one of them.  The other can wait.  It isn’t my bathroom anyway.  Mine is clean…

It is a good thing that no one is home.  I’ve completely taken over both second floor bedrooms, and the hall, with all the piles of stuff for Day 1,2,3 and 4, and for the six seminars and one workshop for Convergence.  My studio is looking a little barren.

It’s rare that I finish my to do list, and since I started playing last night with the dress I started a year and a half ago, I decided to keep working on that.  We’ve hired a house painter, so there were a lot of interruptions, getting him familiar with hoses and exterior electric outlets, and making decisions on what to do.  I am thrilled beyond belief that someone else is doing this job, it needed it so badly, and since my husband and I are never home, it just wasn’t going to get done.  Besides, it isn’t really a great idea for me to be bounding up ladders 30 feet in the air at 55 years old.  Plus it is air-conditioned in my studio, and it is 98 degrees outside.  🙂 I’d rather be sewing…

So, sew I did!  I took the hunk I cut off the floor length dress, and cut a godet from it, I didn’t use a pattern, just sort of cut it by eye.  Or in other words, I guessed.  I kind of felt my way along here, there are two layers in the skirt part, the chiffony print fabric, and the lining, they have to come together for the zipper, the chiffony fabric can’t support the zipper by itself, especially an invisible one, so I sewed a godet to each back seam, below where the zipper would go.  It took some tweaking to get it to lay perfect, but I’m happy with the result.  And the dress hangs so much better.

I used a bias cut nylon tricot seam finish, which was the perfect solution for this particular fabric.  Originally I had serged the seams, and it was just too much thread for such a fine fabric and the seams puckered a lot.  I reinserted the invisible zipper, and then figured out how to neatly tuck in the tape and finish off the base of the zipper with the lining godet.  I wanted the print fabric and the lining fabric to hang free of each other in the skirt.

I can’t tell you how good it felt to just sit and sew and make something for myself.  Nothing show stopping, nothing award winning, just a simple fun summer dress.  Life is good when it is balanced.  And mine isn’t always so balanced.  I need to try harder to just take some time for me to play with what I love best.  And I can wear my new dress this week to the museum.  Not tomorrow though, we are playing with Kool-Aid and the microwave!

So here is my lovely new dress, started around blog post 20.  And now, 282 blog posts later, it is finished.  

Taking care of business…

I haven’t blogged this week because, well frankly, there wasn’t a lot to say.  I had the house mostly to myself, my husband is in Saudi Arabia, my daughter away for staff training week at a girl scout camp.  My son largely lives with the other bottom feeders in the basement, and at the moment is away with friends doing things I don’t even want to imagine, at a cabin in upstate NY.  Oh to be 20 again…

And that left me and the dog.  I’d get up really early, work on the gardens in the morning for an hour, before the sun got too hot.  It has been 98 here all week.  And then I’d shower and be ready to tackle more of the Convergence to-do list.  The issue of the no handout for 60 students was resolved, with a letter to the students having them pre-purchase the handout ahead, so I’ve been printing and shipping the individual books as I get receive the orders, only hampered by the fact that this is a holiday weekend and there is no mail tomorrow.  🙁

I have completely filled all the surfaces in the guest room with all of the handouts and materials needed for each of my seminars.  At this point, other than individually shipping the handouts for the class where I can’t provide one onsite, I am ready to go.  I’ve put together 17 looms, printed more than 200 handout/monographs, and gathered all the samples and examples I need to teach each of the seminars. I just can’t put everything into suitcases yet, because I need the suitcases to transport all the materials for the museum fiber boot camp class I am teaching starting Tuesday.

One of my favorite students Virginia, a talented weaver and spinner, came up and spent the day, and we went through all the packing lists gathering supplies for the 4 day 7 technique boot camp class.  We made drop spindles from CD’s, we measured lengths of cord for kumihimo braiding.  We gathered fleece for felting, and counted packets of Kool-aid for microwave dyeing.  We printed handouts, and gathered samples, and Virginia proved to be a real asset collating and stapling, packing and organizing, and she had lots of her own tips for how she teaches some of the techniques, so we really enjoyed our day.  I took frequent breaks to move the hose, trying to save the beautiful gardens from completely frying in the intense heat.

With no one in the house this week, I’ve felt much more in control of everything that needs to be done.  I have the space to do it in, and nothing pulling at me.  I worked hard to iron out difficulties, every time a wrench would get stuck in the machinery, I stopped, removed the wrench, and continued to work.  Like weaving.  When a thread breaks, you must stop and repair, and then resume where you left off.  It breaks the momentum, but that’s part of the process.  It can’t always be smooth sailing from start to finish.  You wouldn’t learn anything.

I actually got to socialize a bit this weekend, a couple of private parties celebrating the 4th, and my girlfriend came up tonight, we made Margaritas, and we sat and played recorders on the back deck, well after dark, forcing me to hunt for a floor lamp I could bring outside.  Fortunately I hadn’t packed the extension cord… 🙂

In  all of this, I long to just sit and make something.  As I went through the techniques, packing for each of the sessions I will teach this week at the museum, I wished for time to just sit and play with them by myself.  That will come, teaching for the year finishes up in late October, but I really really wanted to just sit at the sewing machine and make something.  One of the projects I wrote about in detail when I first started the blog more than a year and a half ago, was the frosted florals dress.  I had made a couple of “muslins” of preliminary designs, that really didn’t fly, the feedback I got from all of you was to keep pushing the envelope.  Two of the muslins had actually gone into real fabric, and I did finish one of the gowns last year, and have actually worn it.  I don’t have a lot of opportunity to wear long summer dresses, and in fact, the other muslin never got finished.  It just hung off the yarn shelf for an embarrassingly long period of time (since January 3, 2009, but who’s counting…).  It has been hanging there so long I stopped seeing it.  So the other night, I pulled it off the hanger, and tried it on.  The dress was OK, but definitely needed to be shorter.  So I finished up the critical handwork, and took the scissors to it.  I didn’t like the way the zipper looked in the back, the gauzy floral print fought the zipper, so I pulled the zipper out and will rethink how I apply it, it might be just too lightweight for an invisible zipper, and the lower hips of the dress are a bit too tight for a light airy dress (not that I actually gained any weight here with all my traveling and wonderful food experiences).  I’m toying around with the idea of a godet of fabric below the zipper in the back, cut from what I lopped off with the scissors.  Stay tuned…

Meanwhile, Friday’s mail was really thrilling when I opened up the manila envelope and discovered the Summer 2010 issue of Fibre Focus, the Magazine of the Ontario Handweavers and Spinners. (The link shows the previous issue.)  There on the front of the cover was my frosted florals dress.  I will be the keynote speaker at the Ontario provincial conference next April, and they asked for an article for this issue of Fibre Focus, which will provide a sneak preview of the 2011 Conference.   I was so thrilled to finally make a cover, I’ve probably written for more than 40 publications, and never been on a cover, and it was the Canadians who finally put me there.  So a huge thank you to all of you wonderful weavers to the north, and I’m really looking forward to meeting all of you at the conference in April.

I’ve accomplished a lot this week, and I’ve felt more in control than I have in awhile.  I’m looking forward to my boot camp class at the Newark Museum, then a fast pack, and hoping a plane to Albuquerque and points beyond with my husband for a getaway before I actually teach at Convergence.  And I’m starting to look ahead and gather my lists for the American Sewing Guild conference in Atlanta, immediately on the heels of Convergence.

My Getaway…

Grab a cup of coffee, it’s going to be a long one! First let me say how lucky I am I have two sisters.  We are close, as close as geography lets us.  Though we can’t be involved in each other’s lives on a daily basis, we look for opportunities to get together, just the three of us, and it is always a splendid time.  We laugh, we tease, we gossip, we drink, and did I mention we laugh?

My baby sister turned 50 over the weekend.  My sister and her husband recently bought a house in the Catskills in NY State, and since my middle sister and I had never seen it, we took the opportunity to see the cabin in the woods, and celebrate my little sister’s birthday, just the three of us.

My middle sister Marta, bought us shirts that say, What happens with the sisters, stays with the sisters.  My baby sister Tammy bought this spectacular log cabin, that sits literally a stone’s throw from a gurgling stream, visible from the living room windows.

We stopped at the Ashokan Reservoir, not far from my sister’s cabin. It is amazing what you can perch a camera on to take a timed shot.

On Thursday, we packed a lunch and set out to tour some spectacular 19th century estates in the Historic Hudson Valley, since Marta is an architect, and Tammy is a gardener, any opportunity to see architecture and gardens in the same setting, well we’re on it!

First stop was Montgomery Place overlooking the Hudson.  Montgomery was designed by Alexander Jackson Davis (1803-1892) which didn’t mean much to me, but Marta was thrilled since she is in the middle of a huge 19th century restoration project in Maryland.  We wandered through the gardens, and climbed up a cliff overlooking a waterfall.  She was very familiar with Davis’ work.

Next stop was Claremont, home of Robert R. Livingston, negotiator of the Louisiana Purchase and co-inventor, with Robert Fulton, of the world’s first practical steamboat.  Who knew?

We found all sorts of wonderful stick structures as we traveled around.  And some adorable frogs.

We traveled up to Olana during a massive rainstorm, and when we pulled into the parking lot, the rain stopped and we were so glad because this is one amazing estate, created by Frederic Edwin Church, one of America’s great 19th century landscape painters.

All of these estates sit overlooking the Hudson River, which is still lush and pristine, and spectacular.

We ended a perfect day with a stop at the El Paso Winery in Ulster Park NY.  NY State wines are quite different than California wines, and we all fell in love with a very crisp fruity Chardonnay, and I came home with seven bottles.  🙂

Friday morning we went into the little town of Phoenicia, in search of trout.  The Leaping Trout Project involves local artists in an attempt to raise community awareness of conservation issues.

“The Ashokan-Pepacton Watershed Chapter of Trout Unlimited supplied 27 Catskill artists with an aluminum blank cut-out of a leaping trout. The purpose of the project is to stimulate community awareness of the conservation issues facing the Esopus Creek and the Ashokan Watershed. The final works of art will be on display throughout our local community and auctioned off to help raise funds to support the efforts of APWCTU.”

The trout are displayed in various local establishments, the deli, the bank, the pharmacy, and a restaurant or two.  There is a map of the trout, and it makes for a wonderful treasure hunt adventure, “finding the trout”.  The one on the right was done by my friend Alisa Brown, who is a handweaver from that area.  She knit her trout a sweater.  Alisa is the one who told me about the whole project, and I passed the information onto my sister.  Who knew it as all happening in her little town.

Friday afternoon I raced home down the NY Thruway, to meet up with my husband to head to the Prudential Center in Newark, to see Carole King and James Taylor in a reunion concert.  Can I say here that both of them have aged like fine wines, their voices just as sweet and beautiful as they were 40 years ago, and I enjoyed every minute of it.  I want to have that kind of stamina and energy and presence when I’m 68 years old.  Carole King is a brilliant musician and song writer, my husband I both found ourselves gasping in amazement, one song after the other, “I didn’t know she wrote that…”

Saturday morning my husband and I raced back up the Thruway for my sister’s actual 50th birthday celebration at Mohonk Mountain.  Another 19th century historic site, this mountain house and surrounding grounds is known around the world for it’s vacation resort status, and the brunch buffet was the best I’ve ever eaten.  I’m seriously starting to not fit in my clothes…  🙁

After brunch we went on a tour of the Mountain house and learned about the history of the estate, and then hiked to Sky Top, overlooking the entire complex.

We were home by late Saturday night, and my husband left on Sunday for another two week stint in Saudi Arabia.  I can’t say that I came home rested.  But I dove in on Sunday, back to my Convergence countdown to-do list.  I updated my Website Success Monograph in preparation for the lecture I’m giving at Convergence.  The trouble with any subject that has to do with technology is that it has to be updated constantly.  Every link has to be checked, recommended software and hosting companies updated, versions updated, and of course, no discussion on Websites or web presences is complete without mentioning the Social Networking sites like facebook, which wasn’t part of the original presentation I did a year ago.  So that job is done, and the monographs are printed and bound, and I spent the day working on binding the handouts for the Inkle Loom workshop, until I ran out of comb binding spines, which I promptly ordered from Staples, and then set about putting together 17 inkle looms which will be rented to the students.

I’m off to bed, tomorrow is another day with another long list of stuff to do, including the end of the month paperwork and bill paying.  At least we had some really heavy rains today so I won’t have to spend an hour watering the gardens tomorrow like I did this morning.  🙂

Loose Ends

Just a quick post (if that’s ever possible from me) to tidy up some unfinished business.

First off, I got a wonderful surprise yesterday afternoon when Jerri Shankler, one of my guild mates from the Jockey Hollow Weavers Guild, stopped by to deliver the yardage she wove for me from the yarn she got from me for the Potpourri Exchange.  I love the fabric, and the random warp across the width.  She added a few of her own yarns, like the burgundy stripe, and though the crackle structure wasn’t obvious most of the time, the fabric had a texture and dimension that made it just a bit more interesting than if it had been plain weave.  Jerri and I both agreed that this whole Potpourri Exchange we participated in was a great skill stretching experience, and of course Brianna was there, squealing with delight, as only a 17 year old can do, and asking if we could do this whole experience again!  I told her I’d be happy to give her yarns and tell her to come up with something any time she wants!

So now I have another four yards of handwoven yardage to look at and mull over and figure out what to make from it, the hand is weighty and I’m seeing a jacket here…

Meanwhile, my haul from the Saturday dye day in Central Jersey continues to dry.  The scarves are fun, and the skeins turned out bright and colorful and again, I’ll be thinking about fun stuff to do with them.  And one of the 10 yard warps still hadn’t completely dried, so I photographed the two that have, and can I say I love the palette?  Everyone has their own color preferences, but this one is unusual for me, it was riskier with so much orange, and the effect of the pale melon against the lavender is really lovely, at least I think so, and after all, this is all about me, and if I’m happy, then that’s all that counts!  And once it is woven, it will look entirely different, so stay tuned.  Lots of weaving and sewing to come once my schedule from hell ends around mid-October.

I’m heading out shortly for a weekend getaway (yes I know it is still only Wednesday).  My baby sister turns 50, and my middle sister and I are heading to the Catskills with her, where she has a cabin in the mountains, for a little R&R and quality sister time.  The actual party is Saturday, and I’ll have to return Friday afternoon for a concert in Newark, my husband got us tickets for the James Taylor/Carol King event, and then head back up on Saturday, but all the festivities should be over by Sunday when my husband gets back on a plane for another two weeks in Saudi Arabia.  I’m hoping the home gods are a bit more cooperative this time around.  I’ll be working frantically trying to finalize everything for Convergence and teach a four day fiber boot camp at the Newark Museum.  Though the timing is bad, I really do enjoy teaching this class, every three hours students learn a new fiber technique, spinning, dyeing, felting, weaving, braiding, great if you want to enter into the world of fiber and need a crash course!  I’ve stocked up on green and blue Kool-Aid for dyeing (those colors are really hard to get) and I’ve got lots of fleece and a fresh supply of needle felting needles.  If you live in the north Jersey area and are free the week starting July 5th, come play with us at the Museum.

And one final note, I’ve updated my Inkle Loom Weaving monograph to include some of the additional advanced techniques I recently taught in South Jersey.  Now included are supplemental warps and a unit on 1:1 Name Draft.  The monograph is now $20.  If you already own a copy of the monograph, don’t despair, I’m offering an Advanced Supplement to add the missing information.  This monograph costs $3.00 plus $3.50 shipping (I know the shipping is excessive, but the computer figures it out that way.  The real cost of the monograph is actually $5. so I figure what you are really paying is $5. for the monograph, and $1.50 for the shipping).  Anyway, if you are interested in purchasing the advanced supplement, remember I’ll be in hiding in the Catskills until Sunday, so orders won’t go out before Monday.

Happy Summer!  It’s officially here!