A Colorful Diversion…

Our handweaving guild decided to sponsor a “Dye Day” for our members as a celebration into the start of the summer.  Typically dye days provide large pots of color for members to immerse their yarns, warps or yardage, but we did something a little different.  Lead by our fearless president Caroline, who is an avid dyer, we all met in the community room of the condo pool complex where Caroline lives.  We all brought our things to dye, and Caroline provided her vast collection of MX fiber reactive dyes, (I seriously think she has every color Pro-Chem and Dharma sell) and all the little yarn samples to help us in our selection.  Her idea was to allow each member to select the colors they wanted, and make up 8oz containers and paint the yarns/warps/fabric directly.  I was thrilled.

I took advantage of this event, even tough my calendar is full, because Caroline has practically EVERY color, and social events like this are really really fun.  AND, I had a ton of white warps and skeins already pre-wound from last November when I paid my kids to wind up everything in sight that was white.  So I loaded up a laundry basket with white warps, and all the white skeins, and some white rayon scarves for dye-mops, and some silk chiffon scarves I had bought from Kerr Grabowski last summer during a different guild’s workshop with her on Deconstructed Silk Screen Printing.  I had no idea how much I’d need, but it didn’t cost anything to bring everything.  And I threw in all my dye supplies, everything but the actual dyes.

There was a flurry of activity when I arrived, everyone set up quickly, and Caroline showed the beginning dyers how to put two glugs of white vinegar in a gallon of water as a mordant for protein fibers, and for the rest of us with cellulose fibers, we made up batches of soda activator.  I had done a quick check online before I left, doing a Google search for Color Forecasts for Spring/Summer 2011.  I got a couple of sites, with pretty palettes, and I did a quick print and brought them down along with some color chips, and my notebook.  I quickly selected a palette, with lavenders, melon, butterscotch, and mauve.  I was a little nervous with the melon color, it looked so Orange when I was applying it, but the color is lovely and pale and perfect now that I’ve rinsed it.

I ended up painting three ten yard warps, all with the same palette, so the idea is I’ll run them together and create a yardage next time I’m home long enough to warp the loom.  I had a great time sitting and painting, listening the sounds of chatter amongst the guild members.  I ran out of speed about half way through the third warp.  Most of the members had cleaned up and left, since it was nearing dinner time, but I slogged along, since this wasn’t something I could put away and come back to another time.  Once I finished,  I still had some excess dye left, and Caroline noted that there were about 20 bottles of other excess dye from the members who had left already.  She hates throwing away unused dyes, as do I, and I had a basket of white skeins, and some scarf blanks, and I asked her if she cared if I tried to use up some of the extra dye.

This was the most fun I’ve had in a studio setting in a long time.  Too exhausted to over think anything, faced with a bunch of unlabeled bottles of dye, I threw everything white that I had brought into the soda soak and dove in.  I squirted and painted, and threw scarves in  baggies with dye, and I stayed another two hours.  I’m very grateful to Caroline and Andi who agreed to stay and do all the clean up while I used up the extra dye.  What was so much fun is the total lack of control.  I had no idea what was in the bottles and cups, and I mixed small amounts of dye together and made pot luck.  I dyed everything I’d brought except for a couple of the 10 yards warps, and finally called it quits about 7pm.

All of the things I dyed sat overnight on the floor of my warm car, and I started pulling out the bins around lunch time today.  Rinsing warps and skeins is fun for about the first half hour, and then it gets to be a real chore.  I worked around the house for most of the morning, putting off the inevitable, and then I got a brainstorm.  I asked my lovely talented 17 year old, who was watching television if she would please go out and help mulch the yard in the 95 degree heat.  When I got the expected face, I offered as an alternative, that she could rinse out all my dyed yarn, sitting in the bathroom in air-conditioning.  I’m sure you can guess which option she chose and she was actually excited about it.  I know it is sort of cheating, but hey, why not?  We actually worked together, she washed skeins and scarves in the bathroom sink, and I used the tub to wash the warps.  We worked for a few hours, and she’d squeal every once in awhile over some wonderful combination of color, all of them total surprises.  The only thing I planned were the warps, and that’s always fun to see them rinsed out.  But the serendipitous skeins and scarves were so much fun to see once they were rinsed, and hanging to dry.  We lined them up on the back deck, the silk chiffon scarves dried quickly and they will be fun for nuno felting.  While we were rinsing in the bathroom, we both screamed in dismay when we heard a sudden sound of pouring rain, from a thunderstorm that sprung up while we were busy in the bathroom.  A mad dash to the balcony to grab the yarns and skeins, and we hung them instead, now dripping again, in my studio with buckets to catch the water.

So I now have lots of inspiring skeins of yarns to invent projects with, and enough dyed warp for another wonderful colorful piece of handwoven yardage.  Stay tuned…

My Convergence To-Do List…

I’m nothing if not organized.  Compulsively organized.  Obsessively organized.  I took a daytimer, the old fashion kind you write in, and I plotted out everything that needs to get done before Convergence, crossed off days where I wouldn’t be in the studio, and carefully filled in the remaining days so I had a feel of the time crunch ahead of me.  It all fit in nicely, and I did a little exhale.  And then the universe laughed at me.  I know well that nothing goes as planned.

First thing up on my list, which I started Tuesday afternoon, was to finish the Rest in Peace Diptych.  The story here, is I created one of my woven postcards, a Diptych, and entered Small Expressions.  The piece wasn’t accepted.  So I decided to send it to the faculty exhibit for Convergence.  No problem there.  Except I entered an exhibit in Massachusetts on a whim, and of course, it got in, and the timing is too close to ensure it will be back from one exhibit, to turn around and ship to the other since I’ll be leaving more than a week ahead for Convergence.  (For a mini vacation with my husband, can you believe it?)

The exhibit committee, graciously agreed that I could send a replacement piece to them, actually the same piece in a much larger scale. As long as it matched the photo of the original piece.  Which meant I had to weave it.  One of the panels had been finished last year, but I needed to do the second one.  That’s the piece I wove last month when I ran out of warp.  I squeaked it out, splicing in 900 ends.  So all I had to do was mount the two pieces, right?

I budgeted a day for this effort, maybe a day and a half.  Silly me.  I spent an entire afternoon at the art supply store, just trying to figure out how to mount the two panels, so they would look like the original.  The original piece was 6″ x 10″.  I mounted the woven fabric by wrapping it around stiff interfacing and used the spine of a spiral notebook for the bridge in between the piece.  The replacement work is nearly four times that size, roughly 24″ x 38″.

I bought all kinds of stuff, and came home and plowed in head first.  After careful measurements, the pair of 18″ x 24″ canvases I purchased were actually one inch too wide.  So I consulted my tech guy, who happens to be in the country for a brief week or two before heading back to Saudi Arabia (I hear this will be a year long back and forth commute, and I’m trying hard not to think about that).  He came in an with a few swipes of a utility knife, he sliced off the offending inch, and now my canvas backboard is 18″ x 23″.

I wrapped the canvas board in two layers of craft fleece, and lashed it on the back side in both directions so it was really drum tight. I covered the lashing with two layers of fleece, and stitched that all the way around.  Then I decided that I’d like that side to be face up.  It was slightly more rounded.

I wrapped the entire panel in grey silk, and carefully pinned that together.  Then I stitched the grey silk all the way around.  I laid the woven panel on top of the grey base, and turned under the edges until everything measured perfectly and pinned.  I wisely decided not to stitch the panel permanently at this point, until I mounted the second panel.  So I started the process all over again for the remaining panel.  Now I’m seriously into day two of this project.  And it isn’t looking good for finishing any time soon.

I got to the part where I started to pin the second panel to the second grey silk covered backboard and I did a big fat groan.  Bet you heard it all the way to Canada.  See, when I printed the second  8 1/2″ x 16″ silk strip to create the image, at the very top of the strip was a little plop of yellow ink jet ink, right at the top edge, in the sky over the twin towers.  There were only two choices, to reprint the strip, but that would mean replacing the cartridges, which I didn’t have, and then it would more than likely not match the first half of the image, or make the whole image a half inch shorter.  I chose option B.

No matter now I stretched and shrunk, and manipulated the second panel, (which was actually the original panel, woven in full last year), there was nothing to be done but take out two rows of the design.  Because you know, fabric only stretches and shrinks and can be manipulated when you don’t want it to…

So I pulled out two silk strips, and then carefully pulled out the tie down threads at the top of the panel.  Each thread had to be pulled through to the back and tied off.  Now I’m seriously into day 3.  I’m groaning because my to do list is already off by a couple of days and I don’t know where to put all the things that were on the list that haven’t gotten finished.  Or started for that matter.

But the good news is now the panels are exactly the same size and the second panel (which is really the first, is anyone still following this whole escapade?) perfectly fits the back board.

I stitched the panels onto the grey silk back boards, all the way around with invisible stitches.  Then I had to invent some kind of spine in the middle.  On the original piece, the spine represented a child’s copybook or a photo album, and alternately represented the barbed wire that wrapped the perimeter of the roof of the World Trade Center.  You can see it if you look carefully in the photo of my two kids on top of the World Trade Center Tower, which we took two weeks before September 11.  I remember at the time looking at the barbed wire and asking about it and being told that it was there so the public wouldn’t climb past the railing and do something like try to jump.  And I thought about all those people jumping off the towers two weeks later and I remembered the barbed wire…

I found the perfect spiral wire in a sketch book at the art supply store.  I could only find it twelve inches long, but I figured I could splice two end on end and come up with the 24″ length I needed.  And turns out there was enough spring in the wire binding that it could be squished to 23″.  I carefully removed 100 sheets from two sketch books to get the binding wires.  Then I had to figure out how to stitch them onto the two panels.  With a series of long straight needles and a curved one and some strategically place T-pins, I managed to lash the wire spine to the two panels.  Now all I have to do is mount some kind of hanging device on the back, take a formal photo of the piece, label the back, and figure out how to invent an additional two days over the next couple of weeks to accomplish everything I didn’t do while I was working on mounting this diptych…  No sweat…

Re-Entry…

I’m home now, having safely returned from Monterey, VA, where, in spite of actually being paid to teach, I had a wonderful restful, restorative week with two women whom I adore.  Both creative spirits, felters, not weavers, but both interested in using their skills to create art clothing, and it was a pleasure to work with both of them.

The flight home was a bit frustrating, though I’ve had much worse experiences, I was anxious to get home, since I hadn’t seen my husband in almost a month.  We were to fly in 10 minutes apart.  Sadly it wasn’t meant to be, he made it in, and then a line of severe thunderstorms moved in, over the mid-Atlantic region, and our plane had to turn around and land back in Richmond.  We waited out the storm, and finally got clearance to return to Newark, where I battled lines and angry New Yorkers, and traffic, and delays, and I exhaled slowly and remembered that this is home and I really do love to live in the metropolitan NY area.  Mostly…

I took some lovely photos, and I hope to refer back to this blog periodically to remind myself of this lovely get-away, in this lovely mountain town, in lovely western Virginia.  Did I mention it was lovely?  From the sunrise in the morning, tea on the porch before walking into town for Evelyn’s egg, bacon and cheese croissant, across the street from the studio.

There were dinner parties in the evening, Lisa’s friends joined us or invited us to dinner, each night I got to share in some of the wonderful stories of small town life.  They write books on this kind of stuff.  Everyone was so gentle, so friendly, so helpful, and I feel like I have a new family there.  We visited Deborah in her home further up the mountain, isolated, and full of the sounds of the tree frogs, and the birds.  She cooked us an excellent meal, including fresh garden pea croistini, and cold avocado soup.  I wanted to live on her porch.  The view was incredible.  (And then the rational part of me took over and all I could think was, who cuts that lawn?)

Gisela and Lisa worked hard, we all did, Gisela created patterns for simple garments, we did two and three muslins before we got them right, fine tuning the fit, so she can use the basic shapes as templates for her lovely nuno felt.

Lisa got a bit sidetracked on one of her muslins, and dug out some felt scraps, and veered off onto an adventure that netted this amazing vest.  She worked furiously to finish it so she could wear it to the final dinner party at Deborah’s.

We talked at great length about turning this into an annual retreat.  There was a lot of interest from the local residents of the town, in joining the class, there were quilters, and those interested in making garments, and we are looking at dates in May of 2011.  Once a decision is made, I’ll post the dates in my schedule on my website, and consider joining us on this retreat next year, for a Wearable Extravaganza.  We will more than likely be limiting the class to 8, and Lisa has an entire house available for lodging, which from what I understand will be included in the cost of the retreat.  There is so much to see and do in the area, I wished I’d had a few extra days to play tourist.  As it turned out, I settled for lunch time wanderings in the local craft shops and galleries.  Of course I did my best to support the local economy.  And Hap’s Sweet Potato Fries are the best!

I’m still unpacking, but I managed to get through the stack of mail.  One media mail package intrigued me, I didn’t recognize the return address.  I did one of those, “Gee, wonder what I ordered?”

I couldn’t believe it when I pulled out of the envelope three Award Certificates.  My Frosted Florals Dress took first place at the Fiber Celebration 2010 exhibit sponsored by the Northern Colorado Weavers Guild, held in the Tointon Gallery for the Visual Arts, Greeley, CO . There were some photos of the exhibit posted on the internet, though I didn’t see my dress in any of the photos.  There was a monetary award with the first place certificate, and then to my incredible surprise, there was another certificate under it, for second place (with another monetary award) in the functional division for my Celebration Bag.  I’m really thrilled to get this award, since I had entered that bag in the Convergence Tampa Bay Functional exhibit and it wasn’t accepted.  And so it goes…

The final award of the three turned out to be the Halcyon Yarns Award, no mention of the criteria, but with it came a book on Collapse Weave by Anne Field, creating three-dimensional cloth.  I already have the book on my shelf, but I’m sure one of my guilds could use it in their library, or I’ll start a library collection for my daughter…  Maybe this is a sign from the universe that I have to actually open the book and experiment with the structures…

So now, I have mapped out a strategy for preparing for two very intensive workshops, one at the Newark Museum, a fiber boot camp, no experience necessary, just four days of all kinds of fiber techniques, great for fiber artist wannabes, and of course, the unwieldy Convergence, where I’ll be entertaining more than 230 students in six seminars and a day long workshop.  I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’m a little overwhelmed…  So the next couple of weeks, interspersed with some family events and getaways, will be all about printing, prep, packing, and preparing for both of these events.  Oh, and there is my Weavezine column to write…  But first, a trip to Jerry’s Art supply in search of a 24″ spiral bound notebook so I can use the spiral ring in my Rest in Peace faculty piece…  Stay tuned…

Postcard from Monterey, VA

This is seriously gorgeous country.  The air, the trees, there is nothing here but the earth and the sky, and my entire stress level has just dropped to barely registering.

Two felters who worked with me in a class at the Felter’s Fling last September in Massachusetts, invited me to teach a private workshop in Lisa Jacenich’s studio in Monterey, VA.  Her friend Gisela flew in from Iowa, we arrived in Richmond airport within two minutes of each other (when has that ever happened?) and we set out for the three hour drive to the western border of Virginia, in the Appalachian mountain range, seven miles from the West Virginia border.  We are in a very small town, actually I understand there are only 1800 residents in the entire county.  OK, this is like stepping into one of Adriana Trigiani‘s Big Stone Gap novels.  I’m totally out of my element, and I have to say, loving every minute of it.

We stopped atop Shenandoah Mountain, elevation 2900 feet, and the view was breathtaking.  Gisela, from the plains of Iowa, couldn’t get over how many trees were in one place.

My accomodations are wonderful.  Gisela and I had our pick of bedrooms, and I chose a sunny yellow room, with a wall of windows, looking out over a meadow.  I woke with the dawn this morning, just transfixed by the beauty and simplicity of the meadow, the birds, the quiet, and the serenity.  I had my tea on the porch, and just sat.  It felt really good.

Lisa and Gisela are two wonderful felters, who want to make more clothing with their felted fabric, and need help with the most critical areas like fitting patterns.  We’ve already worked through the patterns for two garments, one each, and muslins are the next step.  I’m enjoying the pace, and the fact that I can really concentrate on just two students.

All is quiet on the home front, at least that’s what the kids are telling me.  I suppose I don’t really want to know anything different.  I’m enjoying this brief break from my reality for just a few days before I jump into final preparations for Convergence.

It’s really not about the extension cord…

Poet extraordinaire Maya Angelou wrote, “I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way (s)he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.”

I don’t do Christmas lights, we actually bought a pre-lit fake tree a couple of years ago, works perfectly, and I love rainy days, that means I don’t have to water, and can’t do yard work so I get to work more in the studio, and so far, I haven’t had to deal with lost luggage (she says as she is furiously pounding on the wood desktop, though I’m not sure I would handle that with grace and ease if I were on my way to a teaching assignment).

I’d really like to think of myself as flexible and easy going, but the truth is, I get stonewalled by the stupidest things.  I eventually adjust; after all, I’m from NJ*, but not without a fight. And when I do get railroaded by stupid things, there is usually something else lurking in the back of my head, some insecurity that causes me to momentarily panic.

I’m teaching at Convergence this summer, and for better or for worse, the jury is still out, I’m teaching seven seminars/workshops.  That is a huge amount for a four day conference.  I’m in essence teaching in every time slot, and there is little relationship between the six seminars and one full day workshop. (i.e. Website Design vs. Inkle Loom Weaving)  This situation alone is just a little scary.  OK, more than a little scary.

I got the numbers update for my seminars and workshop and I sort of panicked.  They are huge.  Part of me is really thrilled that so many want to take my seminars and part of me slides into that old insecurity, OMG, what if I screw up, what if things go wrong, what if I’m not prepared…  (Yep, seriously, I go through this every time I’m about to teach…, my version of stage fright…).  Two of my seminars alone have more than 50 students.  Those numbers are a bit unwieldy and as prepared as I usually am, I’m struggling with how I’m going to pull this off.

So when there was a caveat at the bottom of the email about not being able to provide me with an industrial extension cord to power my projector/laptop, I sort of overreacted.  I realize that extension cords in a conference center can cost upwards of $50, with all the union costs of installing and taping, etc. and that if every instructor needed one, it could break the conference budget.  But airline weight and luggage restrictions make it impossible to add anything additional like a bulky industrial extension cord to luggage that will already be unwieldy packing for seven seminars and a workshop.  I’ll be shipping a ridiculous amount ahead, and that just seemed one thing too much.

And then there was the discovery that there is a typo in the conference brochure.  Who is at fault in the proofing of said brochure isn’t the issue (I may not have caught it on the final copy, though my proposal was correct) and now I can’t offer a handout to 58 people in one of my seminars.  This has put me into a tailspin, my handouts are critical to my teaching experiences and I’m walking around like someone died.  I’ve tried sharing my frustration with a couple of trusted friends and my husband and all I get are quotes and reassurances that in the broad picture, this is a nothing issue.  They are right of course, and I will eventually get to that place, but not without a fight.  The fight is all internal, as much as I preach plan B and C, etc. to students in my workshops, I have my actual workshop formats down to a well oiled machine, and I’m  so much less flexible when wrenches are thrown into the works.  Remember, I suffer from the insecurity of “What if something goes wrong…”  At least I know ahead of time, and of course students can obtain the handout from my web store after the fact.  Still, I’m not accepting this whole situation with grace.  And I apologize for that.  I do know how to let go and get on with it, but first I need to sit on the proverbial pity pot and stew awhile.  And sometimes I want a friend to just say, yep, this sucks, and don’t you just hate when that happens?  I’ll figure it out, I always do, but having really solid perspective thrown at me (which is incidentally what I would be doing in the reverse situation) is only making me more cranky.

So, I spent the weekend weaving off  the companion piece of a diptych to replace the piece I was suppose to send to the faculty exhibit for Convergence.  The original piece was unexpectedly accepted to an exhibit at a gallery in New Bedford MA, and won’t be available.  To their credit, the committee graciously allowed me to substitute the same work in a different scale, since it will work with the image I had already submitted.

I leave tomorrow to teach a private workshop with two lovely women, both felters, we are spending four days in western Virginia in the Appalachian Mountains.  I’m looking forward to this trip, one of my favorite states is Virginia, my mom’s father’s family is all from Virginia, and I have wonderful memories of what a beautiful state it is.  And I look forward to applying some of my garment construction techniques to felt.

So today I pack, and try hard not to focus on a conference which is another six weeks away, there isn’t much I can do at this point but adjust, (and I arranged for a friend driving to the conference to bring me an extension cord).  My primary focus right now is my two students paying me for this workshop, and leaving my house in the care of my son and his National Guard buddies who seem to have taken up residence in my basement.  They are good kids, and with my very competent daughter, they should be able to hold things together until my husband’s return from Saudi Arabia at the end of the week.  The list of what they need to take care of and what to watch out for is going on two pages on a yellow legal pad…  They are already experiencing eye spasms from rolling their eyes too much…

*Excerpt from the song, I’m From New Jersey by John Gorka

I’m from New Jersey
I don’t expect too much
If the world ended today
I would adjust