Down to the wire…

My circular to-do list is never ending, and always too long right before a trip.  There is so much to get in order before I leave, family issues, bills and contracts, exhibit entries, a house to clean, I have to look ahead at least 10 days to make sure everything is covered in my absence.  I love my job.  And I’m really really grateful I have work, when the economy tanked in late 2008, I didn’t have any for a number of months.  These last couple of months though, have been almost too much, the work isn’t the issue, it is trying to juggle all the events that make you a well rounded and grounded person, like family, friends, celebrations, and sadly, even funerals.  I was so grateful too, that I was able to attend my son’s graduation from Boot Camp in late March.  I came skidding into the airport, and then right back out on another plane, but I made it.

The down side of what I do, is basically just what I described.  I plan very far in advance.  Sometimes two years.  How do we ever know what the next couple of years will bring.  And even though I’m looking forward to my next trip, to Memphis, TN followed immediately by a trip to Jackson, MS, we found out today that we will both have to miss my daughter’s induction into the National Honor Society.  My husband will be on the road as well, his plane leaves two hours after mine, and he is heading to the other side of the world.  The invitation arrived in the mail today.  The good news is my son will be home from artillery training, so he will be able to accompany her.  The bad news is, we will miss his homecoming as well.  And my mom’s 80th birthday.  The list goes on.  But those we love, know we love them, and that we are always there in spirit, the world is just a little smaller and manageable with email, and texting, and cell phone calls, blogging and Facebook posts.  And there is the occasional snail mail card as well.

I spent the last few days furiously printing and binding handouts and monographs, as usual, and cutting pattern paper and interfacings, and shipping four boxes out to the two locations.  In addition, I have agreed to be the first regular columnist for Weavezine Magazine and I had to upload my first article there before I left, so we can begin the editing process while I am on the road.  The working title for the column is “The Weaver Sews”, but that isn’t laid in stone.  Stay tuned… And my 32nd wedding anniversary is tomorrow.  And right now my husband, my dear dear technological god of a husband is on the top of my priority list.  This man has spent hours, upon hours, well into the night, night after night, working on my blog fatal error problem, and with the help of all of you faithful readers who logged onto my duplicate blog site under my other domain, (huge apologies for all the subscriber notices that kicked out to all of you), my husband has figured out that the root of the problem is our host server.  He has trouble shot (is that a word?) a couple of issues, and sent copious notes and reports and error logs to the hosting server explaining where the problem is, and largely we get back emails that show a bunch of geeky guys scratching their heads and really showing that they have no idea.  The host server that handles my daryllancaster.com domain works perfectly, no fatal errors, and no memory problems.  Which means, that when both of us return, we will change host companies, moving the blog, and my CubeCart online store, over to a new host.  I know that’s more information than you need to know, but we are close to a resolution, and hopefully you won’t see that dreaded Fatal Error message below, which just actually popped up as I write this post.  Grrrrrr………

So I’m off to see the world on Friday morning, and hopefully there won’t be any severe weather in Mississippi like there was last week, Jackson is just south of Yazoo City where the tornadoes did all of their destruction.  I’ll be back on Mother’s Day, and I’ll have the best present in the world, a chance to hug my son!

“Techie” is investigating the fatal errors

As a test I built a duplicate blog for Daryl on another server. It doesn’t have the last two blog entries from Daryl, but it does have all the rest. As a test I would like to have the readers of her blog to access and read that duplicate site. As of now I have not seen any errors there, but it is only me accessing and testing the site.

It is located at:
http://www.daryllancaster.com/wordblog/

If you could try and access that site a couple of times over the next day or two using either a browser or an RSS feed, I will look at the access logs to see if there are any errors generated. If you want you can enter a comment as well, just trying to exercise the different parts of the wordpress installation to see how it works.

Thanks in advance for your test access.

Cheers
Kevin “the techie”

ps: if you have subscribed to Daryls Blog you may get an email from that second test site, I apologize in advance and I will turn it off after this test.

You win some, you lose some…

Actually, forget the winning part, I’m just happy when I’m accepted.  All the notifications are out for Convergence exhibits.  I received a couple of acceptance emails a couple of weeks ago, but was asked not to “announce” the decision until everyone had their written confirmation or rejection letters.

You may remember back in January, that I spent a feverish few days entering shows and applying to conferences, and I’ve heard back from all but one exhibit.  So the count stands at Acceptances 4 :-), Non-Acceptances 7 🙁  That’s actually a 36% acceptance rate, and I’m pretty OK with that.  None of my artwork was accepted this go round, but my garments, and yardage did well along with a couple of accessories.

I already mentioned in a previous blog that my yardage from last December, called “Some Enchanted Evening”, was accepted to the Convergence yardage exhibit, and two of my pieces, the Frosted Florals Dress, and the felted  Celebration Bag were accepted to Fiber Celebration 2010 in Greeley, CO.

I got the results from the Convergence fashion show, and two of my garments will be included, as well as a scarf I wove in the Eye Dazzlers Exhibit, which covers just about every thing else except yardage, fashion, and Small Expressions (which I did not get into…)

In addition, this year I was accepted to teach at all of the conferences that I applied to, including one I hadn’t yet applied to because it conflicted with the ANWG conference.  So I’ll be teaching at Midwest, MAFA, and ANWG, and I look forward to another busy inspiring summer in 2011.  My schedule is as always, available on my website, http://www.daryllancaster.com/schedule.html.  There may be some confusion about my web domains, I seem to vacillate between www.weaversew.com and www.daryllancaster.com.  I’ve had the weaversew domain for so many years now, I hate to give it up, but the information is the same in both, as one domain is parked within the other one.  Either works, and both will get you to the same place.

I added in this blog post this afternoon, two in one day is a bit much I know, but I was curious to see if something I did earlier this morning might help or heaven forbid, correct the fatal error messages.  I actually went back to the original post where we started noticing the errors, and deleted all the revisions.  There happened to be 10 that day.  I had had trouble getting the photos to all line up the way I wanted them to with the text.  So far, this is the first post in about a month, where I didn’t get the fatal error message about six times during the writing process.  Could it have been that simple?

A surprising afternoon…

Yesterday morning I woke to beautiful spring like sunshine, the gardens exploding in color, and the promise of a day in the yard, weeding, mulching, staking peas, and generally enjoying my private oasis.  I did a quick check of my email, and my Google Calendar Alert popped up reminding me that within an hour, I needed to be in Dover at the Hilton Garden Inn for the American Sewing Guild Spring Fling.  This is an annual event sponsored by the North Jersey Chapter of the ASG.  Insert audible groan…  There goes my day in the gardens.  However I have no one to blame but myself, I signed up for this event, only Wednesday, because I to need to get out of my studio, get some inspiration and support my local sewing chapter.  I went off to the shower…

What a great day this turned out to be.  The speaker was Anna Mazur, you would know her if you’ve subscribed to Threads Magazine in the last few years.  What a gifted and talented sewer, dressmaker, designer, fabric artist, and inspiration.  Anna is a Contributing Editor for Threads, and many many of her intricate garments and techniques have been featured over the years.  She began her program with her experience with beads, how she works, organizes, and lays-out her projects.  I intentionally listened with only half an ear since I did NOT want to run the risk of getting into yet another area of study.  After all, I just bought this new loom…

The lunch was surprisingly good, and then came the best part.  Anna brought a car full of her most amazing garments, spanning 30 years of dedicated workmanship, including some amazing coats tailored for her daughter when she was just a toddler (she is now graduating from college).  She brought garments from her articles, and garments from the Bernina Fashion Shows.  She brought award winning garments, and some of her mistakes.  It was a pleasure to listen and to be inspired, she has a sense of humor and an easy spirited demeanor that is engaging and encouraging.  And it was great to spend time with someone who is way more skilled than I am…   🙂

I actually learned a thing or two…   🙂

After the luncheon, I stayed to help Anna, introduced to her by our chapter president Carla, I am an experienced garment packer from years of schlepping and hauling my garments all over the world.  While we were packing, one of the attendees Sara Ann Megletti, owner of PB&J Stores in Newton, NJ covered one of the round banquet tables with the most beautiful Polymer Clay buttons I’ve ever seen.  Not only were their surfaces rich, but the color palettes fresh and current, and the shapes interesting and playful. I of course bought the olive green button in the center of the group photo, out of all of them, it kept calling to me…

Sara said that the buttons, from Crone Art, will be sold through distributors like herself, and she is feverishly working to get the collection up on her webstore.  She anticipates availability within the week.

So Anna will be teaching at the American Sewing Guild Atlanta Conference in August, where I will be as well, and we hugged and promised to reconnect in August.  It will be my pleasure…

On a sad note, my poor techie Kevin, stayed up until 3am last night, doing what a techie does when all else fails.  Uninstall/Reinstall.  I have had, as you have probably experienced, continual Fatal Error messages when trying to read, post or post comments on my blog, referring to Out of Memory Errors, since December 19th, 2009 when the first error was recorded in the log.  When I say this techie of mine is good, I think he is the best, his tenacity to stick with a problem until it is solved puts me to shame, and he has worked tirelessly on this problem for months.  The problem seems to be getting progressively worse, and the only thing left to try was a complete uninstall and reinstall.  Scary, but I trusted he would be able to do it without losing my data.

At 3am, he came to bed confident that the problem was corrected.  Sadly, three sentences into writing this post, I got the fatal error message.  I wanted to cry…

So, we will keep trying, be patient….