Daryl's Blog – Page 138 – The World from a Weaver's point of view!

The Cloisters

We left around 10:00am to head into NYC, with our friends Misa and Pat, just ahead of the blizzard that was making its way up the coast. The snow wasn’t suppose to start until around 12:30pm, so we figured we could get into Manhattan, have lunch at the New Leaf Cafe in Fort Tryon Park, and then hear the Baltimore Consort at 1pm at the Cloisters and be home before the roads got bad. The one thing working in our favor was the temperature. It was well below freezing, so the snow would be drier, and with the winds, it would blow around a lot before it started to stick, and there wouldn’t be the usual problem we have with ice.

The Hudson River view from the Cloisters, including the George Washington Bridge

What an amazing day. If you live in the NY metropolitan area, I’m sure you’ve been to the Cloisters, it is part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but located about 100 blocks north of the regular museum, built by Rockefeller in the late 1930’s to house a fantastic collection of works of art from the Middle Ages, including architectural fragments that have been incorporated into the fabric of the building itself. The work here dates from 1000AD to about 1520AD.

For the rest of my readers, who don’t have a chance to see Manhattan, or if you do, you might not get a chance to visit this mythical place, I have lots of gorgeous photos, courtesy of my husband and his new camera. Wait, wasn’t that a Christmas present?

Twelfth-century chapter house from the Benedictine abbey of Notre-Dame at Pontaut

Can I say that the architecture of this place is truly breathtaking? There is a sense of reverence, and history that makes me feel like I am in a sacred place, and that each artwork has an amazing story, and that I could draw quiet inspiration from these hallowed walls.

The gardens of the Cuxa Cloister, in winter before the snow

Stained Glass from the 15th century Carmelite foundation at Boppard am Rhein

The Gothic Chapel with French and Spanish tomb effigies from the 13th and 14th centuries

Waiting in line with Pat and Misa, before the concert

We waited patiently in line, it was easy to be patient in a place like this, there is a calm wonder and awe that makes waiting in line a pleasure.

The concert was unbelievable. If you can imagine early music instruments and the ethereal voice of the soprano vibrating in a space like this chapel which contained a mid-12th century apse from Spain, it is the most lovely sound I’ve ever heard. Obviously I’m a fan of early music, I played with my recorder consort last night at a Christmas concert at one of the churches on the green in Morristown. But this is truly magical. The Baltimore Consort was founded in 1980 to perform the instrumental music of Shakespeare’s time and today’s performance covered Christmas carols in Latin, German, Spanish, Elizabethan English, Scottish, Finnish, and French. The works ranged from the 12th-16th century. I recognized one of the oldest of Latin/German hymns, In dulci iubilo, which I played with my recorder consort last night.

Entering the Fuentidueña Chapel for the Baltimore Consort Concert

After the concert, we checked through the stained glass windows at the gardens to see if the snow had begun, and if so, was it sticking yet? We saw a few flakes swirling around, so took advantage of the delay to see more of this spectacular building.

I had to take my husband in to the Gallery with the Unicorn Tapestries, woven in Brussels in 1500. The light in the cavernous space is really dim. And though photography was allowed, no flash could be used. My husband took that as a challenge to see what he could do with his new toy, and I am completely impressed.

Detail of the hounds in one of the unicorn tapestries

The colors remain rich and the detail, impressive. As a weaver I am more than impressed, I am overwhelmed. Every time I look at these tapestries, I am silenced by their detail, their expressive story, and their size.

The size of the unicorn tapestries is awe inspiring

One of the marble columns with a color palette

My husband had a great time photographing not only the architecture and the artworks of the Cloisters, but some of the details, textures and colors of some of the stone work, especially the marble. I looked at this photograph and stopped dead in my tracks. I ran over to my cutting table and pulled a couple of palettes from the pile I created yesterday, did a little shuffling, and came up with a gorgeous palette, straight off the marble column, and right in keeping with the spring 2010 colors I described yesterday. I think I am inspired enough to start mixing dyes.

Exiting down the vaulted corridor to the street entrance

We left the Cloisters as the snow was starting to stick, the roads weren’t hazardous yet, and we made it safely home. What an amazing day, and I am really excited about the inspiration for my first dyed warps.

We are expected when all is said and done, to get about 8-12 inches of snow. It is hard to say how much has fallen already, the heavy winds make the snow swirl around, but it is beautiful. We have the wood stove cranked up, and we don’t have to be anywhere in the morning. I have another recorder concert in the afternoon, actually we are playing one song as part of a Celtic Christmas Service at the Presbyterian Church on the Green in Morristown at 4pm, if anyone can shovel out and attend. It is a beautiful service, very seasonal, and I’m hoping the snow is cleared away by then.

Severe Weather Alert…

The little stop sign with the exclamation point in the lower right hand corner of my Firefox Internet screen on my computer has been staring at me all day, with dire warnings of the impending nor’easter on its way up the coast. I’m checking the predictions, sort of, every once in awhile, largely because we have tickets to the Baltimore Consort at the Cloisters in northern Manhattan tomorrow afternoon, when the storm is suppose to hit, but I’m not paying too much attention, because weather patterns are unpredictable around here, they make better headlines than true predictions. At the moment, there is a 3-6″ prediction of snow for our area, which by Jersey standards is pretty nothing, if it turns out to be more like 3″. An hour south of us, there is a prediction of 6-12″. But the winds are suppose to be fierce, so weather patterns can shift a few miles and come in faster or slower, and the whole prediction ends up causing a lot of eye rolling and unnecessary panic. Nevertheless, I sent my son out to pick up a couple of things at the grocery store, that we desperately needed, like half and half, because you can’t have coffee in this house without half and half, and he came back to report that the grocery store was mobbed, and shelves are being cleaned off like there was a severe famine on its way up the coast.

So, I decided to spend the day, keeping an eye loosely on the radar, in my pajamas, in front of my computer, researching colors for next spring. Sounded like a good antidote to stupid headlines and dreary bleak weather. I have a couple of favorite sites, Design-Options, and Pantone, both have information about colors for the upcoming seasons, and I get an idea of the general direction of the trends. Not that it is that important, but I’m always curious, and sometimes I get inspired by a particular palette. I found a very cool You Tube Video on the Pantone site, and I watched it about 8 times, sitting with my little fan of Color-aid papers, getting a feel for the combinations. If you watch the video, which talks about how the colors are forecasted, make sure the sound on your computer is on, the adjectives the narrator uses are important, but comical at times, like the Thesaurus was brought out and dusted off. There were some great phrases like “subtly sumptuous”, “halcyon days”, tapestries of experience”, “adaptive attitude”, and “symbiosis of hues”. I particularly liked, “inventive integrity” and “soul searching and sustainability…”

I have a large block of Color-aid papers, there are 314 colors in all, and I lopped off the top one inch of each paper and put them on a screw post, so I would have an easy reference for playing around, while maintaining the paper order. Each of the papers in the full set has a code on the back that helps identify the color. So I watched the video, and pulled palettes that I thought I’d enjoy dyeing, I’ll spend more time this weekend tweaking and narrowing down, but I had a good start. Also, ProChem, where I buy my MX Fiber Reactive dyes, has a PDF on their website that gives the Pantone colors for Spring of 2010, with directions for how to dye each color. How handy is that!

And I spent the day just playing with color. I outlined the eight palettes as I interpreted them from the Pantone site, comparing them to the Spring 2010 colors from Design-Options, and I cut little Color-aid chips, and played around with arrangements.

This is the sort of thing I would do twice a year for Handwoven Magazine when I use to do the articles for them on Color and Fabric Forecasting. I’ve heard during my travels, how many mourn the loss of the column, but the reality is, the column was costly to produce and you the reader can easily with a handy computer and your own block of Color-aid papers, do your own search and experiment. Google “Colors Spring 2010” and see what you get…

Now that I have a bunch of potential palettes in front of me, I started looking at space dyed skeins I had laying around the studio, to get a feel for narrower palettes and more monochromatic possibilities, and largely this was just fun to see the palettes next to yarn. The skeins are from Cherry Tree Hill and they are a funky novelty knitting yarn. I think these were from the batch of novelties I picked up last summer at the Midwest Conference.

I may be housebound this weekend, but I have a bunch of white warps, and a cabinet full of dyes, and I can crank up the wood stove to keep the room temp about 70 degrees for curing, and I can have a colorful weekend in spite of the frightful weather outside!

The social season is in full swing…

The last days of any year are always a mixed bag. I find it hard to get any meaningful work done in the studio, there are so many social events on the calendar, some seasonal celebrations, some gatherings of friends, and on the other hand, there are so many social events on the calendar, seasonal celebrations and gatherings, that I’m forever grateful that I have opportunities like this to celebrate and see the world outside of the four walls of my studio.

Almost every night, since my last post (was it really almost a week ago?) I’ve had a major event on the calendar. Saturday had three events back to back! Friday night, I attended the reception at the NJ Center for the Visual Arts in Summit, NJ, for the artists who donated work for the Blank Canvas Benefit. You may remember my blog post last month while I worked on my piece. Since the handwoven scraps used in the artwork were from one of my jackets, I thought it would be fun to wear the jacket to the reception.

It was great to see all of the other interpretations of the claybord we were given to work with, we could pick the size, and many of the artists chose to use the claybord as a flat box/container, as a standing shadow box, as a canvas, some two sided, and there was my piece, wrapped like a present, completely encased in fabric. The food was delicious, and in any art venue, there are always interesting people to meet and chat with.

Saturday morning was the holiday party for my American Sewing Guild neighborhood group. It was a pot luck luncheon, and a lot of fun.

One of the members had been to a book sale, and she saw this little tome and because it said Hand-Loom Weaving on the front, she thought it was something I could use. She herself isn’t a weaver. It is little kindnesses like this that make the world a better place. I was THRILLED! I have never seen this little treasure, written by Mattie Phipps Todd, in 1902. The book was revised in 1914, and that’s the version that you see here on the right. It is a small little book, and it primarily focuses on teaching weaving in a classroom situation, using the new modern loom, which looks remarkably like one of the 25 small frame looms I have stacked up on a shelf for those occasions when I am demonstrating to a school group. They have end rods that run through the frame to keep the weaving square, and adjustable end caps so the weaving can be sized. The book, discarded from the New City Free Library, in New City, NY, (I’ll bet that’s a story in and of itself!), starts out with a fascinating chapter called “A Chat on Weaving”. Small phrases in the side bars act like little highlighters, phrases like, “Community feeling continued”, and “Nature knows no hurry”. Since this is a teaching manual, there are lots of phrases like “A child’s work should be suited to his capacity, without regard to grade”, and “If you would develop morality in a child, train him to work.” This particular paragraph gave me a huge smile:

“The child not only recognizes the value in honest labor, but his sympathy with all labor is aroused through his own efforts and through the stories told of weavers in all lands. He realizes, also, although in a limited way, the interdependence of the whole world. If the sun did not shine, and the rain fall, there would be no grass. If there were no grass, what would the sheep do?…

Could it be this little treasure, discarded long ago from a library in an unknown city, holds the key to world peace?

Saturday afternoon my husband and I drove to western NJ, where we attended an annual holiday gathering of friends, more interesting people to meet, share, and enjoy. We raced back home, in time to meet my step-sister and her guy, have a quick bit to eat, and race over to the IZOD center to watch the holiday extravaganza of the Trans Siberian Orchestra. Wow! I actually had never heard of this very popular orchestra, a combination of rock, opera, classical remakes of the greats, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, with an added twist of pyrotechnics, fireworks, laser lights, and some pretty mean guitar work. The newest member of the Orchestra was a keyboardist from Russia who began his number with a rapid fire run on the keyboard of the third movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata!

Our seats were amazing, and the moving banks of lights, parts of the stage rising up, and walls of video images, made for quite the show. I enjoyed it a lot, and it really set the stage for the holiday spirit. The whole first half of the three hour show, with no break, was a lovely Christmas story of an angel flying the world in search of world peace.

Sunday I set out for my recorder consort rehearsal, we have a performance Friday night, and was horrified to see the havoc the unexpected freezing rain was having on the roadways. I almost turned around a half dozen times, but decided it was more dangerous to do that than just keep on going. I’ve never seen so many accidents. When SUV’s are creeping along at 20 miles an hour on a slick interstate, with their flashers blinking, you know something is up! And once I made it to Morristown, the sidewalks were complete sheets of ice. I teetered along, digging the four inch spike of my new killer boots into anything I could to stay upright. I made it to rehearsal, late, but safe, and by the time I headed home, the road crews were out spreading copious amounts of road salt and the traffic began moving at a steady pace of 45 mph.

Sunday afternoon, my son returned from his weekend at the Army National Guard. This is his last weekend there, before he ships out to Boot Camp on January 4th. It is the first time I’ve seen him in uniform, and I will say, there was a little bit of pride and a misty eye, my son has grown up. That’s me over there lurking by the front door.

Sunday night, I had the annual holiday gathering with my “mom’s group”. This is a group of six powerful women who all raised their kids together, meeting monthly for lunches for about 15 years, and then, once jobs took over, and crazy school schedules took over, a quarterly dinner is about all we can manage. Still, there is a bond there that goes back 20 years, and we celebrate each time one of us hits a birthday milestone. We celebrated Patty’s 50th birthday as well as the holiday, and everyone loved my coiled hot mats I’ve been working on for the last couple of weeks.

This morning, I’m about to shower and head out to the Frances Irwin Handweavers annual holiday luncheon, I’m really looking forward to that, and I actually bought an additional luncheon ticket for my husband, he has never attended a guild function, and I know there will be other DH’s there, so I decided it might be fun to have him along and accompany me on the hour long drive to Pennsylvania.

Tomorrow night is the High School Holiday Concert, my daughter will be playing the trombone. And Friday night is my recorder consort performance. Saturday we have tickets for a performance of the Baltimore Consort at the Cloisters in NYC, you cannot imagine how spectacular an early music performance is in this particular venue, the vaulted stone ceilings of the 15th century cathedral like space, it is positively haunting.

And tomorrow is the one year anniversary of this blog. I have completely enjoyed the year, writing about my creative adventures, as they parallel my life and all of its crazy meanderings. And I find it a great resource for me when I can’t remember how I did something. Makes for a great record keeper… Stay tuned…

Busy Days plus a rant…

I beg your forgiveness right up front. I need to rant. I don’t normally do this, I never intended this blog for any political forum, but I wandered out to get the morning paper in the 4″ of slush and pouring rain after 3 inches of snow fell last night, and after I got back inside, dried off, settled down with my cup of tea, I opened the newspaper to see the headlines, and I nearly choked.

Apparently grant money promised to many of the arts groups in the state is being frozen, and the state doesn’t know when the funds will be released. This is grant money which has been applied for, granted, spent by the arts organizations and the final installment was a month overdue. Peters Valley Craft Center is owed $66,000. They are devastated. I wrote about my magical visit there in Saturday’s blog. Tonight, my husband and I attended an amazing performance of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, at the NJ Shakespeare Theater, which is nearing the end of its season, and has no where else to cut. No one can make payroll, and I fear for the very life of arts organizations already bled dry of funding and support. This may be the final blow.

Yes, I know NJ is broke. We are as broke as California. I know a new governor was just elected who sent a memo to the outgoing governor, not to spend any more money. I’m not sure how much of this is a political game, but I am sad, and angry, and appalled at the political mess, ethics, fiscal carnage and irresponsibility that surrounds my elected officials. And I am really sad that many of the arts venues I have loved and supported for nearly 30 years, may die in a coffin nailed shut by politics.

I am grateful to the Star Ledger for making this a headline, it was higher up on the front page above the latest carnage in Iraq. I have no words to describe my frustration, my inability to do anything to fix this mess.

Sorry, this has been weighing on me the entire day. And it weighed in the whole while I watched an incredible performance of Twelfth Night. I did manage to snap a quick photo of the set waiting for the production to begin. The floor looked like it was made of glass, or water, the opening scene is of course Viola washing up on shore. And the walls were all made of, get this, recycled shredded paper. It was brilliant and effective, and worked for any scene necessary from Olivia’s Garden to Orsino’s chambers.I spent the day puttering in the studio, working through my vast to do list, trying to clear my cutting table. After making up the Avoca Handweavers Plaid my husband brought back from Ireland, into a skirt a week or so ago, I’ve been looking at the other skirt length hanging on the hanger from one of my shelves, and I got to perusing the October issue of Burda Style, while I was organizing my magazines.I dug through my stash, and found a small length of Sibonne, which is a rayon underlining popular in the 60’s. I found a dozen bolts of Sibonne about 15 years ago, in a fabric store in Florida on a sale table, and brought home everything I could fit on the plane. Those were the days… I have only a few bolts left, some odd blue colors and a purple and red bolt, but I did have this two yard length of a color that would serve well as the lining for the plaid.

I found a pattern for an interesting dress, that I thought might look really wonderful in this plaid. It is one of those things that could really work, or really not. Don’t know until I try. And I wasn’t sure I could get the dress out of the fabric, so I traced off the pattern from the sheets included in the magazine.Then I did a quick preliminary layout.I think I can fit the dress, if I shorten it a bit, which isn’t a problem because I didn’t want it to come to my knee anyway. Meanwhile, I have a paprika silk dress I made years ago, I love the color and the fabric, but I never liked the dress and I have no use for a gown at the moment, so I got to thinking…

What would happen if I used these narrow pieces, and cut up the dress?I’ll have to do some careful ripping apart of the seams, but I think I can get it all out. I also rooted around and found an additional yard or so of the fabric, still in my stash. So I have my work cut out for me!

When I take breaks during the day, I jump over to my Google home page where I have RSS feeds of all my favorite blogs. One of my top favorite blogs, is the Yarn Harlot, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. She is the funniest fiber blogger on the planet. She is a knitter, but it doesn’t matter, everything she writes is so right on the money, so insightful, and so hilarious, that I can’t wait until she posts her next installment. Today was the best. If you are a handweaver reading this blog, stop right now and head over and check out Stephanie’s latest post. It involves a loom. Yes, that’s right. But the best part, is the comments. As of this writing there were about 125. And nearly all of them were from knitters who were desperately trying not to get involved in yet another craft but had to try out this marvelous thing called a loom because surprise, Stephanie knitted a scarf from her knitting yarn in five hours… I squealed with glee as I read each posted comment, and down along comment number 63, is one from me.

I finished up all the hot mats for my gift exchange, and all the mug mats for the guild mug mat exchange next week. I loved making these, and I think they make hot/mug mats. I think I’ll make a couple for me to use as well.

And progress is ongoing on the garage cleanup, started Thanksgiving weekend, the goal was to uncover the woodworking equipment so my daughter could have a wood studio out there. She wandered out there yesterday, and started playing around with some of the equipment we have, my parting words as I showed her where the safety goggles were, “please, don’t cut your fingers off…” I’m such a mom…

Today she came in with her first project she found in an old woodworking publication. It is a clever wood puzzle, connected with a rubber band, painted in bright colors, and she was really proud that she figured out some of the equipment, started to get use to the shop, and didn’t cut off any of her fingers…

And I’m sure if you’ve been following this blog, you’ve been wondering why I haven’t done anything more with all those white warps from a couple weeks ago. Have you figured out I am procrastinating?

I did go through my dye cabinet today, and to my surprise, I had everything I needed to get started. I thought I had a least a couple more days reprieve since I figured I needed some chemical I was almost out of. Nope, all there. So I have no more excuses. Let’s see, luncheon tomorrow, drive out to a guild members house on Friday to pick up another little Structo, ASG holiday party on Saturday and a concert at the IZOD center. I can push this off for at least a few more days…

A Day Off…

A real day off. I know that sounds odd, but I spend almost everyday, at least a good part of it, in my studio, doing some sort of task, unless I’m on the road. My only other hobby is playing the baroque recorder, and I do practice almost daily and play with a consort once a week, but that doesn’t account for the other 23 or so hours in the day.

Saturday we slept in. Blissfully. My daughter got herself off to work, I love that both my kids have driver’s licenses, and my son was visiting a friend at a college in Rhode Island. A taste of empty nest…

We had to drop bags of clothing off at the high school for their clothing drive, and the weather was looking pretty nasty. It was sleeting, and starting to look like snow in the forecast, but we knew Peters Valley was having their open house, and we have been supporters of the craft center for years. My husband I both served time on the board of directors for Peters Valley, nestled in the hills in Sussex County, northwestern NJ, very close to the Delaware River, in beautiful pristine national park land. I’ve taught at the Valley, taken classes at the Valley, exhibited at the craft fair at the Valley, and at their wonderful store and gallery.

We decided that since it had been close to 70 degrees only a couple of days ago, gotta love NJ weather patterns, the roads were far too warm for the snow to really become dangerous, so we headed west. I have to say this comes close to one of the most beautiful drives I’ve ever taken. The further west we went, the thicker the flakes and the more snow there was sticking to the ground. We got to Peters Valley, about an hour trip, and the store was all lit and festive, and I made a serious dent in my Christmas list. The snow continued to fall, my husband got a terrific shot of one of the historic buildings on the grounds, a structure called Greek. The flakes were huge and wet and joyful.We drove home, it took awhile since traffic was dreadful, but we didn’t mind, the trip was magical, the fields in western NJ were like something out of a gothic novel.It was such a rare treat, and it always feels good to visit the Valley, especially on the off season.

On Sunday, I relaxed, attended my recorder consort rehearsal, and then we put up the tree. In years past, the tree decorating event involved a trip to western NJ to cut down a tree, and drag it home, and get it mounted in the base, deal with crawling under it and watering it a couple of times a day, deal with all the dropped needles in everything, deal with the fear of fire, and last year, we caved and bought a lovely fake tree from Lowes. Can I tell you how great it was to pull the box from the attic (actually I just watched, my daughter and husband did the grunt work) and my daughter popped the three sections from the box, stuck them in the base, and plugged it in. Violá! Instant tree!

Presents are wrapped, and underneath. Hopefully the dog won’t go exploring…