Earth to Daryl…

timeYou know that feeling, the one where your wheels are spinning and you aren’t moving forward? My wheels have been spinning so fast for the last few weeks, and I feel like I am not getting anywhere, I’m making mistakes, I’m struggling to keep my head above water, and I look at the clock and declare, “Oh no, the time”!

We are busy here, wrapping up the summer, getting the kids back to school, but there is so much else going on I’ll be blogging around the clock for a week!

millbrookhillhouseLast weekend, my daughter Brianna (16) and I did our yearly volunteer stint at Millbrook Village, near the Delaware River in Western NJ.  It is an 1850’s farming village, that has been kept alive by the National Park service, and has a wonderful weaving and spinning house, Hill House, kept alive by an industrious group of volunteers supported by the Frances Irwin Handweavers and the Jockey Hollow Handweavers,  organized by Sally Orgren.

We dressed up in costume and showed off the myriad looms and spinning equipment in the house.  My daughter elected not to wear the dress she wore last year, one because she hates dresses, and two because she decided that she needed a cap to cover her blue hair (yes, I know it was fuchsia, but now it is blue, happened some time while I was away this summer).

rugloomtableloomHere Brianna is demonstrating on an 1850’s Weaver’s Friend rug loom, which totally fascinates her.  She figured it out pretty quickly a couple of years ago when we first started demo-ing, it is a two shaft loom with a mechanism like the top of a carousel, where the horses ride up and down on a revolving cog, when one is up, the other is down.  When she beats the rag weft into place, a cog mechanism rotates the two shafts so the opposite one jumps into place.  It makes an incredible racket, and she loves to warn the little kids to put their fingers in their ears before she uses the beater.

In the second photo, Brianna is figuring out the overshot pattern on a nearby table loom.  She loves patterns and figuring them out.

barnloomI’m growing fond of the big barn frame loom, that sits next to the rug loom in this very cramped tiny building.  The beater is worn so smooth, it is like glass, and members of the guild re-threaded the loom at the beginning of last season, so we would have something to weave since a few critters found that the linen warp made a nice warm winter bedding making it tough to weave with so many broken threads.

So I demonstrate this old 1700’s barn frame loom, which is clunky and graceful at the same time.  I often think, if only this loom could talk.  Where has it lived, who has woven on it, what children have played around it, and how many beautiful functional items for the home have been woven on it?

While we were at Millbrook, we stopped next door and chatted with the coopers, two woodworkers who were demonstrating making barrels, very technical work, and they are both trying to perfect the technique.

Sidebar:  Last summer, I taught a class at Peters Valley.  This particular class, which was designed to give an overview of basic fiber techniques to anyone interested in teaching fiber in a classroom, or using fiber techniques in their work, is one of my favorites.  Every three hours we move on to a new technique, it is a whirlwind of activity and creativity, and I bring a carload of equipment and supplies for it.  One of the techniques is of course, spinning on a drop spindle, made from a couple of CD’s, and when they have a sufficient amount of yarn, they wind it off onto a Niddy Noddy, an old measuring device used to skein yarn.

When I was first dating my husband, in the early 1970’s, his mother, an avid lacemaker and spinner, would suggest gifts for me for Christmas or my birthday.  One year, he bought me a beautiful Danish lace pillow.  Another year, Kevin bought me the most gorgeous hand carved Niddy Noddy, which I have cherished over the years.  I have no idea who made it, but it was purchased at a weaving store on Croton on the Hudson, somewhere in NY State.  The store is no longer there, I’m sure.

niddynoddyLast summer, one of the students in my Peters Valley class, wound off their yarn onto the Niddy Noddy, and failed to hear the part where I explained how to remove the yarn from the Niddy Noddy, over the smooth spoke, not the curved spokes.  To my horror, and I’m sure her’s as well, the Niddy Noddy snapped off at the neck, and I nearly cried.  Later, after the workshop was over, I wrote to a woodworker I had met the year before when I was demonstrating at another historic festival, who had remarked on the uniqueness of the design and loved copying old textile equipment.  He had made a lovely lucet and had given it to my daughter who proceeded to become quite the expert on the lucet and will give a program on it for the November meeting at the Jockey Hollow Guild.  But I digress.

steve_wayneWayne Grove, and Steve Wenzel, two very enthusiastic woodworkers, told me to send the niddy noddy to them, and they spent a few months trying to find the best way to repair a very splintered neck, too thin to be doweled for strength.  They ended up epoxying the neck back together, and repairing the finish, so the break is nearly invisible, but they used the opportunity to really copy the design and create a few new ones, with a slightly thicker and doweled neck that won’t be so fragile.

Wayne and Steve were the coopers demonstrating barrel making on the porch of the building next door to where Brianna and I were working in Hill House.  Wayne had brought my now flawlessly repaired Niddy Noddy, and the improved copy, and presented them to me, I can’t tell you how drop_spindlethrilled I am to have my cherished Niddy Noddy back, and a new one I can actually use without fear.

I bought a dozen lucets from Wayne, for the November class, and I also bought a Turkish drop spindle, which is a fascinating tool, it comes apart, into three pieces, leaving a wound ball of yarn.

Bri and I were exhausted by the end of the weekend, but had a great time, and I was thrilled with my new and repaired spinning equipment!

If anyone is interested in having one of the Niddy Noddy’s that Wayne and Steve made from my original, they cost about $150. and you can contact Wayne Grove at swgro78@embarqmail.com.  Wayne not only makes beautiful textile tools, he is better known for his Windsor Chairs.

Tomorrow: My adventures with Liz Clay

Is it fall yet?

I need this summer to be over.  I am tired…

I have so much to blog about, and absolutely no time to sit down and write.  And that’s frustrating me.  I spent the weekend volunteering for two days at Millbrook Village, an old 1850’s farming village on the Delaware river, demonstrating weaving and spinning, dressed in period costume, with my daughter.  We had a great time, and I’ve got pictures to share, but that will have to wait until tomorrow.

For now, I would like to finish up with the Felter’s Fling, I took some shots of some of the work from  the other classes, before I left last Tuesday to come home.  The conference continued for another four days, ending this morning.  Since I was only teaching the first three days, I opted to leave after my class.  I would have loved to have stayed to play, and see what the students made, but I needed to be home.

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Karoliina Arvilommi and Roderick Welch, from Finland, taught a class in Scandinavian Feltmaking/Color, Design and Form.  The rugs were beautiful, so well made, and the imagery fresh and interesting.

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Liz Clay, from the UK, taught a class in Elemental Rhythms/ Felt and Photograph.  I loved the work that came from this class, especially two of the pieces that Sharon Costello did.  The top photo was made from a photograph (on the right) juxtaposed with a piece of felt that was manipulated, stitched, and embellished to recreate the same feel as the photograph.  I posted a shot of Sharon working on the piece on my blog from a couple of days ago.  The photo below, of the fungus, is also by Sharon Costello, the large fungus in the front is in dimensional felt, and the smaller one behind, is a photograph.  Everything the class did, was interesting and sensitive.  And lucky me, Liz Clay was dropped off at my house tonight, and is staying with me for a couple of days while she plays in NYC.  I’ll take her to the airport Wednesday night before I head off to my guild meeting.

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Myfanwy Stirling from Australia, taught a workshop called Feature Texture, Felt Vests or Smocks.  While learning to add surface texture to the felt fabric, students created interesting vests that fitted the body and celebrated the wearer.

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Jeanette Sendler, also from the UK, taught a class making Collars, Cuffs, and Mantles, some of the work was displayed on the folding screen, so I could get a group shot.  Beautiful surfaces.

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Jean Hicks, from Seattle, WA taught a class called Millinery Questions for Feltmakers.  She is wearing one of the hats in the top photo, and some of the other hats made during the class were lined up across the table.  There were such amazing shapes, and styles.  All were wearable!

I had a great time at the Fling.  Sharon Costello, who organizes this event every two years, does a wonderful job, and I’m really loving the felting community.  And I’m looking forward to having Liz Clay in my studio/home for a few days.

Tomorrow I’ll blog about my Demonstration days at Millbrook Village.

I’m Home!

Actually, I’ve been home for a couple of days, but I got in really late Tuesday night, and I hit the ground running Wednesday morning, with very little sleep.  Could it have been the caffeine I consumed to keep me awake for the four hour drive Tuesday night?  Duh…

Anyway, I spent Wednesday morning with my 16 year old daughter at the local county college, where she was taking advantage of a HS challenge program and signing up for a class in Japanese.  Her five text books cost $125.  She was very excited to think of herself as a college student.  Of course she still has two more years of HS…  But it is a great opportunity and she will get college credit for the course.

I spent the rest of Wednesday unpacking, doing the laundry, actually working in the yard for an hour, which felt wonderful.  I haven’t spent any time, either working on or enjoying my lovely gardens this summer, and playing in the dirt after such a grueling six weeks of conferences was healing.  My husband, bless him, has done an amazing job keeping up the gardens which I assure you is NOT a one person job.  There is a ton of weeding that needs to be done, to be sure, but he has kept the worst of the weeds at bay, and installed a ton of downlights around the ponds, which glow like fairy pools in the late evening.  I’m looking forward to the fall, which is usually glorious in NJ.

Last night, my husband and I bought tickets, right before I left, for Noises Off, at the NJ Shakespeare Theatre which is housed in a gorgeous building at Drew University in Madison, NJ.  We bought the tickets based on the Newspaper review, which was stellar, and we laughed through the entire performance.  I adore British farces, lots of door slamming, flawless timing, as only a Shakespeare Company can do, and we enjoyed the show so much, we bought additional tickets for Twelfth Night, and The Grapes of Wrath, which close out the 2009 season.  In addition, we just received the season tickets for the Papermill Playhouse.  So much live theatre to see!

So today, I looked at my poor neglected house, and decided that I needed to spend the day, really cleaning it, which meant all sorts of detours, including cleaning out the snake cage.  Don’t ask.  I worked straight through the day, and only managed to clean one floor.  That’s what happens when you leave for a few weeks, the house gets dirty without you.  I’ll continue it tomorrow, but tomorrow, being the end of the month, is paperwork day.  I have a huge stack, all the accounts and bills have to be addressed, and that will be my priority tomorrow.

Since Project Runway starts in half an hour, I thought I’d post the photos of the jackets from my class at the Felter’s Fling.  They were amazing.  I had five students, and they were working like crazy right up to the end, there are still a lot of pins in the jackets, along with tailor’s tacks, and errant threads.  But everyone was really thrilled, they learned so much, and I heard from more than one student that, “they enjoyed this so much they might even start sewing!”

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Felter’s Fling

OK, I know I’ve been a bit lax in my postings.  Overload wouldn’t even begin to cover it.  But I’m having a great time up here in MA, at a craft center called Snow Farm where Sharon Costello, felter extraordinaire, has organized the fourth Felter’s Fling, which is a gathering of international felter’s, who spend a week doing, well, felting.  The instructors come from all over the world, and so do the felters.  I feel positively local coming from NJ.  Though I’ve only dabbled in felt, I am here as an instructor teaching the felters how to make jackets from their felt.

The first night I arrived at the “Fling”, I judged the Felted Hat contest, where all the conference attendees wore their newest headpieces and millinery creations, and the instructors all got together as judges.  What an amazing parade of creativity.  We all came up with our favorites, and awarded prizes to the most “amphibious”, the most “green” (made from scraps), the most “likely to crawl away”, the awards were as fun as the hats!

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I have to say, I adore working with felters.  Not that I want to become a full time felter, I am a weaver at heart, but there is such a different approach to creativity in the felting community than in the weaving community, it is fun to be here, immersed in wool, for a change of scenery after four weaving conferences in a row.

The biggest difference is the spontaneity of process, with some soap and hot water, and some wool, the most amazing things can be formed, shaped, and invented.  Yes, it takes some skill to be really good at this, but the process couldn’t be simpler.  And there is no huge investment in equipment, and no HUGE learning curve, no threading the loom, no mathematical calculations, (except in how much wool you need), just seeing where the wool takes you.  The felt itself, when cut, doesn’t ravel, doesn’t have a grainline, and has this gorgeous organic edge that can be used in all sorts of decorative ways in a garment, instead of seam finishes, hems, and edges.  So the standard jacket pattern I use for teaching handweavers to sew, becomes something entirely different when used by felters.

I shot a few photos of some of the jackets in progress, it is fun to watch the students change course mid stream, run out and felt another piece if they need it, cut up and piece and overlap and embellish as the spirit moved them, and see these wonderful jackets just take form and develop into personal stories and statements.

embellishingSome of the students continued to work on their felt panels, embellishing and piecing, well into the second day.  Can’t do that with handwoven yardage, it is what it is.construction2

The range of fabrics was amazing, from gorgeous flat wools, to textured collages of bits of everything that could possibly be held down by the wool. The layout was thoughtful, and well planned, and placement of the natural edge of the felt was used in wonderful ways.

jacket3We even had some interlopers come in from other classes to use the needle felting machine I brought, or the free motion stitching capabilities of the sewing machines I brought.  I own a Janome xPressions embellisher machine, and of course I brought my Janome professional 6600.

jacket2sharonconstructionjacket1I’ll try to get some photos of all the nearly finished jackets tomorrow afternoon after the class ends, before I head home.

Taking care of business…

With only a couple of days turn around before I head out again, I am really trying hard to just focus on only the critical stuff.  It is easy to get sidetracked, I’m famous for that, but I have a precious few days to catch up with the truly important things, and the rest will have to wait.

I’m leaving again on Saturday, to drive to Amherst MA for the Felter’s Fling, a conference of felters, and fortunately I’m only teaching the first half of the conference.  Meanwhile, 14  loads of laundry, and $300. worth of groceries, and new brakes on my car, and 5 sets of contracts, one article for the American Sewing Guild chapter newsletter, and airline tickets for yet another teaching venue in the fall, I’ve gotten to the most urgent of things on the top of the pile, and I think I can exhale and go to sleep tonight.

I went to South Carolina last week with my husband, leaving my 19 year old son in charge of the house.  I had a lot of family and friends who were taking bets on the carnage I’d find when I returned home, and I am so thankful that my son, even though he did have a couple parties, which I knew about, and he did have a couple of his friends move in, which I also knew about, left my house picked up and reasonably clean and presentable, though there wasn’t much in the way of food left in the refrigerator or cabinets.  So I’ve restocked the fridge, and wiped out a couple of toilets that were really needing it, and since I’m not planning any house guests this week, that will have to be good enough.  The yard needs some tender loving care, the weeds are messy, and the perennials need trimming, annuals are spindly and dry, but I can’t deal with that now.

I noticed that the widget on the side bar for upcoming events has nothing in it.  I need to refill the widget?  There are a lot of wonderful teaching opportunities coming up, and 2010 is starting to look a little overwhelming, but I just have to focus on the next 24 hours.  I’m trying to hold onto the zen feeling I got while on vacation…  (Isn’t it amazing how quickly that feeling can dissipate?)

I did however, watch the marathon debut of Project Runway season 6 tonight, and the all star two hour lead in, with past Project Runway favorites.  Sorry, I thought Korto’s look was so much more polished, and I would have voted her the winner.  But they didn’t ask me…  And I like the new stable of designers for season 6, they are an interesting bunch, and I’m anxious to read the post show reports from one of my favorite blogs, Tom and Lorenzo, since they always show much better close up photos of the designer’s looks than you can see zipping down the runway.  And I really value their opinions.

Stay tuned…