Daryl's Blog – Page 158 – The World from a Weaver's point of view!

A Sunny Day?

Wow, the sun actually came out today. What a surprise! Course more rain due in tomorrow, there was even a front page article in the newspaper today about how serious climate/weather pattern changes are here. Well the plants are loving it!

I’m now in wind down mode, tying up loose ends, starting the preparations for my trip next week to the Midwest Weavers Conference in Grinnell, Iowa. I’ve never been to Iowa, so this should be a treat. A week before I leave, I need to ship out the consummable stuff, like the handouts, raw materials, and some monographs to sell. So yesterday, I spent the entire day printing and binding stacks of monographs, and the handouts, and burnt out my year old new binding machine. Bummer…

The box is packed, and on its way to Grinnell, and the good news, is it contains about 50 yards of Red Dot Tracer, which I’m happy to say, is finally available, from Pellon, after months of gnashing of teeth and complaining, and moaning, I got 150 yards of it via UPS yesterday, in time to chop it up in two yard packs and ship it with the handouts. I have been in a quandry since HTCW stopped shipping early last fall, and the product became unavailable. Pellon bought the plates for the Red Dot Pattern Tracing Material, but they printed it on their Tru-Grid base, though improved from the original Tru-Grid base, this one is more stable than the old one, I still don’t like it because it doesn’t hold a pencil mark well. For a number of reasons, this is really important to me. I have multi-sized patterns I use for my classes, and the lines have to stay true and accurate. And so do the lines the students trace. Anyway, the Red Dot has now been printed on a different base, one closer to the original one from HTCW, and I’m hoping it will perform as well. I’m crossing my fingers.

So, now to the next project, which is a gallery talk I have to give next Wednesday as one of the exhibiting artists at HGA’s Small Expressions Exhibit at Grinnell College’s Faulconer Gallery. I wanted to finish one of the pieces on the loom that I started last spring, so I could get a shot of it and include it in my talk, since it is woven in the same technique as the pieces on exhibit there. (If you click on “Small Expressions” under “Upcoming Events/February 24th” – which was when the show originally opened in Missouri, you will see the pieces they selected for exhibit)

I’ve blogged about this technique, a Theo Moorman Inlay on a cotton ground, in many previous posts. Search for “Big Sister” and you’ll find many references. I printed the image on silk, and then cut it into quarter inch strips, and wove them back into the loom, in sequence while weaving a backing fabric at the same time. One of my blogs has detailed shots of the process. If I have time I’ll search for it.

Anyway, the image here was shot the end of August, 2001, while vacationing a mere 20 miles away with my children. We took them to the South Street Seaport in Manhattan, and then up to the roof of the World Trade Center. I titled this photo “Top of the World”. I don’t need to tell anyone what happened a mere two weeks later…

It is a chilling photo, the shaky appearance of the towering structure, from the rewoven strips, two innocent children doing what children do when posing for a photo for dad, (notice the rabbit ears my son is sneaking in behind his sister’s back), I am haunted by this photo every time I look at it. Reweaving it back together row by row, was somehow healing.

My daughter walked in tonight while I was photographing this for the blog, and plopped her latest adventure in front of me, a large paper box, carefully folded into a square. She said, “Guess how many boxes are inside of this?”. I took a wild guess at 10, and was sort of surprised when she told me I wasn’t even close. Can you believe there were 20 little paper boxes, all just a fraction smaller than each one they nest into, and she proceeded to unwrap each origami box to unveil the next box, until she had them all lined up on my cutting table. The smallest one was half the size of my thumbnail.

You have to love hanging around with my daughter. She disappears into her room, and comes out with the oddest adventures, she should have been studying for her Spanish final tomorrow, but folding paper boxes was much more soothing to her soul, and she was quite proud of her accomplishment.

Ah to be 16 again… See, that’s my problem. I never blow anything off I’m suppose to be doing for the shear joy of creating. I’ve gotten way too responsible in my old age…

Speaking of old age, we had a couple of great theatre adventures, last Friday we saw The Full Monty at the Papermill Playhouse, which was absolutely a terrific piece of theatre, the cast was unbelievable, one scene stealer after another, and if you live anywhere near Northern NJ or NYC, get yourself a ticket now! The show runs until July 14th I believe. There is a cameo appearance by stage veteran Elaine Stritch, who according to the papers is 84 years old. I want to be able to get out there and still perform in my studio and on the road at 84. That would mean I have another 30 years to go!

And last night, my husband and I escaped to the movie theatre to see “Up”. Another Pixar/Disney hit, one of the most charming stories I’ve seen in a long time, well, you just have to take my word and go to the movies. You won’t be sorry. The star of “Up” is a very old man, who is about to be forceably taken to a retirement home, the love of his life is gone, and he gets his house to lift off into the air with a gazillion helium balloons and flies it all the way to Paradise Falls in South America. I know it sounds like the oddest plot line imaginable, but to see it, and how the story develops, is truely amazing. It is almost believable. It has been a long time since I’ve been to the movies and heard an audience applaud at the end of a film. The show was packed, and they did applaud.

Success!

The weight of the last nine months has been lifted off my shoulders, and no, I didn’t actually give birth, rather metaphorically, I finished the Website Success seminar that I agreed to put together many many months ago. I struggled with this, because there is so much information, and much of it is rather technical and dry, and I had so much research to do. I still want to run it by a few more of my technical friends, and tweak it here and there, but the 80 slide presentation is largely finished, well in time for my August preview, and I couldn’t be more relieved. And I’m happy with it. Course I wouldn’t do anything I wasn’t happy with, but I’m also proud. This was a huge stretch for me, and I learned sooooo much, mostly that I haven’t even scratched the surface. I think of web design a lot like weaving. Weaving can take a lifetime of study, and there are so many different aspects of it to consider. You can have momentary beginner’s success with a very simple project that a teacher helps you set up, but no matter how old and experienced you are, there is always more to learn.

Now I can focus on the next fires to put out…

Meanwhile, the surprise box of yarn arrived from WEBS. (see previous post). This is an enormous amount of yarn for $139. including shipping. And the large $5. cones of cotton flake in the background are in perfect colors to overdye.

Which brings me to the current weather, which has been positively ghastly. I am looking for some beautiful sunny days so I can start dyeing some of this yarn I’m sitting on, into some beautiful warps that will keep me busy weaving all winter. Alas, we saw the sun for about an hour this morning, after yet again another violent thunderstorm. The forecast for the next couple days says sunny in the 70’s, but I’m not buying it. We have had dreary cold rain for so many days now I’m rather thinking I’m still in Seattle…

The only good thing about all this rain, is the gardens, which are positively exploding with color and greenery and lush tropical plants (I’m talking rainforest here…) And of course, not to be completely depressing, there is the explosion of the weed plants as well, those that don’t belong where they are popping up. So, even though the sun is non existent, I managed to snap a quick couple of shots before it has started to rain again.

In the first photo on the left, there is a glimpse of our pool, which so far no one has used because it has been so rainy and cold. Somewhere in there is a beautiful iron gazebo, completely covered with a canopy of vine-y things. And all of the rain has made the climbing rose bush in the foreground, shed all its petals like snow. We have lots of outdoor sculptures, largely because we love to collect art and fine craft, and all the walls and surfaces in the house are completely filled, but there is always room for one more out door tchotchke. And they never need dusting!

The photo on the right has a lovely sculpture in the foreground, called “Drunken Wheelbarrow”. (Actually we needed to keep it turned on its side so it wouldn’t collect 84 gallons of rainwater which will breed mosquitos). Hidden in the back of that photo, under lush vegetation is a sizable pond complex of spillways and waterfalls. It is a delight to hear the gurgling of the water, the twittering of the birds, and the tones of the Monogolian Windchimes my husband gave me for my birthday.

Oops, I’m posting this quick, violent thunderstorm just struck…

2 Hours later…

I’m back, whew, what a storm. Anyway, I was commenting on how beautiful our gardens were, the latest storm caused rivers of water down and across the yard. But usually there is a lovely eco system happening, fish swimming in the ponds, frogs hovering just below the surface or on a lily pad, chipmunks scurrying all around, and birds everywhere. From the height of the balcony out my bedroom, I zoomed down and captured these two shots.

In the shot on the left, there are two frogs hiding, can you spot them?

And this little creature on the right, scurried onto a pathway, covered with drenched rose petals.

When the storm started, my daughter and I quick shut down our computers, and then played around in the studio, waiting for it to pass, tidying up the cutting table which was completely out of control. One of the piles on the table was the mats from the Placemat Exchange, so we took advantage of no electronics for a couple hours, and we got the hems pressed in. Bri, my daughter sat and started handsewing, notice that purple is NOT her favorite color, <g> and the gorgeous 34 strand knotted ankle band she is wearing, which she just completed over the weekend.

And finally, I’m making slow progress on the jacket. I did get one of the sleeves in, and the second pocket, but I’m concerned with the fullness across the back now that one of the sleeves is in, and I’m thinking I need to remove the sleeve, undo the shoulder seam and take out the excessive ease across the back shoulder the pattern called for, and recut the back armhole. The fabric is giving quite a bit, and I don’t want it that slouchy.

I love the colors in this fabric. The green wash is so unusual next to the rust, and it is so textured. If you are new to my blog, I should mention I wove this fabric, from hand dyed warps, and there is more of a description in a past blog. The jacket fabric is called Sandstone Layers, based on one of the palettes from one of my fabric forecasts in Handwoven Magazine, and the fabric hung in the yardage exhibit at Convergence Tampa Bay 2008. I cut some of the fabric into a window shade, which also hung in a functional textile exhibit in Tampa. I had just enough left to create this jacket. So here is what I have so far, I only need another sleeve, and the large belt loops. (And handworked buttonholes…)

Stay tuned…

Just Plodding Along…

Well, I’m getting caught up on house work, and paperwork, and I’m actually making substantial progress on the Website Success seminar. It is coming together easier than I imagined. So most of my days are sitting in front of the computer, surfing the web for sites I like, plugging in data, using things like Webopedia as my technology dictionary. I’m learning so much, that’s never a bad thing.

BUT…

This seminar is costing me a little fortune…

So, picture this…. I’m sitting at the computer for 8 hours straight. An email comes in, I hop over and answer it. Especially when I get one granting me permission to use their website home page in my presentation. And then I get a WEBS alert…

For those of you who don’t know WEBS, it is this wonder of a yarn store, near Amherst, MA, that carries tons of knitting yarns, and more importantly TONS of weaving yarns. They give nice volume discounts, and I buy a lot of stuff from them. Hence the “alerts”. This is a lot like an Amazon.com alert. “Since you bought this particular book, you might want to know about…” OK, I’m a sucker for books. And about 30% of the time, I just have to have the book they are steering me into…

WEBS is just as bad. The WEBS alert comes into my inbox, appearing on the lower right corner of my screen, no matter what program I’m in, and I’m really torn… Do I open it knowing full well I’m probably going to have to get out my credit card? Or do I just hit delete…..

OK, so I glanced at the subject line, BAD MISTAKE… It said, “…great cone sale“. That’s all I had to see, and I clicked on it. So, $125. later, I am back to my website seminar… It was really the rayon bouclé that did me in. $15. for a two pound cone. It is normally $16.95 a pound. What else could I do? And there was that cotton flake, in surprise colors (I love a surprise), you don’t get to pick, but it was $5. for a 2 pound cone…

So I’ll get a nice surprise package in a few days…

Meanwhile, I get about an hour in the evenings to sew, which is a nice treat at the end of a long day of staring at a computer screen. The Sandstone Layers jacket is moving along, it is hard to see much of a change from the last post I did of this jacket, but all the couching (with a rayon bouclé yarn) is finished around the collar, the fronts, and the hem. And I have one pocket attached. I’m really liking how this is coming out, at first I thought it was really busy and detailed, but that’s actually appealing to me in a military sort of way, the belt is very cool, but I’ll know better when the big belt loops are on. There is a two piece sleeve as well. Lots of details left, the second pocket, handworked buttonholes, lots of big belt loops, and of course the sleeves.

Stay tuned…

The Party’s Over

And what a party it was! But sadly, all good things must come to an end, and reality takes over! So now I have a studio full of stuff to make, lots of wonderful ideas, and no time to actually sit and make stuff. Sound familiar?

I leave in two weeks for the first of a half dozen teaching commitments, which will take up most of my summer. In between I’ll be working on an article on the Designers Challenge from 2008 for SS&D, and a book review, revamping my keynote address for New England Weavers Seminar, and building the newest seminar on Website Success. This last one is a killer, and has been haunting me, lurking in the back of my mind since I agreed to do it last fall.

The more I research, the more I get overwhelmed. And all that stuff lurking around me, just calling me to come and play with it…

But I got up early, dusted my downstairs, fed the snake (don’t ask), put in the next load of laundry, cleared away all the clutter, made some breakfast, tackled some of the emails I didn’t get to answer yesterday, filled a book order, and finally sat down to work on the website seminar. Surprisingly it went well. I’m moving along on it, I have a number of resources to pull from, largely it is deciding what is important to cover, and what is “Way Too Much Information” for a 2 1/2 hour seminar.

So, I won’t be any fun until this seminar is put to bed, you’ll just have to entertain yourselves for awhile, but meanwhile, I did promise photos of the fabric I bought at the Fabric Depot in Portland, OR. for $5./yd, for my poor fading rocker. My mother in law gave this rocker to my husband and me for our wedding, we reupholstered it when she gave it to us, and we have been married now for more than 30 years. The fabric is worn to shreds, and it is on the list, the very long list of things to do around the house, but finding a fabric that I think looks great moved the reupholstering job up on the list, just slightly. Maybe in September. No wait, I promised my guild I’d redesign their website. October? No, I promised my other guild I’d redesign their website. Well, for now, I’ll just leave the fabric sitting on the rocker.

I darted out to my car this morning during a massive thunder storm, to gather up the silk scarves that were curing in black plastic, still on the floor where I had left them. I rinsed them thoroughly, like Kerr told us, and hung them to dry.

I’m so loving this technique. The lack of planning, the instant gratification, and the possibilities are making me really want to just dive into getting some screens, a padded cover for my work table and running amok! Alas, I have things to take care of first…

But they are pretty, and I have lots to look forward to. I’m hoping to spend a couple of days this summer, mixing dyes for some warps, and getting a bunch of warps painted to work on through next year, I’ve run out of handwoven fabric to sew, and am really itching to get my big loom up and running again. It has been naked waaaay too long… Of course, whatever dyes are left from that escapade can be thickened and screened on whatever is laying around. Too many techniques, not enough hours in the day….

Stay tuned…

Deconstructed Screen Printing

I will admit, I am exhausted. It is hard to believe, this time last night I was somewhere over Kansas…

I promised you photos of my studio, after my bout of jealousy with Joy’s studio floorspace. There really isn’t any in mine. But it is what I have to work with, and it serves me well, and it stores a lot, and if I keep it picked up, I can actually function in it. And I’ve often said, though this is really just a justification for my 350 square ft oversized bedroom, “It isn’t the quality or quantity of space, it is what you make in it that counts”.

My studio is actually an old 10 x 10 bedroom where we knocked the outside wall out and extended over the downstairs den. There are beautiful floor to ceiling windows at the far end, but I keep the shades drawn for fear of fading of all my yarns and textiles. The loom in the foreground is my big 8 shaft 45″ Tools of the Trade Loom.

I have a great cutting table, that my husband built for me, and there are old kitchen cabinets

above the sewing machines and the computer desk. I do have a lot of storage for such a little room. The hardest part is keeping the cutting table cleared. 🙂

You’ll notice I have stuff stuck all over the face of the cabinet doors. I put up cards, notations, quotes, sketches, things that inspire me, small cartoons, and photos of classes or people I love. It is a happy wall to look up at as I work. Robyn had the same sort of thing in the form of a bulletin board next to her desk, and on it was a great quote, one I have to add to my own wall…

Powerful Woman’s Motto:

Live your life in such a way that when your feet hit the floor in the morning, Satan shudders and says,… “Uh, Oh, she’s awake!”

Well, damn, I like that. It left me with a big smile, and isn’t that what inspirational things are suppose to do?

After getting to bed last night after 1pm EST, I woke up at 7am, to throw on some grunge clothes and pack up the car, and drive an hour west, almost to the New Jersey border. My guild, Frances Irwin Handweavers, was having it’s end of the year one day workshop, free to members, and I was thrilled I made it back in time to finally get to take one of Kerr Grabowski’s seminars. First, I’ve known Kerr for 20 years, I met her when she first came to Peters Valley as their fiber resident. She is amazingly talented, creative, and a wonderful teacher, and she lives in the Surface Design World. It is odd that I’ve never been able to take a workshop with her, as a matter of fact, back in 2001, we both taught together at Montclair State University in their fiber department when the department found themselves without instructors for a couple of semesters. I handled the structural fiber classes and she taught surface design.

So it was with great anticipation and excitement that I finally got to spend the day with Kerr, learning deconstructed screen printing. She has a wonderful DVD of her class, available for about $40. and you can preview it on her website. Of course I bought the DVD…

(That’s Kerr in the red apron)

She showed us some very playful and spontaneous things, and I can’t wait to build a screen surface for my cutting table, and get a couple screens. I have everything else. A cabinet full of dyes, all the materials for dyeing, even the fabric, which I picked up on Friday in Seattle. My head is spinning with possibilities.

Here are a couple of my attempts at the medium, the silk chiffon scarves are still curing in a black garbage bag in my car in the heat.

I’ll take a photo when they are rinsed and dry.

One final note as my excellent adventure winds down, I picked up a birthday card in one of the galleries in Bremerton, WA during our Art Walk Friday night. It was actually a belated birthday card to me. It featured the artwork of a local artist Amy Burnett, who was actually there to sign the cards. In addition to the artwork, the year 1955 was written. She has a series of cards for all different years, as a celebration to women. Inside is a list of all the special things that happened that involved women in the year you were born.

I didn’t realize that Rosa Parks, refused to move to the rear of the bus in December of 1955, the same year I was born, and I didn’t realize that Rosa Parks was a seamstress. I didn’t know that Doris Humphrey founded Julliard’s Dance Theatre in 1955. I didn’t know Louise Boyd at 67 years old was the first woman to fly over and around the North Pole in 1955. I knew Annette Funicello was one of the original 24 Mouseketeers in the Mickey Mouse Club, but I didn’t know it debuted in 1955. It was one of my favorite shows. And most importantly, I didn’t know that Lenore Tawney, weaver and sculptor, exhibited nonfunctional weaving in shapes departing from the traditional two dimensional fabric form, thus introducing a new range of artistic expression, fiber art, in 1955. I feel like I am surrounded by women who made a difference.

“Uh, oh, she’s awake!…”

I don’t usually do commercial announcements, but I know two of the brave souls who have worked tirelessly on the project below. I did a brief bit of alpha testing, and the site has real potential. Of course I’m still hoping you’ll stop by my blog after getting your fill of online technology! 🙂

Today at noon, Weavolution the much anticipated new online gathering place for handweavers launched, and I have a brief press release here:

JOIN THE WEAVOLUTION

Weavolution.com, an online social network designed to meet the unique needs of handweavers, launches its beta test on June 8, 2009. Designed to bring handweavers together from around the world, Weavolution.com is a one-stop resource for every type of handweaver.

From hobby to production, from peg to dobby, Weavolution provides a place for weavers to meet, discuss and participate in moderated user groups and forums.

Members may post projects, looms, yarns, books, and accessories to share with others and solicit feedback from other members.

But you don’t have to be a member or even a weaver to explore the site and learn about weaving free of charge.

Weavolution aims to become an inclusive, global community that encourages weavers by enabling them to discover and follow trends in weaving; find local, national and international resources; and find businesses catering to their needs. Weavolution members can search the site’s databases to view items, group postings and research information catalogued by others.

Weavolution’s goal is to provide a website for handweavers that is useful, fun and helpful, and to be a resource for shops, products and ideas from around the corner and around the world.

The project began in 2008 when three weavers from across the United States, Claudia Segal, Tien Chiu, and Alison Giachetti, met online and formed Weavolution. Working together with a host of dedicated volunteers, the team forged Weavolution.com into a website with the potential to become a community.

Come, take a look. Weavolution.com is available for anyone to explore. You don’t have to sign up to see our site. But if you do, we hope you’ll decide to JOIN THE WEAVOLUTION