Daryl's Blog – Page 167 – The World from a Weaver's point of view!

Can Shakes, Birthdays and other milestones…

I’m here, I know I didn’t post over the weekend, but it sort of got away from me. It was a busy weekend, lots of little appointments on the calendar, but was able to get into the garden on Saturday and start the process of cleaning up the place. I started with one length of the vegetable garden, and got all that brush and debris cleared away, pulled the new weeds, and generally had fun getting really dirty. The sun was warm, and it felt good to be outside.

I picked up my husband and son, late Saturday night from the airport. They had an excellent adventure in Utah, and other than some wicked sunburns on their faces (resulting in raccoon eyes from the protective ski goggles) they were in decent shape. My son of course regaled me with stories of his dangerous escapades, involving things like jumps and cliffs, way more information than I want to know… And yes, he wears a helmet when he skis, they both do. Not that it’s going to help when you fall off a cliff…

My husband’s birthday was Sunday. My daughter had wrapped all his gifts from my shopping expedition on Friday, she used recycled newspaper, it is cheap and goes right back in the recycle bin when the gifts are unwrapped, so my husband got to open his gifts, and then I headed down to Morristown to my Baroque recorder consort rehearsal. I’ve always wanted to play in an ensemble of sorts, never got to as a child. I attended a parochial school and we didn’t have things like middle school concert band. I took piano lessons, but that isn’t the same as being part of a group. No one person stands out, it is about being a team. There is a lot to learn from that experience, and I’m glad I’m finally getting my chance. The music is beautiful, we are playing French love songs from the 1600’s.

Sunday afternoon, I sat for two hours on a bench outside the A&P in the town where my daughter attends HS. I sat with an inkle loom in my lap, weaving away on the Key Fobs for the Frances Irwin Guild donation for the MAFA conference tote bags. My daughter stood with a can, asking each customer as they exited the supermarket, if they would please support the music programs at Boonton High School.

Now, I know there are a lot of people out there who completely disapprove of this practice. They say it teaches kids to beg for money. I actually don’t completely agree. I have spent many, many hours sitting outside of supermarkets and grocery stores, even Walmart, with my kids, (an adult always has to be present), during their years in scouts and school clubs and programs. I’ve watched my kids develop into confident, well spoken almost adults, who have learned to look someone in the eye, and ask for what they want, and be gracious when a donation is made, and even more gracious when the answer is ‘no’. My daughter has a speech issue, and it is hard for her to stand there for two hours repeating a phrase with lots of “s” sounds, and keep her diction clean and understandable. Yet she did it. She didn’t complain, she did her job, and she represented the school well. All these seemingly minor events in a kid’s life all add up to make them who they become as adults. There are lots of people out there, exciting from a supermarket somewhere in America who have fond memories of their years in band or chorus and many of them will strike up a conversation with my daughter, asking about what instrument she plays and how the money is being spent. She can hold a conversation well with a perfect stranger, (which is why there is a parent always lurking in the background) and I’m proud of her confidence and poise.

Anyway, back to me, sitting in the background on the bench weaving on an inkle loom. Some of the supermarket workers, who didn’t speak English, and were obviously from a country where weaving is an important part of the culture, seemed thrilled to stand and watch me weave, it was probably the first time they saw a woman sitting outside a marketplace weaving, since they left their countries. There was an unspoken bond there that was pretty recognizable.

So I finished my Key Fobs, and this morning, I cut them off the loom stitched across the top and bottom of each band, and sewed them to the key rings.

The Mid-Atlantic Fiber Association is working hard updating their website to be useful to its members, and they now have a resource page, where you can find projects and techniques. The directions for these key fobs will eventually make their way there, but you can find the directions for the conference project from two years ago, a tissue pack holder for your purse from handwoven fabric in the projects page.

The rest of the weekend was spent trying to catch up on some things, and my daughter started weaving her first of eight placemats, she did a really good job for a new weaver, her edges were straight with no draw-in, but she did have a few difficulties with broken threads, the 10/2 warp is a bit finer than her first couple projects and she is a bit aggressive when throwing the shuttle. She isn’t having any problem following an overshot sequence, as I suspected, and the great news is the friction brake seems to be holding and there is no slippage of the beam as she beats.

And my next big project to tackle, besides finally getting the lining and interfacing cut out for the Arctic Sky jacket, is redesigning my website. I spent a lot of hours this weekend, working on a logo, and what I wanted the home page to look like. I also decided I wanted a Spry drop-down menu under the header, and never having done one before, I spent a lot of nail biting, hair ripping moments trying to get it work. And of course my lovely husband comes in so I could proudly display my accomplishment, getting this puppy to work properly, and formatted properly, and he takes one look at it and says, “You forgot a tab for the blog…” So more hours were spent trying to figure out how to edit my now gorgeous drop-down menu to add a tab… Dreamweaver for web design, is a powerful program and the learning curve is huge, and it isn’t very intuitive, but then again, I’m not hugely computer literate either… Stay tuned.

Vernal Equinox

Happy First Day of Spring! In the northern Hemisphere, spring officially started at 7:44am. Course you couldn’t tell it by looking outside! This is the picture outside my balcony when I got up! Little puffs of heavy snow on all the buds. It was quite lovely.

I woke up this morning a little later than usual, since I was up until 1am Thursday night processing the last of the 32 pages for my sister’s website. I FINISHED IT! What huge relief to be able to finally say, I’m done. I expect there to be edits and changes and updates, but those are usually quick fixes, the bulk of the work is done. The site is up and running in its entirety, and after looking at a couple hundred magazine looking shots of gorgeous homes, I’m a little depressed by my average 100 year old home I’ve happily lived in for more than 25 years, it is beginning to show signs of neglect… Could it be I am too busy weaving and having other grand adventures to deal with painting and repairs?

Anyway, my sister’s firm, Ebeling Noe Associates is very happy with the new site, and I’m hoping it helps her connect with some future clients. I really enjoyed getting to know her work over the past 10-15 years more intimately, and I have a huge respect for what she does. After all, she is just my younger sister…

Now I have to tackle my woefully outdated website, and one for my weaving guild…

Sunday is my husband’s birthday. He will return from his ski adventure with our son tomorrow night, so far no broken bones… Anyway, I took the day off to run around and shop for some things for him, I had been doing research online all along for ideas, who had what at what price, the internet is good for stuff like that, and I took today to do the final shopping. And I had a coupon at Kohl’s and with their sales, I managed to do some serious damage to the charge buying some new things for myself! You see, it all started with the cancer thing. And the weight gain from the chemo (yes I know it was 7 years ago), and then the instant menopause, and the weight gain from that, and then the tamoxifen for five years. Apparently now that I’ve been off Tamoxifen for over a year, my body is strangely returning to its original shape before I had cancer. Which was pretty thin. So over the last year I’ve dropped 12 pounds. I know all of you are rolling your eyes, this would be a good thing under normal circumstances. But all my pants were too big.

So, armed with my coupon, I hit Kohl’s with a vengance, and bought pants in my new size, and a couple pairs of shoes while I was at it, because my favorite pair of travel wedges broke last fall, and I haven’t been able to find a pair that are comfortable to walk and travel in all day for a week or more, so I had to buy three that had possibilities and I have until June to break them in…

You can tell I was really roughing it today. And I did manage to get my husband quite a few gifts while I was at it. Please note that I almost never shop. I make clothing last for years, and largely if I shop, I buy coordinates to wear with my immense wardrobe of handwoven jackets and tops. But the pants thing was a really a problem. So, just like that, problem solved!

As I traveled around today, doing my shopping thing, I loved going into stores, fresh with spring merchandise, garden centers waking up, fully stocked, after having sat in my studio for the last week with my nose in the computer screen. I even picked up a handful of packets of seeds, for the cold weather crops, lettuces and such, I always have such high expectations for a garden, and as my life gets out of control, so does the garden, last year it was decimated by the groundhogs, who tunneled in from the outer fence perimeter, so I always have to wonder why I bother? I bother because it is important to keep trying, and I love to watch things grow and eat what I plant. So, depending on the weather tomorrow, it is suppose to be a high of 51 degrees and sunny, I’m hoping to get quite muddy and clear the garden of the winter debris and plant some seeds.

The sand paper seems to be holding the friction brake on the loom I mentioned a couple days ago. Thanks for all the great suggestions on what to do. I did stop at the local bowling alley on my way to the High School Thursday night, to pick up a bag of rosin, which Sandy Gunther from Weaver’s Cottage suggested as a surefire way of getting a non metal friction break to hold when it starts slipping. Alas, my bowling alley pro shop was out. So now I have to search further, but for now, I wove a bit into the second mat, and all seemed secure. Stay tuned.

And one final note, I spent the afternoon on the phone with Sandy Bowles from the HGA. She very graciously spent hours pouring over my Design Challenge presentation, all 80 slides, and had some wonderful editorial suggestions, cleaning up some copyright issues, and helping to point out things that weren’t quite clear. So I’ve made the changes, will send her the final copy, and hopefully get my HGA Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval and then I can add it to my webshop and offer it to any guild that would like to present it as a program without having to fly me in! And I’ll be writing a very condensed version of it for the Summer Issue of Shuttle Spindle and Dyepot. I’ll keep you posted…

Public or Private?

It would seem that two of my recent posts were published privately? instead of publicly. They didn’t show up in my email notifications, and they were headlined with “Private” when I clicked on them to check. Odd. The mysteries of software and computers. Hal isn’t some myth from ‘2001’. He is alive and well and lives in cyberworld. He actually controls cyberworld…

Anyway, in case you are relying on the email notifications for my blog entries, I believe there were two missed entries, A More Focused Monday and Cast of Characters were published earlier this week.

If anyone blogs using WordPress and knows why a blog entry would spontaneously publish privately instead of publicly, let me know. I know how to correct it once it happens, but not what I did to cause it in the first place.

Where Did the Time Go?

Is it Wednesday night already? I have spent most of the last two days sitting in front of my computer, my hand permanently attached to my mouse, processing photos of houses, additions, and renovations for my sister’s website (she is an architect). My eyes are crossing, I’m not processing anything in my brain, and my hand is in the permanent shape of the mouse. I have to uncurl the fingers from it when I want a tea break. But I’m making huge progress. I am close to the end. There are a total of about 30 pages for this site, and I have about 6 to go. My sister is thrilled. So I’m thrilled too.

This is my favorite clock in the house. It is in my studio, right by the door, within site anywhere I happen to be. My husband and I use to collect clocks, until we had no more space to put them. I showed my work at craft fairs all through the 1980’s, and traded for a lot of craft/art work over the years. Do you know how many pieces of pottery/dinnerware you can get for one handwoven jacket?

Anyway, I remember trading a jacket to a husband and wife craftsmen team, and I got a few clocks for the trade. One was this one, done on foam core, the signature is Gail Oring, but it isn’t really clear, so that may not be correct. It is done in a very Lichtenstein-esque style, (Roy Lichtenstein being one of my all time favorite modern artists, seems to me we saw a retrospective of his work at the Tate in London on one of our trips). The clock keeps ticking away, and I totally identify with the blonde in the artwork. It is always “beat the clock” with me.

My daughter and I took a break when she got home from school yesterday, and we curled up in my bedroom (which is the only TV I can figure out in this house), and watched the DVD from the fashion show at the Tampa Convergence, sponsored by the Handweavers Guild of America, in June of 2008. One of my previous blogs, I talked about the challenge project I was involved in for this show, and the presentation I put together for it. I haven’t forgotten, I am still waiting for the “HGA Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval”, and then hopefully I’ll have my own disk to market. But the DVD from the Fashion Show is now available from the HGA, for about $25., including shipping, less if you are a member. It is worth seeing. If you belong to a guild, get it for your library. It is an inexpensive thing to show at a meeting, you just need a computer/projector set up, and this past year’s version is well done.

That said, I have a couple of musings I’d like to share. I’ve seen a lot of weaving conference fashion shows. I’ve seen some with professional models, I’ve seen even more without, where the maker or someone from the conference wears the work. I’ve seen some really professional models, and I’ve seen some models that have no business modeling. I’m not talking about body types. It is the way a model carries themselves, walks, and presents the garment. I’ve seen some pretty bad ones. The models in this DVD were at best, a mixed bag. But that happens, and that’s what the agency sent.

But what I really want to talk about, has nothing to do with the models, or in this case, everything. When I sent my work to the Surface Design Conference in Kansas City in 2007, the paperwork clearly explained that I had to send coordinating support outfits, head to toe, for the model to wear along with my accepted garment. If I was sending a short jacket, I had to send the skirt or pants, and a shirt with it. Even the accessories. What that does, is it makes you think of the garment you have made as part of an ensemble. When I was given the criteria for the design challenge I was asked to participate in for the Tampa show, my partner and I were told our project had to be an ensemble. I am thinking much more in terms of “ensemble” with my work now, especially if I design it for the runway.

Fast forward to the Convergence show. I was back stage for much of the preparation of the fashion show, the fittings, and the dress rehearsal. Sadly, no request was made of the participaing artists to send anything other than their actual garment. And no one shopped for coordinating garments or accessories. So that left whatever the models had in their bags. Which is usually black. Spandex. Badly fitting black spandex. So the artists who sent a beautiful silky jacket in gorgeous Floridian colors, it was stuck on a black spandex body.

So my message to any of you who design garments, and might want to submit work for a fashion show, don’t wait for the sponsoring organization to ask. They might not. Design an entire look, like they do on Project Runway. That doesn’t mean you have to weave the pants and the shirt. But you could make them out of a commercial fabric and send them along so the garment isn’t orphaned. When you watch the DVD, you will see exactly what I’m talking about.

The good news here, is that the work is really easy to see. The models held still long enough for the close-up cameras to really pan the garments, and the details are pretty amazing. Sadly, there isn’t a clue about what techniques are used, only the name of the artist and title of the piece. I’d like to encourage the HGA to consider putting that information on future DVD’s as well.

And, I got the first Overshot placemat woven for our placemat exchange. If you haven’t been following this thread, since way back over the Winter Break when my daughter started winding the warp for this project, in a nutshell, my daughter and I are each participating in an overshot placemat exchange with our guild, Jockey Hollow Weavers. We are each paired with seven other weavers, and each weaver selects an overshot pattern, and we each select our color, and give 2 ounces to each of the other weavers in our group. The idea at the end is, you will get 8 placemats in your color, each with a different overshot design. My daughter immediately selected purple, and asked when I select my color, that I pick something that will sort of go with purple so when I die, she can have my set as well. 🙂

So I picked a celadon green. I love how icy it looks. I started with my mat, to work out all the bugs with the loom. This one is a little quirky, and the warp beam is slipping, and I’ve spent a lot of time trying to get it to hold tension. I haven’t been totally successful. But I made it through one mat, only 15 more to go…

A More Focused Monday

When I walked into my studio this morning, the looms were clearly more content, no longer naked, except my poor big guy. So I removed all the piles from the big loom, which started a process, filing the programming information for my guild, which meant making room in a file cabinet for that, and that turned out to entail purging all the old files from all my articles I wrote over 35 issues for Handwoven. Boy was that a stack of papers. I still have all the computer files, and I do refer to them from time to time, but the hard copy stuff needed to go.

So now my loom is just naked, no longer a catch all for what I hadn’t gotten a chance to put away. And I have a number of little baby looms, a couple Structo’s, and a Penny Loom, they sit on top of the other looms, and my inkle looms haven’t come back yet from California, they sit on top as well.

I spent most of the day processing photos for my sister’s website. I’m sort of bleary eyed. I welcomed the break in the afternoon, to run over to the breast center for my annual mammogram. I know most people dread getting one, but I love the huge relief of hearing those wonderful words, “everything is fine, see you in a year…” So if you have been putting off getting one….

After dinner I drove to the Westfield Weavers, a guild I’m not actually a member of, it is a bit of a distance away, but I wanted to hear my old college professor Carol Westfall give a lecture on her 2007 trip to Europe to see the Venice Biennial, and the Documenta Kassel in Germany. The work was politically charged, lots of recycled materials, and I felt like I had just been through a major textile/art exhibit at the MET. A great evening. I met Carol in 1974, in my first weaving class in college, (Montclair State University in NJ), we have remained friends ever since. A great lady, she touches all those she meets in very positive way.

My husband and son finished their first day of skiing in Utah, so far, no broken bones! They are having a great time, conditions are excellent.