Windy Day

I woke up early, the intense wind made the house creak, and the eerie moaning of the bare trees, brushing against the house, made it pretty clear I was up for good.  So I jumped into the day, starting the morning routine, empty dishwasher, make breakfast, reload dishwasher, tidy up kitchen, mail piles, newspapers, the house was quiet except for the wind, which I understand topped 50 miles an hour and killed three people in NJ, everyone in my family left for work or school and I was blissfully alone.  🙂

I continued my routine, cleaning the bathrooms, mentally making a list of everything I needed to get done today, water plants, call my supplier and order pattern paper for the California conference, get tickets to the show I altered the 27 dresses for, fill an internet order for interfacing and get that shipped, toss in the laundry, three loads total (my goodness teenage kids can go through clothing…)  make an appointment for my annual GYN exam and mammogram, AND, make a very long overdue appointment to get my hair cut.  You know how when you pass by a mirror and do a double take and it isn’t good?  Well it was time.  And with the conference coming up in sunny California, I needed a haircut, badly!

All that got taken care of, and I had a scheduled lunch date with the Thursday Philosophy Club, my group of friends, teachers, we’ve been doing this little Thursday routine since my daughter was in elementary school.  In the middle of our eggplant rollatini pizza and arrugula salad, the power went out.  We kept on eating, at least our food was finished cooking.  It was adventurous when I had to use the ladies room, making my way to the back of the pizza place in the dark with a flashlight.  We finally left the restaurant, I had intended to do a bit of grocery shopping, but with no power, I didn’t feel like getting to the register and finding out that the charge machines were down.  Fortunately the power came back on in time for my haircut!  🙂

peacockbackI needed to ship a garment for a faculty exhibit at the Newark Museum for the spring season of workshops, so I decided on the very dramatic Peacock piece, which I did back in 2005, since they hadn’t seen it at the museum, and knowing the space, I thought it would be perfect.  Plus garments like these don’t do any good hanging in my closet in cleaner bags.  It isn’t like it is something I’m going to wear to the next social gathering.  There are pieces I make that I really wear, and there are pieces I make that I do because I want to push the envelope a little bit, and make a spash in an exhibit or on the runway, and a conservative, very wearable little jacket like I’m about to make for Project 5, just doesn’t always fit the bill.

So I raced it over to the shipped, boxed it, and off it went, I’ll see it back at the end of the season.  This piece was actually assembled from leftover pieces of a series of production plain weave fabrics I wove back in the 1980’s.  I saved all the scraps from the garments I made for craft fairs, and sometimes I’ll even find unsold work still in a box in the attic, and I’ll cut that up as well.  Here is another piece I did that way, cutting up old work or scraps from old yardage (I use to weave 30 yard bolts of fabric when I did craft fairs, that’s a lot of scraps).  I wrote about the process of piecing the handwoven fabric using a fusible knit backing, in the first article I wrote for Handwoven Magazine back in December of 2000.  The article was called Slice and Dice, and you can access a PDF of the article by clicking here.cocoon-front-lr

If I never wove again, there is enough work/scraps in my attic to keep me busy for a long time.  I’ve had family clean out closets, and give me back some of the old dated garments they bought from me at craft fairs, they can’t bear to give the garments away, but giving them back to me somehow will make sure they live on.  I enjoy reworking, giving life to something that just isn’t working anymore, style, size, whatever, as long as there is still a trace of an interlacement, handwoven fabric can live indefinitely!

Maybe next time I’m set up to do a photo shoot, I should photograph some of the interesting things that have found their way back to me, back in the 1980’s, I didn’t record everything I made, just what I needed to produce 5 good slides to get me into shows…

Pick-up Updates

single_diamond_graphsingle_diamondI teach a class on Inkle weaving, I love Inkle bands, first the loom is very portable, and second, the bands are so great on garments.  I used a complex inkle band with double rows of a 7 thread pick-up in the garment photographed for the blog.  Anyway, I’ll be teaching the class at the Southern California conference in the beginning of March, (see upcoming events on the right) and I’ve had on my to-do list to update the color  Inkle Weaving Monograph I sell to include a page of basic 5 thread pick-up designs for beginners to end the section on Pick-up.  So I photographed a band I’ve birds_eyebirds_eye_graphbeen working on, and created the 5 thread drafts for the designs, which took me most of the morning, updated the presentation, and created a PDF file as an addendum which can be accessed through my website .  So if you bought the monograph and would like the added page, or are just curious, click on PickUp, and you should access the page.

The rest of the day was spent working on the Dreamweaver Manual, I have a design for the website I’m working on, but not exactly sure how to execute it in Dreamweaver which is soooooo much information, which I’m following, but don’t have a clue how to do this yet.  But I’m only on chapter 4.  I’m learning CSS style sheets.  I long for the simplicity of HTML, even though it is very limiting.  I hit the bed exhausted last night, too late to blog, but my head swimming with all the exciting ideas and fun things that await, if only there were another 24 hours in one day…

Back to the Projects

So my usual Monday morning task is to dust one level of my house.  Since yesterday was a wash, with the guild meeting, and feeling lousy, and my daughters five hours of extra-curricular events, I’m lucky I had the 10 minutes to blog.  So I picked up the dust cloth and started dusting this morning, and the upstairs is much harder than the downstairs, because it has a) my husband’s office, and b) my studio.  As you can imagine, both rooms are a nightmare to dust.

fabricI moved the roll of fabric from what I originally described as Project 5, way back in the beginning of January  off of my loom to dust, moaning that it may be awhile before I get to my poor naked looms.  But I have fabric still to sew…  I returned the roll of fabric to the top of my loom castle, and then decided to actually move it to my cutting table.  The sari lining I had originally put with it in the January photo, was instantly replaced with one of the new ones my husband just brought back from India.  It is a gorgeous cyan blue, with little Jacquard motifs in gold metallic.  It is a better match, even though the original sari would have worked, the original sari competed with the lime green piece of felt I made with a friend on a whim.  I love the edge of the nuno felt piece, the irregular felted edge would be so amazing peeking out of a princess seamline like piping.  And I found three big buttons that I liked with the fabric as well.

patternSo I poured through my back issues of Burda, and found the pattern I think ties this all together, shawl collar, lightweight jacket, princess seams, welt pockets, cuffs, and I like the little belt in the back.  Oh, and it calls for three big buttons…   🙂

So I feel like I am embarking on a new relationship, whenever I finish a project, there is a mourning period, where I am actually depressed, I feel like a passionate relationship ended, that it is gone from my life.  It is all about the process for me, and when the project is done, it just hangs in the closet, or goes out for exhibit, but it is the passion of figuring it all out, laying awake at night, jumping out of bed to get through what I need to accomplish so I can dive into the latest solution.  You can probably tell this brought  me out of my slump…

There is so much going on in the studio, but I am slowly chipping away.  I finished the latest five alterations for the HS Musical production, which came in after I finished the 27 dresses.  And I got a rough outline for my architect sister’s website.  Just waiting on the final photos of all the home additions and renovations she designed, the befores and afters (which totally amaze me, I know what I can do with a piece of fabric, but to do that with a house? )  I am feeling a bit better today, thanks to my mom’s famous home remedy for stomach ailments, sip on honey and vinegar mixed in tepid water.  Works every time…

I got the work shipped out for Small Expressions, and generally got back into the swing of things.  My to do list is onto the second page, which is always scary, but I’m in a brighter mood, with a project to execute, and I’m actually beginning to feel human again after the stomach virus from the weekend.  And it is suppose to be 60 degrees tomorrow.  Can spring be far away?  There is less and less snow/ice remaining, and pretty soon, little shoots popping out of the ground!  And you know what that means….  Gardening season!

Monday

Yes, I’m still alive.  Thanks to all who emailed me and saw me at the guild meeting this morning, with good wishes hoping I was feeling better.  I’m still not completely myself, still a bit queasy in the stomach, and food not appealing (but the glazed pound cake at the meeting went down really well…), but I’m alive, and sort of working on about three cylinders.

I spent the day yesterday hunkered down, with manuals in hand, and huge amounts of files, it is hard to imagine but my sister is even more organized than I am, a pleasure to work with because she knows exactly what she wants and it is my job to execute.  She is an architect in the northern Maryland area, and is in need of a website.  And I am in need of income.  It is a perfect match.  Bless her, she has given me a deposit, and I’m off and running and outlined a site for her, which she enthusiastically approved, now we are down to hours of processing photos and building pages and links, but I’m enjoying learning how to use the Dreamweaver software, and the new Photoshop CS4, along with Bridge, and it was a good day to just sit quietly by the computer.  I did manage to get out around noon to join an early music recorder group for a rehearsal, I’m playing Alto.

My daytime guild, Frances Irwin Handweavers, met this morning, I just love this group.  The talent here is amazing.  One of our members gave a presentation on Turned Tacquetté, which is like a Summer/Winter on opposites but turned so only one shuttle is needed in the weft.  And of course, I do love the show and tell.  We have a couple prolific weavers who always have a bag full of stuff.  This is the guild who very kindly last month, pointed out the beach ball in the back of my dress (see blog from about a month ago…)  They were thrilled to see the resolution, and I showed the coat which received numerous accolades.  It is a pretty cool coat, and I am really proud of it.

daydreamThe hour trip home was tiring.  I’m still not myself, and I didn’t eat lunch because it just didn’t appeal to me.  And I got stuck in horrible traffic on Interstate 80, largely because it was the perfect day for road crews to be out there filling the crater size pot holes from the brutal winter.  So by the time I got into the driveway, I was ready for a nap.  But I didn’t bother to go inside the house.  I’ve done this before, and it is such a cool thing to do, at least I think so anyway.  (And you can’t do it in the summer!).  I reclined the seat in my car, which was warm and cozy, and dozed, with the sun streaming in the car, for at least a half hour.  It felt so wonderful.  I slowly woke, and this was the view I saw out the window. (And I just figured out how to use the camera in my cellphone!) This beautiful blue sky, with black leafless tree branches, gently swaying in the breeze, the occasional ribbon of clouds lazily drifting by.  I stared at it for maybe 20 minutes.  It was so restful and restorative.  Now I am ready to go to the HS, pick up my daughter from play rehearsal, and get her to her snow make up volleyball practice, (where I’ll continue on my knitting), and then on to trombone lessons.

And in the mail today were contracts for teaching at the John C Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, NC in January 2010.  I’ll have more on that once I finalized the details and sign the contracts.

Lost Day

There is a saying, something like, “Life is what happens when you are planning something else…”  I totally hate when I have an agenda (which is most times) and it gets derailed by something which I don’t expect.  Course I’m sure you are all rolling your eyes, you can’t do what I do, have two teens, and a traveling husband, and not expect that things will go wrong.  But still, I always outline what I expect from the day, what I want to accomplish, in those sleepy morning minutes while I listen to NPR as I wake up.  Well, forget this morning.  I woke about 1am with a horrid stomach virus, I won’t bore you with the graphic details, just know that the bathroom tile floor is cold at 1 am, and 1:30am, etc. and that I’m still doing laundry.  I haven’t been sick like that since, well, I can’t remember when.  And it came on so suddenly.  So, that was my night, and my morning, and I could hardly get out of bed I was so weak.

Unfortunately I had to go into NYC today.  I never got my work returned from the Economies of Scale Exhibit, and I needed one of the pieces to ship to Small Expressions to be in Mississippi on the 16th.  When I called the Phoenix Gallery, the woman told me that she is still looking to flag down the UPS driver, that to call him for a pick-up would mean an extra expense of $10.  Even though I prepaid the shipping, she said she wouldn’t send it out until she ran across the driver.  The Gallery is on the 9th floor of a Chelsea Highrise.  Its not like she could look out the window and see him on the street like we do in suburbia.  With the gallery closed on Sunday and Monday, my hopes of getting the work sent to me in time to turn it around and send it to Mississippi, were getting slim.  So I had no choice but to drive into Manhattan today and pick up the work.  My wonderful husband took pity on me, and actually offered to drive in for me, I decided that, though I felt terrible, I had largely stopped the stomach virus part, and would just sit in the car while he drove, run up to the 9th floor (I took the elevator) and retrieve my pieces while he waited in the car.  We were back in an hour and a half, successful, and then I went back to bed.

I got up around 2pm, had a little something to eat, chicken soup, and headed to the Academy to drop off the 27 dresses.  Most of the students had left when I got there, apparently practice hadn’t gone well, and the students were dismissed early, so I didn’t get to see if any of my redesigns worked, but they added another five garments to the pile and home I went.  I still feel lousy, achy and chilled, so I’m going to do what any self respecting person would do, I’m going to curl up in bed and watch the recorded Masterpiece Theatre episodes I missed.