Blizzard – Daryl's Blog

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 Cloisters sit on top of a hill overlooking the Hudson River in northern Manhattan

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.

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!

Tag: Blizzard

The Cloisters

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