Tag: Dishtowels

And so starts the holiday season…

…with a vengeance! Thanksgiving is late this year, so hasn’t happened as of this writing. But the last few weeks have been horrifically busy, because, ’tis the season.

It is the season for our annual guild show and sale. I worked furiously making stuff from leftover scraps, for the sale, like ornaments…

Like zip bags…

And I loaded up the car, helped set up the sale, spent an exhausting three days working the floor, and selling my little heart out. I sold quite a bit of work, which made me happy.

Most of the unsold work was just delivered to the Shakespeare Theatre of NJ, for them to add to their little gift shoppe in the lobby of the Kirby Theatre for the final show of the year. ‘Tis the season!

The final show is A Christmas Carol, and because I volunteer as a stitcher in the costume shop, it has been all hands on deck. I always thought my least favorite show to help with costume alterations was Macbeth. Lots of black, lots of leather, and garments that weight 75 pounds. The current production is just as challenging. Many of the garments for this show have to be rigged for quick release, for costume changes that have to occur in about 15 seconds. There are only 8 actors in this version of A Christmas Carol. That means fitted corseted jackets have to be attached to full skirts, and full petticoat attached to that. With a lapped separating zipper down the back, where some of the layers were 1/2″ thick. We have industrial machines there at the costume shop, but nothing would go through this except the costume shop’s manager’s personal $199 11 year old Singer from Walmart. Try putting in a lapped zipper after the fact in a garment that weights as much as I do… Go figure… The things I am learning… I’ll go in one more day on Tuesday, they pack out on Wednesday and go into tech this weekend. Show opens December 4th. ‘Tis the season!

This is the season of harvesting, and I had a friend collect a huge bucket of black walnut hulls. I don’t have a garage to put them in, since that is now the weaving studio, and with the animals always getting into something, I don’t dare just put them in my studio. So I left them in front of the garage bay under the overhang, to protect them, and the squirrels had an absolute field day. There were crushed walnut hulls all over the driveway. Somebody was happy! I covered the bucket and now they are all moldy. Sigh… Maybe next year my life won’t be so crazy and I can soak them immediately and use them as a dye promptly.

It has been a beautiful fall season, especially in my yard with all the wonderful native plants and the colors that they are turning, much subtler than all the invasives on my property, but beautiful in their own way. However, this is NJ. And though it flooded four times in the last year, we have been under extreme drought conditions for the last couple of months. No rain. None. Which means no fire pits, no fireworks, nothing that could spark dry leaves and create a conflagration. Nevertheless, thousands of acres have burned over the last couple weeks, which is pretty scary in this small and overcrowded state. I became obsessed with watching the weather apps on my phone, hourly, praying for some kind of precipitation, watering where I thought I had no other option, but understanding that our reservoirs were half empty, and conservation was important. So it was with extreme joy that over the last few days, we received slow and steady precipitation, that amounted to nearly 4″ of rain. Everything looks wet and healthy.

I grabbed a photo of some of the color outside my studio window.

And with the all the rain, I was inspired to wind a warp for dishtowels, because, IT IS THE END OF NOVEMBER AND I DON’T HAVE MY HOLIDAY GIFT DISHTOWELS ON THE LOOM! I grabbed the draft from last year’s 4-shaft combination structure towels, based on this design from my eShop. I just edited the colors in my weaving software, and started winding.

I put 10 yards of 8/2 cotton. I have a lot of cotton. Within two days I was weaving… I’m calling this run Autumn Rain.

With a lot of help from Mulder. NOT!

I’m about three yards in so far. I try to do about a yard at a sitting. ‘Tis the season for dishtowels!

And for anyone who plays music, this really is the season. I played recorders at a Viking festival last weekend, and our annual holiday concert is this Sunday in Montclair. I play bass recorder, with Montclair Early Music, and we have had a number of opportunities to share our music with the public. Which means lots of practice and lots of rehearsals. And a couple of us are planning to take a quartet to a memory care facility in my county to play Christmas music. More rehearsals and practicing. ‘Tis the season!

And of course, thrown in there was the election. I don’t ever talk about politics in my blog, or my Facebook page. Most of you who know me know where I stand politically. And in the arts, most of us lean in the same direction, since we are such a diverse community. That said, I pray for some stability and kindness, and willingness to have frank discussions, and embracing those who think differently than I do. I’ve reached out to talk with those who voted differently than I did. And there is always more than one perspective, for any situation. I miss my late husband terribly, because he was the absolute best at seeing all sides of a situation and acting accordingly. And though election season is over for now, the 2025 gubernatorial primary season for NJ has already started, and there are about a dozen good candidates up for the position of NJ Governor. I’ve tried to limit my news exposure at this point. Because even though, ’tis the season, I don’t have the stomach for it right now.

And I wait. By the phone. For my son’s return from his deployment in Syria. I know the process has started for his return, but the military never gives details about troop movement, so I have no information, except that I’ll eventually get a text from him telling me he is on US soil. Soon…

And so dear readers, I’ll spend Thursday quietly with a friend, and then back to work rehearsing, weaving, and all the other things that need to be done in this season of darkness. I love the waning afternoon light through the trees, minus their leaves. I love the blowing leaves along the streets and in my yard. I left them in the beds this year, because apparently that’s the thing to do. Like covering up everything with a blanket for the winter. It rained, and I have towels on the loom, and my son will be home soon. All is well.

Stay tuned…

A Tale of Two Dish Towels, 4000 pages later, and other random stuff…

A good weaving buddy of mine recently contributed to a series of interesting comments on my  Facebook page after I wrote on my Wall the following query:

Daryl: Do two days off equal a vacation?

Ginnie: Does it feel like it? What’s a vacation?

Daryl: I don’t know exactly, but I see some people talking about them on Facebook.

Ginnie: Maybe you and I need to research this!

Daryl: Sounds like a plan, I’ll add “research the definition of a vacation” to my to-do list.

Daryl again: Actually, I just heard that when you have off on a Saturday and Sunday, that some people call that a “Weekend”. I’ve never experienced something like that, so I can’t verify.

Ginnie: Ah, I have heard of “weekends”, said to be invented by labor and teacher unions…. There’s a banner in our town to that effect!

Daryl: I don’t think there is any such thing as a labor union for the self employed artist. That’s probably why I am not familiar with the term “weekend” or “vacation”. Might be something else to research, it was great to have two days NOT in my studio.

Truth is, I had two glorious days last Saturday and Sunday, where no one expected anything from me, and there was nothing on the calendar for me to worry about or deal with, or get in a car or on a plane for, and I sort of didn’t quite know what to do with myself.  A gift.  There is nothing more to be said.

So I spent the last three days, gearing back up for the next event, a conference in Northern California, CNCH 2010, I leave April 8th.  I cranked up the trusty HP printer, and printed no less than 4000 pages of handouts and monographs, bound everything, packed two large Priority Flat Rate Boxes, and shipped them off to California this afternoon.  Huge exhale, that job is complete.  I paid all my bills, and now have to tackle a pile of documents due tomorrow.

On a completely different note, in a recent string of emails, about the tie up on a Tools of the Trade Loom, of which I own four, see blog post from last year, I ended up solving the problem and then deciding to purchase the loom from the person who posted the original email.  This is a sister loom to my TOTT floor looms, I own two 25″ and one 45″ floor loom and regret never having purchased the 36″ version.  I have found that, although I don’t have space for another loom there have been times where I wished I had a second bigger loom.  It would of course have to have 8 shafts, and big bonus, it has two back beams.  I wish one was a sectional, but I can deal with that.  So I will head to Maryland in April, to pick up my newest addition, and then figure out where the hell heck I’m going to put this puppy.

A Tale of Two dish towels…

I don’t weave dish towels.  I have been weaving since 1974 and I have never actually woven a dishtowel.  Is that some sort of record?  I did weave place mats, runners, scarves, throws, all kinds of products on my loom when I was in production in the 1980’s, selling my little heart out on the weekends in craft fairs, I may have mentioned that, but I never wove much less sold a dishtowel.  I don’t know exactly why that is.  It isn’t like I don’t use dishtowels.  I go through them like water, use them until they fall apart, and buy new ones at the grocery store and use them until they fall apart.  I can’t say I’m one of those who go by the motto, “It’s too good to actually use”, for goodness sake, I chop up my handwoven fabric, and make garments and wear them until I’m tired of them, they wear out, or they go out of style and then I cut them into something else.

For some odd reason, I’ve never made a dish towel.  But in the last couple of months, I’ve actually acquired two.  The first one came from Laura Fry (hey, if you are going to have someone else’s handwoven dishtowel in your house, you might as well have one from the best!).  Laura was offering an incentive on her blog, after the disastrous earthquake in Haiti, a dishtowel, to anyone donating to Doctors Without Borders.  I had planned on doing that anyway, I donate on a monthly basis now, just like I do for public radio, but I took her up on her offer and she sent me a lovely aqua cotton dish towel.  I didn’t use it, just looked at it.  OK, to be fair, we have a dog.  And this has been the rainiest March in the history of the state of NJ (and for those whose US history is a bit cloudy, we were one of the original 13 colonies.  George Washington slept in almost every town in the state in the late 1700’s or so they say…) Which means that our lovely back yard is a swamp.  Swamp + dog = muddy paws.  Dog comes in, nearest textile gets grabbed, and by the back door off the kitchen, it is usually the dishtowel.  So I haven’t actually wanted to put my lovely Laura Fry dishtowel out because it would be covered in mud within about 10 minutes.

On the drive back to the airport after my recent trip to Columbia, MO, Debbie Schluckebier, my lovely workshop coordinator and airport chauffeur, presented me with a thank you gift from the Columbia Weavers and Spinners, one of her beautiful handwoven dishtowels.  The universe was trying to tell me something.  That and the three hour trip to the Kansas City airport allowed Debbie to convince me that it was silly to have handwoven dishtowels and not love them and use them.  So I’m using them.  Both of them.  No one has died, and none have been covered with mud yet, and they are really pretty and I feel good when I use them.  I am getting dangerously close to actually wanting to warp up one of my numerous looms, all of which are naked at the moment I’m embarrassed to say, with some cotton warp, and weave some actual dishtowels.  They don’t have to be prize winning, and they don’t have to color matched to my kitchen.  And I don’t have to turn them into clothing.  I can just use them in the kitchen, and be happy, and if they get used on muddy dog paws, there is always the washing machine…  I hear they won’t disintegrate in the washer and dryer…