Frances Irwin Guild – Daryl's Blog

I’m in heaven…

Phyllis Hirsch led the guild in making a holiday ribbon ornament. What fun!

Wow, this was one of those rare gifts of a day, where the planets just align and someone says, Daryl, you are going to spend the whole day having fun. Actually, the fun started last night, in the dreary cold rain, my daughter and I drove to our Jockey Hollow Guild meeting, where one of the members, Phyllis Hirsch led us in a holiday make-it-take-it project, making a ribbon ornament. I like little projects like this, first because it is quick, and I can see doing something like this with handwoven scraps, and secondly, it is one of those kinds of projects that allows you to work on it and chat non stop through the whole meeting. 🙂

In the middle of the meeting, my dearest friend Candiss Cole called on my cell phone. A rare treat, I didn’t expect to hear from her for awhile, since we got together and played last month! Candiss, turns out, was in NYC, and had an extra day to hang out, and called to see if I could come out and play. Woo hoo! We scheduled a lunch date for today, and I went back to the guild meeting.

This morning, after I got my daughter off to school, I headed over to the cancer center, and had my annual check-up with my oncologist. There is always this tiny bit of apprehension when I go, fear that maybe she might find something that could start the whole breast cancer scenario all over again. But I went, and the visit went well, and I got a clean bill of health and was told to call in December of 2010 for my next visit. Woo Hoo! 🙂

I picked up Candiss at a hotel in NJ, and off we went to play. We hung in the studio for awhile, catching up and looking at each others ideas and directions, something we always use to do regularly. We headed off to lunch, Candiss knows my Thursday Philosophy Club ladies, and we all had a delightful lunch, and afterwards Candiss and I went SHOE SHOPPING! This is one of those things that works so much better with a shopping buddy. A new DSW opened not far from me, how did Candiss know about it and not me? She lives in Arizona! So we went to the new DSW and OMG! I headed right for the back room and the clearance shoes. We had so much fun trying on the Steve Madden and the Stuart Weitzman shoes, I tried on shoes that nearly broke my ankle, after all, I’m over 50. And I ended up buying some very practical pairs of casual shoes, and one killer pair of leather lace-up boots. Candiss and I both wanted them but I won!

I dropped her off at her hotel, quick hugs to her husband Rodger for giving her up for the day, and I headed home to find a quiet house, and boxes everywhere in my living room. UPS, and the USPS had a field day at our house. We are buying most of our Christmas presents online, we usually do, so we let the Brown Santa do all the traveling. Speaking of the Brown Santa, my son is now working as a seasonal driver assistant for UPS, and it was so cute when he walked in around dinner time, in his brown uniform. Since he leaves for boot camp on January 4th, the seasonal work was perfect for giving him some extra cash and a reason to get out of bed in the morning…

Anyway, if you are a handweaver, you are most likely following Tien Chiu’s blog, she is a very talented complex weaver, embarking on weaving her wedding dress. We had some correspondence earlier in the year about some interfacing issues. And you should know that Tien is one of the founders of the online weaving community Weavolution. Tien has been taking a break from weaving and has picked up one of her other specialties, making chocolate, and I’m not talking a couple of milk chocolate eggs here, I’m talking combination’s that I can’t even begin to imagine. She has been carefully blogging about the whole chocolate experience, and I had to replace my keyboard twice this week for drooling too much while reading about it.

So, back to my living room full of boxes. I worked through the Amazon boxes, hiding the presents from the family, and then I got to a box that had Tien Chiu’s return address on it. What could be in this box? I opened it and well, I screamed for 20 minutes. Good thing no one was home. I don’t know what I did to earn a box of Tien’s chocolates, but there is was, in the Priority box from the USPS, and I ran right up to the computer to write a thank you note. Wow. The first one I sampled was the square white one in the front, Coconut Tequila Lime fudge. OMG! Tien if you are reading this, I LOVE YOU!

I'm having fun making hot mats and mug mats from coiled handwoven strips and the sewing machine.

Writing this blog has been a wonderful experience this year, I’ve met so many readers through it, and gotten some terrific feedback. After my last post, reader Diane thought that the little bowls I was making from coiled scraps of handwoven fabric would make great hot mats for the kitchen or table. I had actually made a hot mat first, to get back into the technique, and then played around with the bowls. Diane had a point, a hot mat is a usable functional item, and would be a great gift, a fiber bowl isn’t the most useful thing, and it is hard to dust. It is a lot easier to just zoom around in a circle on a flat mat, and so I did. I made a couple of 8″ round mats, and then thought about how smaller versions would make great mug mats.

Caution Spoiler! If you are in the Frances Irwin Guild, do not read this paragraph! For everyone else, the guild is having its annual exchange at the holiday luncheon this year, and this year’s exchange is mug mats. Weave six and get six in return. I hadn’t planned on participating, but these little mug mats are so cute. So I am going to make up a half dozen of the 5 inch size and take them to the holiday luncheon on the 15th.

Speaking of my blog… Jenny, one of my most prolific commenters (and I do love when people comment!), mentioned to me last night at the guild meeting, that my anniversary was coming up. I took a minute to think what she was referring to, and then I realized, I’ve been blogging for almost a year, December 16th, 2008 was my first post. With almost 250 posts, I’ve had a great year of writing about and celebrating the creative spirit and am really grateful for all of you who take the time to read my posts.

And, in case you haven’t gone back to follow the comments for one of the previous blogs, the one where I made the plaid skirt from the handwoven skirt panel from Avoca Handweavers from Ireland, there was a string where I attempted to locate a source for the Burda Style Magazine, the current issue, for one of the blog commenters who loved the skirt pattern. I did an online search and didn’t find anything but how to order a subscription, which won’t help the commenter get the December issue. I called the US distributor for the publication, and they were completely sold out. But they sent me an email with two online retailers who sell individual issues, and have the November and December issues available. One of the retailers is Fashionista Fabrics and the other is Sew Baby. I love this magazine, and I’ve been subscribing for more than 10 years. Each issue contains over 60 patterns, and I love the style and engineering of the garments. The directions are scanty, one needs to know how to sew, and the pattern pieces have to be traced off of a large sheet of paper that looks like a road map from hell, but once you get use to it, the patterns are always at your fingertips and just leafing through each of the monthly issues gives me tons of ideas and possibilities.

And, on a final note, I caught the first episode of Bravo TV’s newest launch for a fashion design reality TV show, and I actually enjoyed it. Called Launch my Line, it involves fashion designer wannabees who are already known in another field, and they are paired with designer/experts, who can actually sew, and there was some exciting stuff. So, until the next season of Project Runway starts in January, this is a nice early winter treat.

Did I cover everything???

Houston We Have a Problem…

First, I want to update everyone on the Designers’ Fashion Challenge Presentation CD. It is up on my site, available on the page with the monographs for sale. The CD is $30. plus shipping, and has both PPT (PowerPoint) and PDF formats on it. The presentation was designed for a guild program, this can work for handweaving guilds as well as sewing guilds. I got the OK from the HGA to market it, and I’m really proud of the work I did, the whole experience, and I think the presentation is a great overview of the whole design process as well as the step by step journey Loretta and I took to pull this off.

Well we all survived the weekend. My husband flew back from New Hampshire Friday evening, and he spent Saturday fertilizing the roses, and spread Holly Tone, and did some general yard work, in the rain, all while I was happily at my American Sewing Guild meeting making a spa coat out of two bath towels. I sort of felt sorry for him.

Sunday, my mom, who lives in Maryland, just off the beltway, invited the whole family there for Easter dinner. That’s great, except it is three hours away. On a good day. Which if you’ve ever driven I-95, or the Garden State Parkway, or the NJ Turnpike, you know there is never a good day. Still, we made it down in good time, had a lovely dinner, and then turned around and drove home. It took us about an hour just to get to the Delaware state line. And another three hours to drive home to north Jersey. We arrived home with just enough time for my husband to throw his clean clothes back into the suitcase, and catch a few hours sleep, he was off to the airport by 6am this morning. I really felt sorry for him. My daughter started her spring break today, so she reluctantly got out of bed because I wanted to drag her along to my daytime guild meeting. I love the Frances Irwin Guild, there are some amazing weavers in this group, and today’s program was a pleasant surprise. I hadn’t planned to stay long, because I had a 1:15 appointment with my daughter’s pediatrician for her physical, which she needed so she could compete in a track meet on Wednesday, even though this is spring break. Last year’s annual physical expired on Friday. Timing is everything…

Who knew I’d love the speaker so much I’d be really wishing I’d been able to stay longer and be able to participate in the workshop that followed. Rabbit Goody has been in the textile world for many many years. She has a studio called Thistle Hill Weavers, that specializes in custom woven historic reproduction carpet, fabrics, trims, bed hangings, etc. All I can say is, WOW! I’m not really interested in historic textiles the way I am interested in fashion and garments. But Rabbit’s presentation was fabulous, it talked mostly about Venetian and Geometric Ingrain Carpets, which I didn’t think interested me, until she started the presentation. She is an excellent speaker, full of stories, incredibly knowledgable, and it was really hard to leave the meeting early to get my daughter to her appointment.

Meanwhile, it is sheep shearing time. No, I don’t have sheep, nor do I want any, nor do I think my town would even let me think about owning sheep, but many members of my guilds do. One of the members, Carla Kostelnik just had her sheep shorn, and brought the fleeces to the meeting to give away. Mostly Corriedales, I came home with three fleeces, because the ones I’d had for years, were mostly used up in demos and classes, and I have this day of demonstrations and lectures at an area elementary school next week. So now I have to figure out the best place and best method to store them. I have them in plastic ziplocs in the garage for now, the jumbo kind, but I’m thinking they shouldn’t be sealed in plastic.

So I got my daughter to her physical, and dealt with some emails, and got her to her trombone lesson, and got her to girl scouts, and I was going to try to get another mat finished from the placemat exchange, which was going along fine, until suddenly the beam stopped holding tension. This seem to be the problem I was having earlier which I blogged about awhile ago, and now that I had a rosin bag in hand, courtesy of Sally, on Sandy Gunther’s suggestion, I tried to blow a little rosin dust in there, and realized, to my complete horror, that the problem wasn’t warp slippage, the screws that hold the beam to the end cap that supports the brake had sheared off, and I could turn the brake drum all I wanted but the beam wasn’t going anywhere. The beam had separated from the brake drum. So I unscrewed the main bolt that holds the beam in place and dismantled the beam as best I could, desperate to not lose any of the 12 yards of warp I put on. We’ve only done five of the 16 mats for the placemat exchange. My daughter, who has been taking a woodworking class in HS, ran to the garage and scrounged until she found some weapons of mass destruction, and expertly wedged some glue into the actual beam that was splitting and clamped it overnight. I’ll go to the hardware store tomorrow, and see if I can replace the screws that sheered off. I have to say that this is an unfortunate thing, I rarely have trouble with any of my equipment, the sewing machine gods and the loom gods usually are my friends. This loom usually has a sectional beam on it, but I replaced the sectional beam a couple of months ago, with the standard beam I’ve had laying around for 20 years, thinking it would beam finer threads more consitently, and it did, but this standard warp beam has some design issues I never knew about since I’ve never actually used it before. It couldn’t take the stress of warp tensioning. So I won’t panic. I’ll make a trip to the hardware store, and see if my daughter and I can’t get this beam back together and working.

So, if you are keeping placemat exchange score, Brianna 3, mom 2 1/4. And holding…

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.