Jockey Hollow Handweavers

What a fun day. I loaded my four huge tote bags of stuff into the car, along with my trusty sewing machine, and off I went, tea mug in hand, to the workshop with Marie Ozmon, sponsored by the Jockey Hollow Weavers. Marie has a very varied background, but loves to manipulate fabric into constructions and wall pieces, playing with color, crocheting fabric strips, cutting apart layers, and generally having a great time with a needle and thread. It was so great to just sit all day with my weaving buddies, playing with our sewing machines, and diving through piles of stash. It doesn’t get any better than that. I had terrific fun with my machine, switching feet, playing with stitches, trying to see what it can do, and I can’t think of a more enjoyable way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

workshop sampler We basically started with four layers of fabric, stitching them together in a random way, and slicing through the layers to reveal the underneath, manipulating them, folding them, adding embellishments, and generally entertaining ourselves. This gives me a terrific jumping off point for that illusive project 4 I have been mulling over in the back of my mind. I think I posted that project back in December, but may have come up with a starting place for where to take all those leftovers and pieces of wonderful fibers. But that will have to wait until I finish the Arctic Sky jacket, and my California conference.

My son is picking up Chinese food, and we will be leaving in about an hour for the show Footloose, that’s the production where I altered the 27 dresses which turned into 33… You can read about that adventure in the blog Help Wanted and SuperBowl Sunday…

A winter storm is due in tonight through tomorrow. I am so done with winter. California, here I come…

I went to log onto my computer this morning, and some very weird stuff started to happen. The screen sort of froze up in the half booted up stage, not a good thing. Alt + Ctrl + Delete wouldn’t work, and I will say, I had a moment of complete panic.

Sidebar: I am married to an absolutely brilliant man. He makes computer geeks look stupid. To watch him work, trying to debug, find the problem, and craft a solution is to watch an absolute artist in technology. When my husband isn’t traveling the world as a systems analyst, he usually works from home. That would be down the hall.

The computer gods live in fear of my husband. And I say this with humor, but it is a long standing joke in our household (with a computer system in almost every room), that when something goes wrong, my husband need only come and stand in the doorway, and all will instantly correct itself. I understand this, I have the same rapport with the sewing machine gods. We have a mutual understanding. In a class, a student will be struggling with a machine, and usually I’ve only to sit down and all will work properly. But I DON’T have that rapport with the computer gods.

Fortunately my husband was working from home today, and I wandered down the hall, trying to hide the complete panic in my voice. I had shut everything down, and when he came in to the studio, and pushed the power button to boot everything up, all worked as it should. Go figure…. I hate when he does that, but I’d be completely lost if he couldn’t…

So, I got on with my morning, which was spent in front of the computer, paying bills, doing paperwork, balancing checkbooks, entering bookkeeping figures in Microsoft Money, and doing all those distasteful tasks that are critical to a smoothly running business and household, but I’d much rather have been weaving.

Once that task was completed, I started packing for a one day workshop I’m taking tomorrow at the Jockey Hollow Weavers Guild, with Marie Ozmon. First I should mention that a perk of belonging to the JHW, is a winter “Freebie” program, a one day program in late winter, for free, that gives you a little creative sunlight, something to get you out of your winter doldrums. Well this program is right up my alley. The title is Constructing Fabric Structure, Surface, and Texture.

So I pulled out some very large tote bags, and boy do I have a collection, between my years of conference attendance, and my husband, who has been on the local school board for more than 10 years, and attends the yearly school board convention, well, you haven’t seen tote bags until you’ve been to one of these conventions…

Anyway, I packed up some fabric, ribbons, beads, sewing supplies, my iron and ironing blanket, and my trusty Janome 6600 professional machine, along with a couple bolts of fusible interfacing, and lined up all the bags in the hall, along with my camera, which is why I don’t have a picture of this escapade…

Stay tuned…

Tag: Jockey Hollow Handweavers

The Workshop

Lions and Tigers and Bills, Oh My!