Jockey Hollow Weavers Guild – Page 2

Not a great start to the year…

OK, true confessions… I’m a baby when it comes to getting sick. I’m miserable, cranky, and very whiny. Fortunately my husband is on the other side of the world, and my son is safely in Boot Camp. That means poor Brianna has to listen to my misery…

This hit me like a ton of bricks, and I never saw it coming. As a matter of fact, I kept blaming my not feeling quite right on all kinds of stupid things like the jalapeno pepper I put in the cole slaw yesterday, and overdoing it at a new yoga class last night. Truth is, I’m sick. There is no denying it. How long I’m sick for, and what actually I have, remains to be seen, but I am achy, feverish, and have a deep rattling cough. Bummer…

I’m guessing that my body did what it had to do, got through the holidays, got through the New Year, got my husband off to Israel, and my son off to Boot Camp. I cleaned out his room, and his car (it would take a blog post by itself to describe those adventures, but I’ll be kind and just say, everything is now clean, beds are properly made, and nothing is currently growing or unidentifiable in the downstairs refrigerator.) 🙂

And now I’m sick… 🙁

I did manage to finish sleying the reed with the new marble inspired warps, and I did manage to update my sister’s website, but it was painful. Everything on me aches. I had to cancel attending the guild meeting tonight, which was tough because I was one of the panel speakers. Brianna is driving, as I write, to Mendham to take over for me as program chair, for the Jockey Hollow Guild meeting tonight. She is a trooper (and I think she welcomed the excuse to get out of the house since I was so cranky…).

I have to say I’m really really lucky. I can lay low. Other than dropping off my work tomorrow in Montclair at the George Segal Gallery for the Art Connections 6 exhibit, I have nothing on my calendar requiring me to be out of the house, and I can hopefully sleep it off. I have a slew of deadlines, but it is more important I get over this thing quickly, so I’ll cave and be a good girl… And I just started an 800 page book, the final installment of the Outlander series, Echo in the Bone, by Diana Gabaldon though I hear it really may not be the final installment. This is book 7 I think… It was a handweaver in Connecticut who turned me on to this series, many many years ago when I stayed with her. So I’m off to curl up in bed and read, and hopefully sleep…

Here are the photos from my loom adventures today. I slowly but surely worked my way across the reed, pulling the appropriate amount of threads from the cross on the appropriate warp bundle. I loved the colors, and it was peaceful to just sit and thread, but I sure wish I didn’t ache all over…

Here is a tip, I found this out the hard way of course. If you are using hand dyed warps, always save a couple of extra threads, or wind a couple of extra threads to include when you are dyeing, in case one breaks while you are weaving. You’ll always have a way to correct the break with the right color.

The next step is of course, threading each of those warp ends, one by one through the heddles in the shafts. Here is another tip, one I also learned the hard way. Check how many heddles are on each shaft BEFORE you start threading. My loom is the type where you can’t add heddles once you start. You also can’t remove them. And I’m going almost the full width of my loom. So having a bunch extra squeezed on the sides, or heaven forbid not enough, can make the most easy going handweaver resort to hair pulling…

So I used my handy dandy computer drafting program (I use Fiberworks PCW) and it gives me the heddle count for each shaft. Now I just have to pull each of the eight shafts out of the castle, and lay them on my cutting table, and add the correct amount of heddles. I keep my heddles stored on knitting needles, so they just slip on the heddle rods effortlessly, checking first to make sure they face in the correct direction. 🙂

This process takes time. And I really don’t enjoy this step. But it is an important one, on most of my shafts I had to add at least 100 heddles…

Now they are all back safely in the castle, fully loaded with the correct number of heddles, and I can start threading tomorrow. If I can get out of bed…

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???

Jockey Hollow Weavers Show and Sale

Guild show and sale

I’m making slow progress on making stuff for the guild sale. But I will have a few things there. And I got a brainstorm on how to combine my two little Structo looms (the real ones) into one that will weave multiple post cards for the Personal Post Series for my art work. More on that in a later post.

Meanwhile, if anyone who lives in the northern NJ area is interested in attending the Jockey Hollow Handweavers’ Show and Sale in November, here is the postcard. There will be all kinds of hand crafted items, many suitable for gift giving for the upcoming holiday season! Support your local craftsmen! (And women!)

Placemats Finished!

First, let me welcome all the ASG members who have just joined my blog, following all of my creative escapades. There has been a flurry of subscriptions for email notices for when I post a new blog, and many of them have signed on after my blog was mentioned in an ASG (American Sewing Guild) posting. Thanks Marcia Russell from northern California for the mention. Marcia has written for the ASG publication “Notions”. For all of you out there who are new to my blog, you may be interested in a podcast I did for Weavecast, about a year and a half ago, though Weavecast is a podcast for handweavers, it crosses over into so many other fiber communities it is worth noting. I was episode 26, “Sew Your Weaving“, and I approached the podcast, not as a weaver, but more as someone who has sewn for most of her life, and has a lot to share about the body and the spirit and the sewing machine.

After much angst, and frustration, we are finally finished! A bit of background, for those who are new to my blog. Exchanges are a fun part of weaving guilds, and they come in many different forms. Last year, one of my weaving guilds, Jockey Hollow Weavers, which meets the first Wednesday night of the month in Mendham, NJ (Morris County) does an “Exchange” each year, starting it in September, and finishing up in June. Last year, we did a crackle exchange, crackle is a weave structure, everyone did samples of a specific design in a Crackle structure, and at the end, participants had a notebook of all different designs.

My then 15 year old daughter had just joined the guild, and was anxious to participate. No matter that she hadn’t really ever woven before, actually correct that, she hadn’t ever set up her own loom before. There is a difference. So, being 15, and not knowing how to plan ahead, leaving everything to the last minute, she learned how to wind a warp and set up an 8 shaft crackle the weekend before the exchange was due. That was last June. In all fairness, she pulled it off, wove the samples beautifully, and delivered them finished and mounted, and stood before the group explaining her draft and how this was her first warp all on her own. Everyone, including her mother, was very proud.

Fast forward to September. My 15 year old enthusiastically raised her hand when a poll was taken to find out who was interested in a Placemat Exchange for the 2008-2009 guild year. The theme was “Overshot”, all mats had to be woven in an overshot pattern. Each participant gave the other participants 2 ounces of 5/2 perle cotton in their pattern color, and all of us chipped in and bought large quantities of 10/2 perle cotton in white for the background. As it worked out, there were more than eight participants, but not enough for 16 (two groups of eight), so we invited a few members of an adjacent guild, and ended up with two groups of 8 each. My daughter joined one of the groups, and I joined the other. So my daughter, Brianna, started the set up, gently prodded by me, during her Winter break last December, and has muddled along, weaving when she could, hampered by school activities, broken warp beams, broken threads, and a major threading error, which she painstakingly took out and re-threaded because in weaving, there is nothing else to do but take it out and re-do it.

Bri and I selected the pattern “Dog Tracks” which was from an 18th century weave structure class I took with Barbara Miller in 2000 at Convergence Cincinnati. I liked the name since Bri works on Saturdays at a local kennel and her clothing looks a lot like muddy dog tracks when she comes home at night.

So those that have been following my blog since January, know I’ve posted a running score, and for the most part, we were steadily neck and neck, I’d weave a mat, and Bri would weave a mat, until Bri got so busy with a major school competitive event (that involved a lot of glitter) that she fell behind. She was about 10″ from the end of the last placemat, and the warp beam broke again. I was able to fix it, and Bri finally finished the last mat on Saturday morning, but discovered a mistake about 5 inches back and had to get to the High School for the final production of this all consuming event, so like the kind mother that I am, and wanting to get this bloody thing finished so I could weave all the samples that went along with the drafts for the placemats, I unwove the 5 inches, corrected the mistake, and finished the mat. I spent the day today, weaving about fifteen 5″ x 5″ samples, and printing all the drafts for the samples, which will go along with the mat. The point of an exchange is to have lots of different patterns, having just the finished mats would never satisfy your average weaver, we have to know how it was done. So there will be a notebook of all the patterns along with all the finished mats. Each participant will have, if all goes well, 8 different overshot design placemats, all in their pattern color. Bri chose purple, and I chose a lovely soft celadon green.

Every weaver loves to see the knots coming up over the back of the warp beam, this means you’re almost there. After 12 yards of fine cotton warp, and almost six months of time and gentle prodding of a now 16 year old, this was a welcome sight. There are two photographs here, the next swing of the beater after I shot the image on the left, the apron rod which holds the knots at the end of the warp, broke clean off the cords holding it to the loom. The problems I’ve had with this poor loom…. So I turned the loom around, sat down on the floor, my favorite position with this loom, and changed the apron cords to Texsolv, which I’m really hoping will hold for awhile. Most weavers know about Texsolv, and it is available on rolls through most weaving suppliers. Not cheap, but it does the job from treadle tie cords to apron cords and heddles better than anything else on the market.

This is such a cool shot! I am so excited. Winding off six months of work to really step back and look at it gives me such satisfaction for a job well done.

I spent the next couple hours, stitching carefully between the mats and cutting them apart, and doing all the paperwork and samples for the drafts (Photo right). So now we have a huge stack of placemats ready to take to the meeting on Wednesday night. The next two days will be a whirlwind of getting things done before my mini vacation. Yep, I’m heading out west!

Continental has a promotion allowing me to fly for double Elite qualifying miles, a great bonus when you are trying to maintain Elite status. So I decided to hop on a plane on Thursday and head to the other side of the country, specifically Seattle, just for a weekend, to hang with my special fiber buddy Robyn Spady. We are planning a weekend of fiber adventures, wine, and friendship. And I get bonus miles too! Such a deal…