Tag: Music Room

Highs and Lows…

I grew up in southern NJ, not far from a town called Clementon. They had an amusement park there, and a few times a year, my dad would take the three of us to the Clementon amusement park for the day. ( I checked, it is actually still in existence). I would patiently wait, because I couldn’t go on any rides that spun me around, some structural inner ear issue, I’d immediately start hurling. Motion sickness haunted me as a child. Now there are drugs for that, but mostly I just sat and watched my sisters spinning around in tea cups, the Tilt-a-whirl, and all the other magical rides that make up an amusement park. The merry-go-round was iffy. If I sat on a non-moving horse, and stared straight ahead, I might make it off the ride with my lunch intact. The only real rides that were safe were the Ferris wheel, which only went in one direction, but NO ONE could swing the seat, and of course, my beloved old wooden roller coaster. I loved the roller coaster. That slow climb to the top, barely making it over the crest, and then straight down, breathlessly screaming all the way!

That’s sort of like my last couple weeks.

The day after my last post, the reconstruction guys came and my beautiful music room with the view was complete. I was so very happy, and grateful that something really wonderful came out of a miserable situation. I still have to stain the wood around the new window…

The next day, yeah, not so much. My dryer broke, and when the service man came, he said, Yep, can’t get the parts, you’ll need a new dryer.”

This is something I’ve been dreading for years. I’m a textile artist. The Washer and Dryer are an important part of my design team. I need total control over the function of both. I don’t want appliances smarter than I am, I need to control the water level, I need to be able to open the lid periodically to check on how the fabrics are doing. Wet finishing handwoven fabric is critical.

I’ve heard horror stories from other weavers who have had to replace their washers. In addition to wanting a simple top loading washer, and even though it was the dryer that broke, the washer, actually the pair, were put in when we built the addition, in an alcove off the second floor bedroom, in 1989. So yeah, both were hanging on by a thread. I knew this day was coming, but really, did it have to be the day after the reconstruction was finished? (Ok, fair point, it could have been during the reconstruction…) Sigh…

Further complicating things, according to the repair guy, was that the alcove that housed the pair, was very shallow by today’s standards. He wasn’t hopeful I’d find a dryer that would fit the space. At this point, I’m bordering on having a heart attack…

I went to my local appliance chain, and looked at options. There were washer/dryer sets, like Speed Queen, that would do what I wanted, and not do what I didn’t want, but they didn’t fit the space. They sent a surveyor out the following week to check the space and see if there were any options.

Turns out, my original units were GE Profile. And who knew that GE still made roughly the same pair, same features, and roughly the same size. I ordered, and yesterday, an incredible pair of service technicians hauled my old set away, down two flights of stairs, and had the new set installed, in about 25 minutes. I cannot tell you what a huge relief this is, something I dreaded for years. I’ve done a couple loads and so far so good.

Last weekend, I drove a couple hours up to Newtown CT, where I had agreed to judge The Handweavers Guild of CT biennial fiber show. Denise Kovnat, the other judge and I arrived Saturday evening, and our lovely hostess Jennifer, whom I had never met before, greeted us, showed us around, got us settled, let us preview some of the work, and then we just sat and chatted. Can I tell you what a joy it was to be back with my tribe? Denise, whom I knew of, and had some online interactions with, but didn’t really know well in person, was just a delight, full of stories, adventures, humor and grace. My hostess was the same. We were like old college friends who hadn’t seen each other in 40 years. I needed this weekend away. (And Denise told me that there is a site that ranks blogs, and I’m number 7 in the country for handweaving blogs according to Feedly.com. Who knew!)

Judging is always tough, a huge responsibility, and I needed to give critical feedback on more than 60 pieces. I had a couple of scribes assigned to me, they were hard workers, very accurate, and helped me move the process along. I saw photos today of the exhibit, which was just a beautiful installation, and in one corner, there was a grouping of a couple of my pieces and some of Denise’s work.

I didn’t provide a link to the Handweavers of CT Guild, because apparently their site has some malware my software apps picked up. I’ve let them know. If you can get to the show, it will be up for a month, it is a lovely array of what handweavers do, this is why we do it.

Meanwhile, yesterday was my late husband’s birthday, he would have been 74. There are so many times I wish I could just sit and talk with him, get his opinion of this crazy world we are living in, he was so grounded and informed and thoughtful. In honor of his birthday, every year, I go out and buy pansies, and plant them. First planting of the spring. Such happy little faces on such colorful plants.

And this afternoon, I went into the vegetable garden, and planted a couple flats of spring greens, the lettuces, spinach, arugula, etc. along with collards, kale and chard. And of course peas and parsley. The universe is sending rain tonight, or maybe it is my late husband, since it is still too early to turn on the hoses outside.

And of course, because my life is about putting out fires at this point, we have a raccoon that has moved in, completely trashed the wood shop, and we are doing battle with it trying to catch it and remove it from the property. My vet tech daughter has some experience with this, so she is in charge. We put chicken wire on the underside of the eaves of the shed to prevent reentry, but there is a huge task ahead trying to clean up what looks like a drunken frat party in my woodshop. Every box of nails and screws has been shredded, contents dumped on the floor. Could have been worse, it could have been my yarn.

Each morning I sit by my window, eat my breakfast, and look at the yard, and see the little bit of green that increases every day. I’ve always wanted to do a daily sketchbook journal of sorts, I envy those who, have a committed practice. And though I can draw, I have a degree in fine arts, I don’t find it appealing. I don’t for me see the purpose. Even though I keep buying art supplies, sketchbooks, and take classes.

I participated in something last fall called the Sketchbook Revival. I even paid so I could continue to access the content. There was one session that really struck me as something I could do regularly. Melinda Nakagawa, the session leader uses a fountain pen, which was right up my alley, since I spent 8 years in parochial school writing with a fountain pen, and have actually very fond memories, and she would sketch a plant, a bird, add simple water colors, and write all over the page, thoughts, definitions, plant names, whatever was important that day.

So I sit every morning, with my breakfast, and my sketchbook, and my cat, and my tea, and I sketch something in the yard, something just poking its head up, and I research the common name, the Latin name, the traits, thoughts, and I’m starting to fill my sketchbook…

Oh, and yes, I’m still a weaver! I managed to clear another loom, and I’m keeping this one, a little Rep mat for my dining table.

When I used to travel, I’d always pray that my trips were uneventful. Now I just hope I can get through the days uneventfully. I would like to get off the roller coaster and just walk for a while. It has been going just a little too fast for my taste.

Stay tuned…

On Making Lemonade…

At least I can reasonably state that the last two weeks have been if nothing else, entertaining…

I got a notice that my custom Pella Window was ready to install and they made an appointment for 10 days ago. Pella installers came, and did a fantastic job replacing the old, short double-hungs, and now I have a beautiful window facing east, to catch the rising sun, and look over my fantastic gardens, as they carefully begin to come to life after the long winter. Sounds almost magical doesn’t it?

I stood looking out of my beautiful window and think, if I hadn’t had the flood, if the day after Christmas they hadn’t completely gutted my den, where it rained broken pipe water from the room above, through the ceiling fan, if I hadn’t experienced any of that, I wouldn’t have this incredible view, and I wouldn’t have met all the fantastic workers who were kind, efficient, knowledgeable, and though we could rarely communicate with English, we managed to get the important concepts across. I genuflect in gratitude.

The restoration crew came in with a vengeance, the day after the window was installed. Insulation, drywall, spackle, more spackle, sanding the spackle, they were like a crew of bees busy in the hive. The painters started two days later.

All of this required me to be around. The whole time. Partly to answer questions, and partly to make sure that the animals didn’t interfere with any of the messy jobs they were doing. I stayed most of the time in my weaving studio, where I could let the dogs in and out and not disturb the workers. Which meant I got a lot of work done.

Though, I did, on the one day between drywall people and painters, help with a loom rescue. A weaver in the area, well over 100 years old, had passed, and her relatives wanted to donate what weaving supplies there were, to my local guild. In addition, there were two looms, and all of us, do what we can to rescue looms, as the house will be bulldozed within a couple weeks, including the contents. One loom, in the basement, an old Swedish style barn loom, my friend Susan has been sending around notices to area fiber people/guilds in hope that someone has room to rescue a large loom. But Susan and I drove over, with tools in hand, to rescue a 25″ Macomber, left on a porch, covered in mouse poop, hence the mask and gloves, in sad condition, but with some TLC, and a lot of elbow grease, my friend will bring it back to life. There is always good loom karma when you go to the effort to rescue a loom.

This all seems fantastical within the last 10 days, but I’m rather impressed at my ability to make good use of time.

First up, I’m taking a workshop through my guild with Natalie Drummond in Deflected Double Weave, the first week in April. Which meant I needed an empty table loom with 8 shafts. Which I didn’t have… Around 40 looms, and the one I needed wasn’t empty.

I’ve gotten real good at moving warps from one loom to another. The loom I wanted had the last remaining yard of a Rep class from last April, with Rosalie Neilson. I really didn’t want to waste it. So I spent an afternoon moving it to my floor loom.

Problem was, within the reems of documentation, I couldn’t remember exactly how to do this structure. I know it is alternating thick and thin wefts, but the myriad of designs in her handouts, all worked off Profile Treadlings, which I did easily in the class on a table loom, but couldn’t for the life of me remember how to interpret them. I spent a lot of time just sitting and staring and trying to work out what was there, right in front of me. At some point, working in my office (with the animals in tow) on my desktop computer with my weaving software, I finally figured out how to interpret the profile treadlings and create a treadling sequence I could follow. Should have taken better detailed notes…

So I will have this lovely mat, and this loom will be cleared within the week.

That left prep for the Natalie Drummond workshop. She requires a complex warp, hand painted with additional solids in varying values. Honestly, we only got the instructions just about the time I had to lock myself away with the animals, not her fault, and with only a month till the workshop, all the construction, gardening chores starting soon, (where I live it is time to start planting the lettuces, spinach, etc.) and the herculean task it will take to clean spackle sanding dust from every corner of the house, if I didn’t get the warp on now, it wouldn’t get done. Complicating things is I agreed to house Natalie, because she is a good friend.

I didn’t have time to paint a warp, and I didn’t have exactly the yarn she suggested, but I have a lot of yarn. And I’m determined to use what I have. So I pulled some old vintage Contessa, a long discontinued yarn from Silk City Fibers, mostly rayon with a silk fleck, which I have lots of, especially hand dyed. It comes in at the same 2100 yds/lb as the 5/2 Tencel she suggested. Along with the solids, I have a few variegated cones, and though she specifically said no variegated yarns, I understood why, because she wanted the colors to line up, like it was hand painted. No problem as I know how to do this, and Contessa variegated was mostly engineered to repeat itself. I grabbed my music stand, wiped off the dust, and propped my little warping board onto it, and wound a circular warp, lining up the colors as I went.

I added the solid colors, a light, a dark, and a bright, and then went to the loom and started sleying.

And threading.

And now I have another warped loom, ready to go…

Meanwhile…

I decided, while I was trapped in my studio, with the animals, to finish up the 10 yards of 8/2 cotton I tied into my fall run of towels. I ran out of the light grey weft about a yard from the end, and grabbed a small cone of dark blue, which is gorgeous, but I didn’t have enough of the dark blue to weave the whole 10-yard run, and wanted to use up some of the various cones of light colors as weft.

Washed and dried.

Since I will be scrubbing everything I own in the coming weeks, I decided that the now cleared loom needed a good dusting and wipe down with Howard’s Feed and Wax. The loom is patiently waiting for my next adventure…

That night, making dinner, this happened. The blender bowl just slipped out of my hand, taking out the lid for my beloved mini Oster food processor…

By the time dinner finished cooking and I’d cleaned up all the glass, I had gone on Amazon and ordered replacements, which were there the next morning on my doorstep. The new mini food processor, my favorite tool in my kitchen is even better than the old one.

Meanwhile, I moved to another loom, that had 5 yards of hand-dyed warp in a four-shaft combination draft, the same draft actually, as the towels. I had just started the fabric last year, so the loom could sit in a corner of my retrospective at County College of Morris, to give viewers an idea of cloth on the loom. The weft was a medium grey alpaca/silk from Webs.

So I dove in, playing around with different shuttles to get the maximum speed, and resorted to my old favorite, my AVL end-feed, the smaller one. I flew through that yardage, periodically checking on the workers and tending to the animals who were at this point really confused… But mom, there might be someone in there who will pet me, or even better, feed me…

That fabric is off the loom, washed, dried and rolled onto a tube.

And I dusted and wiped down this loom as well, with my friend Howard’s Feed and Wax.

I spent all day yesterday scrubbing everything in the book case in the den, and the moldings, which are awaiting installation tomorrow. I scrubbed the tile floor. I set up the little bistro set I ordered from Wayfair, so I could sit at the table and have my breakfast and watch the sun come up. My little bit of heaven, with a lot of elbow grease.

The cat of course, my constant companion, seems to like our new set up. He can watch out the window while patiently waiting to lick my bowl after I have my morning yogurt and granola.

So tomorrow, all the reconstruction should be finished, window trim installed, ceiling fan, and my cleaned wool rug that has been in storage since the end of December. If I can get my daughter to wake up on her day off, I’ll see if she can help me move the piano in there. The cello is already moved, and I have all my recorders to bring in as well. There is music in many corners of the house which will all be moved into the bookcase. (Once I dust them…) I will have my music room with a view… the best lemonade I could have ever imagined…

Spring is coming, stay tuned…