Tag: Natalie Drummond

No rest for the weary…

First, let me say that at this point in my life, everything I agree to, everything I participate in, and how much I participate, is completely my choice. I’ve spent my life overbooking myself, because it is what I do, and my twilight “retirement years” are no exception. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m absolutely not the kind of person who sits on the couch watching TV, I got rid of the TV after the flood.

And in my twilight years, especially now that I’m widowed, it is super important to be with a community, or multiple communities, as is the case. I will always have my textile community, my friends, my guild mates, my former students, I love them all and try to gather with them as often as I can. Now there is the early music community, and my beginner cello opportunities, plus the native plant people who are even more generous than the handweaving community, if that’s possible.

And of course there are lots of volunteer opportunities, like at the Shakespeare Theatre of NJ, where I get to hang with the most amazing and talented people. Who knew with 60 years of sewing experience behind me, I could still learn so much.

So yes, my life is crazy busy, and right now way overbooked, but I have a reason to get out of bed each morning and deal with the most critical things, and learn, and celebrate, and create, and I’d say, there is nothing I’d change about my life.

Where to begin…

When I posted last month, I was just beginning to figure out what I wanted to make for my guild sale. My plan, which worked spectacularly well, was to gather all the leftover fabrics, swatches, samples, etc, from the last couple of years, and create stacks of kits so I would know what I had for inventory. The inventory sheets were due ahead of the sale, so the committee could generate bar coded tags. Then I could sew like the wind…

So I cut out tote bags… with just a dusting of scrap left…

And I took a pile of sushi containers and made tons of ornaments…

And I cut out something like 18 zippered project bags, and five ginger jars.

I took advantage of the timing of the Weaving History Conference, sponsored by the Thousand Island Arts Center in Clayton, NY. It was held the end of October, and it was three days of Zoom lectures, which were fantastic. I highly recommend it. I was so very impressed at the passion of the speakers, to devote their lives to the research on some pretty obscure topics, much to the delight of the audience who listened to them. This is the same art center that houses the handweaving museum, which is in the process of building a larger space to house/exhibit their vast textile archives and holdings. They are the ones that if all goes well, sometime in 2026, they will take much of my work from my retrospective exhibit last year at County College of Morris. Anyway, I sat for three days watching Zoom sessions and hand stitching my little heart out… By the end of the conference, all the handwork was done.

I had bunches of ornaments… (many of which sold at the guild sale, the remaining few are now at the Shakespeare Theatre of NJ lobby shop at the Kirby Theatre)

I had 5 ginger jars, all of which sold within the first hour of the guild sale, to the same person. She would have bought more if I’d had them…

I made three stuffed bears, in addition to the two remaining rabbits I had from last year. I sold one of the rabbits and the bears and remaining rabbit are at the Shakespeare Theatre shop. The bears are so freaking cute…

I made a pile of new tote bags, one is missing from the photo as it sold within hours of my making it, to one of my musician friends. I think there are only two left, they are at the Shakespeare Theatre.

I added more greeting cards, many of which sold…

I put two of my woven scarves in the sale, and two of the scarves I wove on the remaining deflected double weave warp from the Natalie Drummond class my guild sponsored in the spring, along with four botanically printed scarves, and all of the scarves sold.

And I created, like I said, something like 18 zippered project bags, in addition to what was left from last year, many of them from Botanically printed silk scraps. This was one of my favorites, with a base of kimono silk from my trip to Japan a couple years ago.

I think there were only about five left when I packed up Sunday night of the sale, they are at the theatre lobby shop.

As you can probably surmise, I did really really well at the sale. It helped that I was there, working the floor the entire three days, and it helped that my friends from the plant communities and the music communities, and my weaving friends from afar all came to buy my work. It is fun to go to a musical gig and see one of my totes carrying someone’s music.

Just before Halloween, I volunteered to work the Shakespeare Theatre costume and prop sale, an annual fund raising event for them. Of course one can’t help but look at what’s on the rack, and I came home with this amazing vest, which was custom made for one of the actors in Romeo and Juliet, but came out the wrong size. It was tiny. I could technically fit in it, but I needed more arm movement for playing the cello, so I thought, “What would we have done in the costume shop?” I ended up creating extensions in black microsuede, which encased loops, and stitched them to the zipper tape, to camouflage the zipper, and give me a couple more inches across the chest. And with a shoelace, I had an instant closure. I was so freaking proud of my solution.

And I took a denim split pant I picked up at the costume sale, remade it and wore it, with the vest, to my performance Sunday at a local Viking Festival, Gormanudur. I played cello and bass recorder. Someone grabbed a photo of me and my friend Ken, who plays all of the recorders, and bass clarinet. In addition to early music, we played some wonderful series and video game music, from Lord of the Rings, Skyrim, Valhalla, etc. And I was delighted to see in the audience one of my weaving guild friends. Her husband is a professional musician. My world overlaps in the best ways!

And though at first glance, my gardens have gone to sleep, my son came and helped me bring in the hoses, put away the mowers, and cut back some of the more prolific Joe Pye Weed and Rudbeckia, to keep the pathways clear for winter walking. It poured rain the day he came, but we persevered and took care of my list anyway, getting completely soaked, but ultimately triumphing and accomplishing my agenda.

I had to pick all the tomatoes left on the vines, we had a hard frost that night. My window sills were full, and I’ve made a lot more sauce and froze it, and oven dried a lot more cherry tomatoes to add to my bags in the freezer.

There are so many berries out there on the bushes, some are native, and some are not, but my gardens are still a work in progress, and I’ll probably remove more invasives next year as the native plants fill in.

And on my walk around the yard this morning, I couldn’t believe how many things were still blooming… I especially loved the rose bud way up in the air against a brilliant blue sky.

And so, now that the guild sale is behind me, and remaining inventory delivered to the Shakespeare Theatre (I let them keep all the money from anything they sell), I can concentrate on all the upcoming performances, and the more than 100 pieces of music I need to learn for them. Yes, it is really hard work, and yes it is probably way too much. But I am learning so fast, and practicing really hard, and making such wonderful supportive friends, and having a blast playing dress up, that saying “no” isn’t going to be part of my vocabulary for the foreseeable future. And I just ordered a 3D carbon fiber cello, because I’m a handweaver with about 30 looms, (down from 64), why would I only have one cello… (The real reason is apparently I’m a klutz, and I’ve had three accidents with my wood cello, all from things falling on it while I was playing another instrument… I still have to send it in for repair from the previous accident).

And so, I probably won’t post again until after Thanksgiving; for all of you that use the time for quiet recharging, or spend the time with family and friends, for better or for worse, I hope that the holiday brings you a chance to give thanks, for what we have, community that supports us, and in spite of the curious world we are living in at the moment, with whiplash at every turn, there are always trees and bushes to tell us that spring will come again, and that life is renewable…

Stay tuned…

Milestones

It has been a beautiful busy couple of weeks. Spring is here and it is glorious looking at how my newly planted gardens are coming to life, lots of plants to sketch, identify, celebrate, rip out when appropriate, and appreciate.

The 29th of April would have been my late husband’s and my 47th wedding anniversary. My glorious Kwanzan Cherry (yes I know it is not native) did not let me down. It bloomed once again for our anniversary. The tree means a lot to me, because my husband and I planted it when we first bought the house, in 1982, in honor of our wedding anniversary. All of our wedding pictures were taken in front of a Kwanzan Cherry outside of the church where we were married.

I just returned this afternoon from a bittersweet beautiful weekend visit with my mom, who turned 94 on Friday. I say it was bittersweet, because I adore the woman, she has been a constant in my life, for my entire life, kind, supportive, knowledgeable, and the absolutely best mother anyone could have. Each time I see her, or talk to her, I realize that at 94, she is on borrowed time, and every hour is a gift. My middle sister and her husband came on Saturday and we all went out to lunch at a local restaurant.

I brought my cello and played Happy Birthday for her, I know she will never get to hear me play in concert, so I brought the music to her. I’m not very good yet, but determined. And she was so kind and pleased that I brought the cello, and as she napped in the afternoon, I played each day for more than an hour and a half. She said they were the best, most soothing naps she’s ever had.

The trip to just outside Baltimore, from Northern NJ is long and boring, down most of the length of the NJ turnpike. I woke up Friday morning early, prepared to pack, have breakfast and leave for mom’s, and one of the emails that came into my box, was from a woman from Montana, Janet Szabo, who has a sewing podcast called The Straight Stitch. She wanted to know if I would like to be on the podcast, and of course I said yes. We are scheduled to chat in June. So I listened to a number of episodes (there are something like 77 so far) of the podcast, and the trip down to Baltimore and back just flew by. I thoroughly enjoyed the podcast, at least the dozen episodes I listened to, and look forward to my conversation with Janet. Check it out.

I spent all day Thursday volunteering at the Shakespeare Theatre of NJ, working on restoring the velvet smoking jacket for the lead character in Oscar Wilde’s, The Importance of Being Ernest. I saw this play there a number of years ago and it is hilarious. I get to work on the coolest things when I volunteer there. Last Saturday night was their gala fund raiser, I look forward to it every year. Great food and entertainment and there is always an interesting silent auction. This year I bid on and won a gorgeous pastel/charcoal painting by Edith Moore Hopkins. I had to have this painting because it represents how I feel about the world every time I look at the news. This is my new emoji as I respond to whatever comes across my internet feed.

I continue to sketch most mornings, with the cat patiently watching me. Sometimes he watches from inside the wall unit.

The gardens, like I said above, are glorious. We are getting a good amount of rain, and everything is just glowing. All sorts of critters have taken up residence, including another raccoon, this one unfortunately appeared to have babies, which we didn’t know about until after I had her professionally removed, and we couldn’t save them. I hope the raccoon saga is over for this year, and I’m working hard to shore up the places where raccoons might find residency appealing.

And I’m weaving whenever I can. I finished the two scarves on the leftover warp from Natalie Drummond’s Deflected Double Weave class. They washed up beautifully, and that loom is once more clear.

And I’m almost finished the third of five? scarves on the “cat” warp. These are mixed yarns, all hand-dyed, cellulosic and some silk. Tencel weft. The mixed structure draft is original.

I’ll leave you with my morning view out my music room window, the azaleas, (yes I know they aren’t native) are in full bloom. The Packera has beautiful little yellow daisy like blooms, and is everywhere. That one is native.

And, my first Bearded Iris just opened up.

Stay tuned…

Personal Triumphs

It is a challenging world we are living in right now. It is hard to know what to make of things, what to focus on, where I can do the greatest good. Living in the moment, taking each thing as it comes, putting out small fires, and taking pride in the smallest of endeavors keeps me moving in a forward direction.

Earlier in the week, I had my landscape designer come back with her helper, to remove more Burning Bush (Winged euonymus) from the property. A couple of them were probably 15 feet tall, been in since the 1980’s. She doesn’t use heavy equipment, just a shovel, loping shears, a hand saw, and a pick ax. They are a remarkable team.

She removed all the branches from the four bushes, and her helper set out removing the stumps. To watch someone with that kind of physical strength and determination was really powerful. I wish a bit of that for all of us. When Saul finally got the root system to break free, the look on his face was indescribable. I asked him if he was proud of what he had done, and he responded with such joy, how he lives for this kind of personal triumph. Of course then he proceeded to spend the next hour with a pick ax and a hand saw, taking apart the root ball so they could lift it in parts and get it in the back of the truck with all the branches and the other root balls. I wanted to genuflect at the greatness of perseverance.

I thought about my own life and what things, no matter how small, gave me a sense of personal triumph. No one may even know, no one may even appreciate some of the things that I do on a daily basis that give me real satisfaction. But nevertheless, I managed to do something I didn’t think I could do, or was really challenging, and I managed to pull it off, and those are the things that make us smile and pat ourselves on our own backs and say, well done.

Even when we aren’t even sure what we did to make something happen, against all odds there are five adult frogs living in my ponds. I haven’t had frogs in my ponds in years, frogs are one of the things struggling to survive in these changing environments. But there, sunning itself, was a gorgeous frog, and when my pond guy came and opened up the ponds, cleaned them out and hooked up the filters, he found five. I’m not sure how they found me, but they are most welcome.

I’ve had a house full the last couple of weeks. Natalie Drummond was here last weekend for a workshop with my guild. I adore Natalie, I’ve known her since she took one of my retreats in the Outer Banks, NC back in 2018. I’ve followed her career. She has made Deflected Double Weave her thing, (that’s a structure in handweaving), and we all arrived at the 2 1/2 day workshop with looms warped and ready to go. I blogged about setting up the loom last month, knowing this past couple of weeks would be challenging.

Natalie encourages the use of hand painted warps, I chose to use a variegated yarn wound circular to create an ombré effect. I was fine with it. One of the things she teaches is how to substitute a warp, or group of warps if you want to change things up. My warp didn’t really lend itself to that, I liked the value contrast in what I had, but I followed along, always willing to learn something new. We used a lot of cell phone camera previews, checking value by using a grey scale mode.

There were two of us who picked one of the eight shaft pattern samplers, and I started in on the sampler the morning of the second day. I happily sat and did my thing, making sure Natalie was fed (since I was the hostess) and by the end of the day, I had woven all three samples and an additional one, the last two were yarns that would shrink differentially.

We were then supposed to cut them off and wash them that night, and bring them back to class the next day to evaluate.

What surprised me was how much I loved the subtleness and patterning of the second sample from the bottom. I wanted to weave a couple of scarves out of that.

Once I was home, I had gardening and yard stuff to attend to, but alas, it was pouring rain all day, and so I decided to pull the remaining four yards or so from the table loom, because we have already discussed how much I don’t like working on a table loom, and put the whole thing on one of my floor looms.

Which I did. By the end of that rainy Monday, I was weaving away on my first scarf. The yarn, in case anyone is interested, is vintage Contessa, rayon and silk, from Silk City Fibers. No longer available (I’m still in mourning) I hoard whatever I can find at weaver’s estate sales. I have a lot of it I’ve dyed. I love the matte finish of this particular rayon with a silk fleck. Deflected Double Weave will deflect and collapse once it is washed, so the patterning will look quite different. And when I transferred the warp to the floor loom, I brought back in the original warps I had substituted out. I’m very proud of myself…

Meanwhile, after all this rain, my lawn was looking seriously like it needed mowing. Last Wednesday, after having decided not to renew the contract for my lawn service, I dug out the electric mower, made sure the batteries were charged, so I could mow. I couldn’t even find the batteries in the trashed wood shop from the racoon debacle. They had fallen under the workbench.

I got everything charged and set out to mow, and alas, I couldn’t get the poor mower started. I loved that little electric mower my husband bought me before he died. It worked last year, when against all odds, before my lawn guys came, I charged it up and was out mowing with a broken foot in a boot. Talk about proud of myself.

But this year. Nothing… So I spent some time looking at options on the internet, and ordered basically the same mower from Amazon, which arrived on my doorstep the next day.

The house guests I have this week, and old college friend and her husband in from CA for a family event, have been wonderful to visit with, and spend the evenings fixing puzzles, restringing my guitar, and going out to dinner. Her husband agreed to help me assemble the lawn mower, which I will admit, I would have probably had trouble doing on my own. I charged up the battery, and of course it rained. Three quarters of an inch, all day yesterday.

So today, after reading the directions for starting the new mower, I went to the old mower, which had been sitting out in the rain, and I tried it one more time before tossing it out at the curb for bulk pick up tomorrow, and to my complete shock, it started right up. Of course… So I mowed the back lawn. It performed admirably. I wasn’t going to return the new one, I’d already taken it out of the packaging and set it up, and so I mowed the front with that one. It is a little heavier and blows the grass out the side, so I have to learn the best way to use that feature. I don’t bag my grass.

Anyway, my lawn is mowed, and I’m pretty damn proud of myself.

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…