Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey

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…

My First Love…

This is going to be a long one, grab a cup of tea and settle in…

It is incredible to me how full my life is right now. Too full if that’s possible. I’m doing all the things I love, almost to excess, because, why not, I am a free spirit, exploring new worlds, new communities, and I know how fragile life can be, and how it can all be gone in a heartbeat.

So it is August. My least favorite month. I’m so tired of the heat, 90-100 degree days, no rain in site. It is painful to be out tending my gorgeous gardens every day, but I committed to this and I wouldn’t change a thing, except I pray for rain hourly, and check the radar like a crazy person. I’m assured that native plants can handle drought well, and I’m trusting that. But I’m getting tired. I’m glad I live in NJ, where we garden for six months of the year and things go to sleep for six months. I have an indoor life, so I’m happy to let things rest.

I’m going to visit a friend down the shore tomorrow, so I wanted to make sure I got the lawn mowed, and the ponds topped off and critical plants watered, etc. I’m always rewarded by the most remarkable happenings in my yard, I have a Monarch Butterfly and sometimes his friend that love to follow me around the yard, doing long lazy figure 8’s, buzzing by my head, taking a quick drink of nectar and off again. He even flew by my big window while I was eating lunch, wondering where I was?

I have all sorts of insects in the yard, besides the huge population of native bees and wasps. There is the swallowtail butterfly…

The Spicebush Swallowtail…

A hummingbird moth… (I had to look that one up!)

And I watched two dragonflies tied together doing their dragonfly thing…

And today, I was watering the newly planted Persimmon trees, and a hummingbird buzzed around me, checking me out, and looking for I’m not sure what, but I understand they find spiders and feed them to their babies. After he checked me out for awhile, he flew up into the curly willow tree and watched.

The flowers are beautiful, even though everything is stressed from the drought.

And of course, my fish greet me every morning when I come out to feed them, they are voracious little piglets…

And I have the most beautiful pond lily…

Last Saturday, I went, with two members of my weaver’s guild, to a memorial service for a beloved guild member, Hedy Lyles, who passed away last month. It was a beautiful memorial service, her handwoven fabrics were everywhere, and the stories of her life were beautiful and poignant and a testament to the full life she led. After the service, there was a repast back at her house with a lovely spread by her family. It was comforting to be with weavers from the Philadelphia Guild, the New York Guild, my own guild, the Bucks County PA Guild. Hedy was beloved by so many people.

At 1 o’clock, they opened her studio and all of its contents, yarn, books, fleeces, warps, more yarn, handspun, weaving tools, sample books; most of the things were reasonably priced, but I looked around and there was nothing I needed or wanted. I’m finished with the acquisition stage of my life, and being in Hedy’s studio, amongst all the things that made her the fantastic weaver she was, I thought again, how fleeting life is, but how weaver’s stashes get spread out through the weaving community like dandelion seeds, and was happy knowing that life will continue with the next generation of weavers.

However, there was a table in the lower level that had commercial fabrics on it. With a sign, best offer. The fabrics were mostly upholstery fabrics, brocades, decorator fabrics and all I could think of was, I could make costumes out of these! And what I can’t use, I can donate to the Shakespeare Theatre where I volunteer as a stitcher in the costume shop.

So all of this came home with me…

Mulder picked his favorite right away. The grey raw silk.

Meanwhile, on the trip back, one of my guild mates asked me about a native plant place near where we were, as we headed back to NJ from PA. I mentioned Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve, the largest native plant preserve in the US, and they sold lots of native plants. A quick check on the phone, and it was 16 minutes away. How did we ever get along without a GPS?

They had to drag me away, because I filled two carts with plants, and the driver of the SUV was convinced they weren’t going to fit in the car with the loom and all the bags of yarn and my fabric purchased from Hedy’s sale. I was determined, even if I had to sit with a button bush shrub and a couple of Elderberries on my lap in my handwoven dress for the two hour trip home…

I think it funny how my priorities have changed. Now I buy plants, not yarn. I have too much yarn, you can never have too many plants, especially if you find one that is hard to find! So I have to get all these planted, in August, in a drought, which isn’t the best idea, but they were available and I don’t often get to Bowman Hill Preserve.

So the costume thing. Every Friday I go to the Shakespeare theatre costume shop and they give me some outrageous assignment, you want me to do what with this? I’ve gotten really good at taking apart things and remaking them into other things, borrowing parts from other things, and engineering a way to make it all work. It has made me look at my own closets and stash. Truth it, I don’t need any more clothes. I have a killer wardrobe, almost everything made from my own hands. But I love to sew, it is my first love, and the world is at peace when I’m one with the sewing machine. Which is saying a lot.

So next Sunday, the 24th, Montclair Early Music is sponsoring a medieval fest, and I’m going to perform with two groups, starting at noon, cello with the beginner group, and bass recorder with the regular early music group.

I have a hankering for a new costume. It’s a week away, I’ve got time! I took one of the fake suede upholstery fabrics from Hedy’s stash and some trim I bought last year from the going out of business sale at M&J trims in Manhattan. I made this…

I chose to use cording to make loops, instead of grommets. I’ve never been very confident with grommets, I don’t have good tools to apply them, but I can always devise an alternate method for pretty much everything in the textile world. So I took apart a commercial frog, and used the cording for loops and bought a pair of shoelaces for the ties. Now I have a new vest. But I kept thinking about a dress I’d seen, long and slender, lace up the front, and I started poking around my closet…

I found this…

I had made this dress, and hand beaded vest to stand for my friend Candiss Cole at her wedding in England to Roger Footit. I wore it again when I stood for my mom when she remarried in 2006. The dress was a bit legendary, but it has been hanging in the back of my closet for a long time. I haven’t figure out yet what to do with the vest, but the dress was exactly the style I had envisioned for a medieval costume, laced up the front over a full skirt, hopefully full enough I can get a cello between my legs.

I thought about it all day while I was watering and watching my insect friends. Basically I needed to cut the dress right up the middle. Armed with my new found confidence to make anything work, thanks to my vast experience now in the costume shop, after dinner tonight, I cut right up the middle of the dress. I needed something to work for the loops for the lacing, and I have bags of frogs, but none of them were the right color. I took a bunch that were shiny white, and stuck them in a pot of green tea. They came out perfect.

I used some yarn from the studio, and made a twist ply rope for the lace cord. And voila! I have a new medieval costume to wear! Still have a lot of handsewing, but I have a week!

I’m poking around in my closet to see what I can put under it. It is an outdoor event, and I’ll be sweating my butt off, but I’ll look pretty spiffy and medieval as I play early music with my friends.

Meanwhile, as plant season is drawing to a close, I’ve spent little time printing with the plants. So I grabbed some PAS mordanted silk, from maybe two years ago, and some of my favorite leaves, and created a couple of very cool pieces of silk, leaves dipped in Fe, with a logwood blanket and the second one, an osage orange blanket. The green leaf in the second one is from a nine bark cultivar, best printer on my property.

And yes, I’m still weaving, though this is getting kind of old… I have currently on my small 8-shaft floor loom, the warp that never ends. Kind of like that girl scout song, about a song that never ends… Yeah, I have a warp like that. Originally when I set up a bunch of Structo looms for teaching, I put on some ridiculous warp, like 6 yards, of 20/2 cotton, which was never going to be woven off, because students would just weave samplers to explore the technique. I want to clear all of those looms, as a number of institutions want the looms for teaching and I don’t want to do that anymore. So I’m transferring the warps, one at a time, to a floor loom so make the weaving easier. Sooo much easier… This is an overshot sampler from Robyn Spady.

After a couple yards of the sampler, I decided to change colors, and just pick one of the samples and weave that. I can use the fabric for making zip bags, or totes, or I don’t know what, but the point is, I want to weave it off.

And there is still an unknown amount on the back of the loom…

And so, between daily practice on the cello, and recorder, and new early music communities I’m rejoining, and the gardens and gardening adventures, and my volunteer work, and my vast studio stashes, there really aren’t enough hours in the day to fit in all I want to do… But I try…

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…

My world is whole again…

I will admit that I struggle with this whole season. And it is sad and heartwarming at the same time, the amount of people who seem to feel the same way. Expectations, family dynamics, travel, too much food, or not enough, all of it can consume you and leave you empty and depressed.

The woman behind me in line at the post office asked me in a friendly conversation starting way, if I was all ready for Christmas. I didn’t know her, a stranger, but she was eager to be friendly and just picked a way of striking up a conversation. I don’t think she was completely prepared for my answer, which was basically, “no”. I explained to her that I really had no plans for the holidays, as I had a son who was deployed, and hoped he would come home in time, but even if he didn’t, December 25th wasn’t some magical date where everything would come together. I had no plans, because there was no one to plan with.

The end of the year holiday season has always annoyed me from a business standpoint, it is largely just inconvenient, things are closed, places are overwhelmingly busy, schedules like deliveries are off, and I’m completely sick of emails begging for money, telling me how wonderful their products are for gift giving, “last chance on our special offer”, etc. I think January is really my favorite month because it is just normal. No holiday anything. Just 31 days of silence.

I don’t want to be a scrooge, yet this time of year really is, for me, magical, but not in the way that everyone seems to celebrate. My expectations are that it is cold, the gardens are asleep, the Winter Solstice is reassuring in that the light will come again, and that this is the season of generosity, of music, of gatherings with friends and strangers, and this is the season of one of the reasons for weaving. Towels. Lots and lots of towels. Even though my family is begging me to stop giving them towels, because their drawers are full, there are lots of others who have never gotten a towel, and are absolutely delighted with such a useful pretty gift.

So I finished up the 9 towels on the warp, I’ve already given out a few, and decided that they were so much fun to weave, I should just tie on another warp.

I looked at my vast stash of 8/2 cotton and randomly picked an icy warp.

I wound another 10 yards…

Tied it into the existing warp,

Beamed it onto the warp beam,

And started to weave. I’m sure the warp would be even prettier with a dark weft, but I have a couple of cones of an icy gray, and decided that rather than buy more cotton to have a dark weft, I’d just use what I have. Head start on next year, or hostess gifts when I need them.

I finished up the Deflected Double Weave Warp I had transferred to my floor loom from one of my Structos. I grabbed another one of the Structos and started offloading that warp onto my small floor loom.

This one was set up in a four-shaft twill sampler, or gamp, and once it was on the floor loom, weaving it off was a breeze. There was only three yards of warp on this, so I’m just weaving it as a scarf, but it may turn into zip bags, or I don’t know, I don’t have to monetize everything…

My guild’s final meeting of the year is usually some simple project, a make it take it kind of thing, and this year’s project was actually a bit magical. We created little weavings in the round, around a ring covered in cotton.

I took what was leftover from the guild sale, what didn’t sell of mine, and gave it to the Shakespeare Theatre of NJ for their small gift shop in the lobby of the Kirby Theatre at Drew University in Madison. I did this last year, and they ended up selling $500 worth of my items, and of course they get to keep all the money; my gift to them and the fantastic productions they do. There was a table of handmade items, some were mine, and some were by the ShakesPurls, a knitting group that supports the Theatre.

They had a large tree in the lobby filled with my ornaments.

They had a greeting card rack, and as I spun it around, I found all of my cards.

This is the season of music. And I’m really enjoying all the opportunities to play, dress up, rehearse, and I’m really really loving playing the cello. I practice at least an hour a day. We had both our holiday concerts with Montclair Early Music, many of you asked to see my costume, made up largely from just stuff in my closet I altered for effect.

I was hanging in the sewing studio, and started pulling out my more opulent fabrics that might work up into more costumes for the coming year. The public seems to love when we all come out in our medieval garb.

I have one more performance, this one tomorrow, in a local memory care facility. It is a great privilege to be able to take the gift of music to strangers, and maybe Christmas Carols might spark a bit of memory in those who have lost that ability. I love the music of the season, in all of its forms, though I will be glad to put away the holiday music and pull out new things to learn. We played Carol of the Bells at our winter concert a couple of weeks ago, which is Ukrainian, and after the concert, a couple of newly relocated Ukrainian families came up to the music director, with tears in their eyes, saying how much it meant to them to hear a bit of their homeland in this miserable war. Music has that power.

This time of year is for tying up loose ends, I love finishing up projects, and moving onto new challenges, and the greatest challenge I have ever taken on, was making this appliquéd cat quilt for my mom, from a Maggie Walker kit she bought in the 90’s. This was a really tough year for me, for many many reasons, and this quilt marked time, each month gone as I finished another block.

All of the last 100 pieces of the trumpet vine that runs through the central part of the quilt have been cut out, and today have been pressed under and ready to stitch on. I store them 10 at a time in sushi trays, stacked in order.

This is where the quilt is at this point, I’m seeing the end of an incredible project. I will miss it.

And the most important thing I want to share with all of you, is that he is home. My sister and her husband came with me yesterday to the National Guard Armory just outside of Princeton, and my son, who has spent the better part of this past year in Syria, is finally home. My heart is whole again. It will be a long road of reintegration for all of the returning troops, all he wanted last night was to go home to his apartment, with his beloved jeep that I kept repaired and running for him, and sit on his own couch with real pizza and a beer (no alcohol in Syria or any Islamic country). We brought him back to my house, where he grabbed his keys, hugged me goodbye, and took off to begin to pick up his life where he left off.

I’ll go and visit my mom who is 93, next weekend, and show her how far I’ve come on her quilt. That I still have my mom, and that she is still that amazing woman who raised me, is the biggest blessing of all.

Enjoy the magic of the season, the return to the light, the sleeping gardens, the opportunity to give gifts of music, things made from the hands, and just plain old friendship. Enjoy the music of the season, whether you play an instrument or not. And if you don’t, why not? I’m playing the piano again, glad I still kept the one I bought 40 years ago. And I play recorders, and now the cello. And there are always people to play with. You don’t have to be very good.

And I’m enjoying planning out my next year, what new adventures will I take on, what will my garden look like when everything wakes up? The night of the solstice it snowed about 4 inches. Everything is clean and white, and fresh.

Stay tuned…

And so starts the holiday season…

…with a vengeance! Thanksgiving is late this year, so hasn’t happened as of this writing. But the last few weeks have been horrifically busy, because, ’tis the season.

It is the season for our annual guild show and sale. I worked furiously making stuff from leftover scraps, for the sale, like ornaments…

Like zip bags…

And I loaded up the car, helped set up the sale, spent an exhausting three days working the floor, and selling my little heart out. I sold quite a bit of work, which made me happy.

Most of the unsold work was just delivered to the Shakespeare Theatre of NJ, for them to add to their little gift shoppe in the lobby of the Kirby Theatre for the final show of the year. ‘Tis the season!

The final show is A Christmas Carol, and because I volunteer as a stitcher in the costume shop, it has been all hands on deck. I always thought my least favorite show to help with costume alterations was Macbeth. Lots of black, lots of leather, and garments that weight 75 pounds. The current production is just as challenging. Many of the garments for this show have to be rigged for quick release, for costume changes that have to occur in about 15 seconds. There are only 8 actors in this version of A Christmas Carol. That means fitted corseted jackets have to be attached to full skirts, and full petticoat attached to that. With a lapped separating zipper down the back, where some of the layers were 1/2″ thick. We have industrial machines there at the costume shop, but nothing would go through this except the costume shop’s manager’s personal $199 11 year old Singer from Walmart. Try putting in a lapped zipper after the fact in a garment that weights as much as I do… Go figure… The things I am learning… I’ll go in one more day on Tuesday, they pack out on Wednesday and go into tech this weekend. Show opens December 4th. ‘Tis the season!

This is the season of harvesting, and I had a friend collect a huge bucket of black walnut hulls. I don’t have a garage to put them in, since that is now the weaving studio, and with the animals always getting into something, I don’t dare just put them in my studio. So I left them in front of the garage bay under the overhang, to protect them, and the squirrels had an absolute field day. There were crushed walnut hulls all over the driveway. Somebody was happy! I covered the bucket and now they are all moldy. Sigh… Maybe next year my life won’t be so crazy and I can soak them immediately and use them as a dye promptly.

It has been a beautiful fall season, especially in my yard with all the wonderful native plants and the colors that they are turning, much subtler than all the invasives on my property, but beautiful in their own way. However, this is NJ. And though it flooded four times in the last year, we have been under extreme drought conditions for the last couple of months. No rain. None. Which means no fire pits, no fireworks, nothing that could spark dry leaves and create a conflagration. Nevertheless, thousands of acres have burned over the last couple weeks, which is pretty scary in this small and overcrowded state. I became obsessed with watching the weather apps on my phone, hourly, praying for some kind of precipitation, watering where I thought I had no other option, but understanding that our reservoirs were half empty, and conservation was important. So it was with extreme joy that over the last few days, we received slow and steady precipitation, that amounted to nearly 4″ of rain. Everything looks wet and healthy.

I grabbed a photo of some of the color outside my studio window.

And with the all the rain, I was inspired to wind a warp for dishtowels, because, IT IS THE END OF NOVEMBER AND I DON’T HAVE MY HOLIDAY GIFT DISHTOWELS ON THE LOOM! I grabbed the draft from last year’s 4-shaft combination structure towels, based on this design from my eShop. I just edited the colors in my weaving software, and started winding.

I put 10 yards of 8/2 cotton. I have a lot of cotton. Within two days I was weaving… I’m calling this run Autumn Rain.

With a lot of help from Mulder. NOT!

I’m about three yards in so far. I try to do about a yard at a sitting. ‘Tis the season for dishtowels!

And for anyone who plays music, this really is the season. I played recorders at a Viking festival last weekend, and our annual holiday concert is this Sunday in Montclair. I play bass recorder, with Montclair Early Music, and we have had a number of opportunities to share our music with the public. Which means lots of practice and lots of rehearsals. And a couple of us are planning to take a quartet to a memory care facility in my county to play Christmas music. More rehearsals and practicing. ‘Tis the season!

And of course, thrown in there was the election. I don’t ever talk about politics in my blog, or my Facebook page. Most of you who know me know where I stand politically. And in the arts, most of us lean in the same direction, since we are such a diverse community. That said, I pray for some stability and kindness, and willingness to have frank discussions, and embracing those who think differently than I do. I’ve reached out to talk with those who voted differently than I did. And there is always more than one perspective, for any situation. I miss my late husband terribly, because he was the absolute best at seeing all sides of a situation and acting accordingly. And though election season is over for now, the 2025 gubernatorial primary season for NJ has already started, and there are about a dozen good candidates up for the position of NJ Governor. I’ve tried to limit my news exposure at this point. Because even though, ’tis the season, I don’t have the stomach for it right now.

And I wait. By the phone. For my son’s return from his deployment in Syria. I know the process has started for his return, but the military never gives details about troop movement, so I have no information, except that I’ll eventually get a text from him telling me he is on US soil. Soon…

And so dear readers, I’ll spend Thursday quietly with a friend, and then back to work rehearsing, weaving, and all the other things that need to be done in this season of darkness. I love the waning afternoon light through the trees, minus their leaves. I love the blowing leaves along the streets and in my yard. I left them in the beds this year, because apparently that’s the thing to do. Like covering up everything with a blanket for the winter. It rained, and I have towels on the loom, and my son will be home soon. All is well.

Stay tuned…