Tag: Shakespeare Theatre of NJ

Above all, be flexible…

These last couple of weeks nearly killed me. So much so that today, I went back to bed after taking care of all the animals, and I curled up with a very trashy novel and had a real day off… I haven’t done that in years. The trashy novel was book four of the Bridgerton series, got it cheap on my Kindle, and it was the perfect thing to curl up with, and actually catch my breath..

This all started the weekend before Thanksgiving. I promised my 91 year old mom a long overdue visit. She lives about 3 1/2 hours from me in Maryland. I arrived on a Friday for lunch, she had chicken soup waiting for me. It was the best. From a completely weary and overworked daughter, coming home to mom and having chicken soup put in front of me, well I’ve never been so grateful for anything in my life.

We had lots of fun over the next couple days, picking up puzzles at the barn sale at her complex, she gave me half, and she kept half and we will eventually swap. I took her around for her errands, and Sunday afternoon, we had a lovely lunch of Crab Imperial. I carried the lunch dishes to the sink, and I heard an oof and then a thud, and I turned, and just like that, mom tripped over her rug, and landed flat on her face, taking out a dining chair in the process.

I can’t begin to tell you the myriad of things that went through my mind. And of course, the first thing was, damn, this happened on my watch, and my sisters are going to kill me. The ambulance came, she was transported to the hospital, x-rays, CT scans, lots of blood work, and because no one is available for rehab on a Sunday night, I sat with my mom in the ER, who broke her right shoulder in two places, same as me almost a year ago, in the hospital, for 30 hours. I’d like to say it was the longest day of my life, but I’ve had worse. I adore her, and she was really trying to keep her spirits up.

Above all, be flexible…

I stayed an extra day in Maryland, making sure mom was safe in the rehab in her complex. My Maryland sister will take over. And my heart bled for my mom. My broken shoulder was my non dominant side, and I’m only 67. She broke her dominant side. Though when she said to the medical staff, actually anyone who would listen, that this is the 14th broken bone she has had since she was 14, I did break a smile. I come from a strong stock of women who always find a way. But this will be a painful year to come. Ask me how I know this.

Above all, be flexible…

So I made my way home on Tuesday, two days before Thanksgiving, not what I planned. But I did my best to prep the house, buy the food, and though my guest list was small, just my kids and my NY sister and her husband, I was hosting Thanksgiving.

I set the table, with my favorite dishes, a wedding present back in the 70’s, with my new handwoven napkins, and my lovely daughter did all the cooking. My son made his infamous charcuterie boards. We had a 2 pound slab of fresh organic salmon with crab meat stuffing. The house was presentable, though I didn’t invite anyone upstairs.

Above all, be flexible…

Friday after Thanksgiving I promised I’d work a day at the Shakespeare Theatre of NJ, where I volunteer as a stitcher in the costume shop. They are in the final prep for costumes for Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, which opens next week. They save all the really hard stuff nobody wants to do, for me! Which challenges me and makes me think!

My private student Kyrie, whom I’ve rescheduled three times, once because I broke my shoulder, then a conflict with her schedule, and the last time, two days before she was to come, I got Covid, was due in Sunday night. I had two days to grocery shop, and clean the house again, including upstairs. I have multiple animals, I’m always cleaning the house…

Above all, be flexible…

Sunday morning, I was about to head to the grocery store, and I got an email, Kyrie was sick. Covid negative. But she wasn’t well enough to travel until Tuesday.

I thought I’d have a couple days to breathe. Hahahahah!

Above all, be flexible…

Monday night I got the first draft of my long awaited Heddlecraft article, all 36 pages, to start my editing. I suppose the timing was perfect, since Kyrie was delayed, but dear Lord, is there no rest for the weary?

Anyway, I furiously edited, checked links, checked .wif files, compared my original manuscript. We got through five versions as Kyrie was walking in the door Tuesday afternoon. The issue was released shortly after, and I’ve never been so proud of anything in my life. Here is the link if you don’t have a subscription (if you are a weaver you should) or you can get a single issue.

My student was an absolute delight. She was still getting over the remnants of some respiratory crud, but I’m beyond caring anymore. We wore masks and carried on. we worked hard and she proved to be a wonderfully adept student.

She brought a gorgeous handwoven fabric, using hand dyed warps from Blazing Shuttles.

She finished the jacket, all but the handwork, late Friday night, and was out of here Saturday morning, making a five day class work in three.

Above all, be flexible…

And that gave me the opportunity to frantically do multiple final rehearsals for the Montclair Early Music holiday concert, last night, Christmas in King Arthur’s Court. Beautiful music from the English Renaissance. I played bass recorder. It was so very much fun, I remembered why I love playing recorders with a group, and we even got a standing ovation.

Meanwhile…. There is a difference between what I need to do, what I have to do, and what I want to do. And sometimes there is a very grey area between those things.

Mostly what I need to do, is to constantly create, and life is certainly interfering. Silk City Fibers, whom I’ve had a long relationship with, periodically sends me yarn they are thinking of bringing in, or have brought in, or are just curious about. I’m always happy to make a test run, because that’s something I adore doing, I need to do, and I excel at; throw something at me and I’ll see what I can invent.

This yarn is a lovely silky rayon, two four ply yarns loosely wrapped together, in an exquisite purple. I had about 9 ounces, and so I immediately thought of a Spot Bronson structure, and did some fast calculations, and wound a warp.

I started weaving and my sett was spot on, pun intended. I ultimately made three samples and washed them in different ways, and then wove a lovely scarf. Took about a day, which was just before the Heddlecraft proofs arrived…

Meanwhile… My guild meeting is Wednesday night. We usually have some make it-take it project for the December meeting, and since we are still meeting via zoom, it was decided that we would all make an Anni Albers Bauhaus necklace.

You can buy them as a kit from the Philadelphia Art Museum. The kit is simple enough, a 1/4″ ribbon, with a bunch of washers. I’ve always been curious how this necklace works, but I really didn’t have the time or thought to plan ahead and order the kit. I was sort of busy… And besides, I’m a handweaver… Duh…

I bought a sample pack of some 60 different Sulky 12 wt. thread colors many years ago at a sewing conference. It remained untouched. Until now.

This was something I really needed to do, to keep my hands busy, and I knew that once my student started sewing her jacket, I would just be hanging out at the ready for a number of days, to make sure questions got answered, and that any mistakes were rapidly fixed, and she could keep going.

So I designed a 1/4″ ribbon, full length on my Bekka inkle loom, which is longer than the 84″ necessary to make the necklace.

Easy weaving…

And ultimately, I have long ribbon for my necklace project for Wednesday night’s meeting.

I keep trying to figure out how my life has become so out of control, and I’m hoping that things will quiet down soon. I needed today, to curl up with a trashy novel, but this afternoon, I tackled the last of the major projects on my overdue to-do list. I finished the Index for my YouTube channel, The Weaver Sews. You can find it here. Alphabetical by video, and alphabetical by topic. There were many labors of love I completed this past week, the Heddlecraft article finally got published, the Shakespeare Show will open next week but my work there is done. The concert was last night, my student finished and made it home safe, and the Index is finished. And I have a 1/4″ inkle woven ribbon for the meeting Wednesday night.

I’m tired. But above all, I’m flexible…

Stay tuned…

Checking it twice…

Have I ever mentioned that I hate checking my work? Always did. Even back in Middle School, I’d work on complex math equations, and then get the answer wrong in the last step because I made some stupid addition error. Still, it would make me nuts to go back and check my work.

And of course, I became a weaver. And in weaving, you HAVE TO CHECK YOUR WORK! There are just so many times you find a threading error in the middle of 750 ends and start to say, yeah, I need to check my work.

I’m in addition to other things, a writer. I’ve written more than 100 articles, both print and digital, and I know this sounds weird, but I’m a writer, not an editor. I love to write. I don’t have to edit. They have people for that. I’ve been offered editor jobs, and flatly turned them down, because, I’m a writer, NOT an editor. Editors are like God. I just provide content. And I’m pretty good at it. But someone else always does the final check of my work. (Actually I check the final copy right before it goes to print, but I can count on one hand the amount of times I ever found errors, and then it was a fluke. Usually a photo in the wrong place.)

That said, I offer a lot of digital content on my own site. I’ve recently upgraded all the digital monographs, especially the ones that have to do with garment construction for handweavers, to include links to techniques illustrated by my YouTube channel The Weaver Sews.

And of course, I sell patterns. The year we took to develop them was mind blowing days of constant checking and editing and checking again. All of those patterns needed directions, and needed measurements in both imperial and metric. More mind numbing days of editing my own work. I actually decided that in everyone’s best interest, I would pay someone else, a real tech editor, to do the final edits on the extensive directions for each of the patterns. All 12 of them. The directions, often more than 30 pages, would be kept separate from the patterns, so I could edit without too much complication.

It became quite clear to me, after I was asked to teach a two day remote workshop in Canada, making my 500 vest pattern, that as I updated the prospectus, and looked over the directions, that I really needed to include all the YouTube Channel video links for each of the steps where I recorded content that explained them in further detail. It took the better part of a week, and I was terrified that I’d have mistakes, yet I knew there would be because I am so bad at checking my work. Still, I carried on, and knew it was inevitable that I do the other 11 patterns, updating those directions to include video links. But my calendar was too full and I didn’t see getting to this until winter.

Then this happened…

As best I figured, since I never go anywhere, I caught Covid at a fabulous packed house production of On Your Feet at the Papermill Playhouse. Everyone had to wear a mask. And 48 hours later, I was coughing with a fever. My first instinct was to test for Covid. And it was negative. So I went to bed, felt lousy for a couple of days, and then started to feel better. The night before the guild sale, my daughter had already dropped off our work, she encouraged me to test again, just to be sure I really didn’t have Covid.

Yeah…

By the time I knew it was Covid, I was feeling better, and there didn’t seem to be a need to go racing off to the doctor. I knew my sense of smell was gone, but I assume I’ll eventually get that back. Problem was, not only was I going to miss working the sale, my daughter couldn’t go either, because, we assumed it was just a matter of time before she showed symptoms. (She lives with me and was also at the theatre. Fortunately she never got it, and continued to test negative). I had to cancel my week long private student that was due in last Sunday night.

Which was really really unfortunate. She worked hard to get her fabric finished, and set aside the week. And this was already rescheduled from last spring since I was still undergoing treatment for my fractured shoulder. Which left me with a free week, absolutely nothing on the calendar, because I assumed I’d have a student all week.

Since I was fine by the weekend, this was an unusual dilemma for me, to have a “snow” day turn into a “snow” week, no snow, but unexpected change of plans.

I decided, as much as I really really didn’t want to, that it was time I redid all the directions for my 11 remaining patterns, and added the links. Problem is/was that I needed to rewatch some of the videos to remember what was actually in them. There are 80 of them. I’m working on, and have been for the last year, an index of the YouTube channel, both by video in chronological order and alphabetical by topic. It is a huge huge job. I’m actually paying someone else to do this. But she is struggling to find time as well. We got to 68%, which is currently posted on my website, but it is taking forever to complete it. You can find what we have completed here.

So I started last weekend, determined to use this week to update all the directions for my sewing patterns, which are free to download from my website. And while I was at it, watch as many videos as my brain could stand, and mark topics and time codes, and then enter them into a very large Excel spread sheet.

So I’m sure you know where I’m going with this. I’ve spent a miserable week, staring at a computer screen, checking my work, rechecking my work, converting to a PDF, and checking my work once again. And I know there are errors. There always are…

And I’m within 10 videos of completing the index. Ann Marie is working on four of the last ones, and I have five more to view.

And so dear readers, this is my gift to all of you, updated directions with live links in the PDF to appropriate videos for many of the steps, and soon a completed index of what to find where. In return, please let me know whenever you find an error, missing link, whatever. I say this of course with fear, because I know you’ll find them. Many of you are actual editors, and though I bow down to you, I also know you will find the mistakes! Email me at theweaver@weaversew.com

There are no cool pictures to share. All I did was work all week on the computer until I couldn’t see anymore. I’m well beyond Covid at this point, and my work sold well at the guild sale, I’m writing checks tonight to the participants, since I’m the treasurer. I’m checking each check twice to make sure I got the amount right, and didn’t do something stupid like leave out my signature.

Some of the work that didn’t sell at the sale will be donated to the Shakespeare Theatre’s annual holiday bazaar, check that out if you live in the north Jersey area. Work will start soon on the costumes for their December production of Shakespeare’s 12th Night.

And I rescheduled my student for the end of November. So now I have to clean my house all over again. Fortunately housework doesn’t require checking your work…

Stay tuned…