I suppose it is a good thing that there is still a foot or more of packed ice covering all of northern NJ. And of course my gardens. And half my driveway (well that part isn’t so great). I try to spend each day chipping away at the ice piles in the driveway. But the gardens I’m told are fine. Snow is an insulator, and all will be well when it finally all melts. The good news is that may take a while, and there is nothing for me to do in the gardens until I see the actual ground. Which means I have some more time inside before I have to venture outside.
I’m still slogging my way through the natural dye class through Maiwa. Each of the saved batches of dye are being reused to exhaust them, no sense tossing perfectly good dyepots. I’ve got a routine, including exhausting the exhaust baths… Don’t ask! I think I counted so far that I will have done more than 75 dyebaths. And I haven’t gotten to the indigo yet.
I finished the 8-shaft Shadow Weave scarves, design from Webs, I put the link in the last post. They are sitting in my closet waiting for the guild sale.
I kept at the 12-shaft towels my daughter started years ago. I wanted that warp off. Good thing I have such good leg and upper back strength from weaving on this monster loom, because I need it shoveling mounds of icy snow.
Pretty soon, the sight every weaver longs for…
And I cut the roll of towels off the loom, and left them for my daughter. They are really hers.
Then I took my 12-shaft Voyager Table loom, (did I mention I hate table looms?) and slowly started to transfer the echo weave draft I got from Denise Kovnat, onto the 12-shaft floor loom. I wanted to finish one last warp before this loom moves to FIT in NYC. I knew I’d never get to weaving off this complex Tencel warp on the table loom, so I started sleying the reed of the floor loom, directly from the table loom.
I got all 574 ends threaded, 36 ends per inch.
And then releasing the brake on the table loom, I wound through the four yards onto the floor loom.
And I will admit, it took a while to get the sheds clean on all 12 treadles, lots of tweaking, but once I spent the time on it, it is weaving beautifully. I love this pattern. And I love that it is a single shuttle weft. My kind of weaving.
And just today… Knots… This makes me so happy. Probably one more repeat…
I pulled a box of sheepskin fur scraps from the attic, I’m making a medieval brocade vest, and I’ll line it with the sheepskin pieced together. It only took the cat about 10 minutes to find the box, and now it is his favorite place to rest.
I think I want to come back in another life as one of my animals…
I got my latest Shuttle, Spindle and Dyepot last week. It is the publication for the Handweavers Guild of America. I casually opened the front cover and there I was, with all these young faces, part of the Careers in Textiles symposium sponsored by the Handweavers Guild of America. I was reluctant at first to be a part of it, because the path I took to become who I am doesn’t really exist anymore. But then I thought about it, and it isn’t about the path, it is about seizing opportunities and learning everything I could about each of the components that helped me earn a living as an artist, handweaver, writer, and educator. So I’m the artist, handweaver, writer and educator on the panel. It happens in March. I have started writing my presentation, which I have so much fun with…
And I practice like a crazy person every day, cello and recorders, and a week ago Friday I had a performance with one of my groups, the Mendham Consort for the Folk Project. We played a colorful version of Greensleeves, which is a song about unrequited love, from the 16th century, at a concert featuring love songs for Valentine’s Day. It was so much fun. That’s me in the center, standing, playing bass recorder. Seated next to me is my cello teacher Loni Bach.
And one of my groups, New Jersey Early Music, has its spring concert on March 22, which is coming up soon, less than 4 rehearsals to go. I’m playing cello and bass recorder for that one.
And I was just asked to record a podcast with the SweetGeorgia Yarn company, out of Vancouver. I’m always up for a podcast. I looked at their yarns, all handdyed or handpainted. They are gorgeous.
So life is of course spiraling out of control, which is all fine. I choose all these fun things, and they sometimes collide, but I have a breather before I have to get outside and work in the dirt. In the next couple of weeks, two more looms will be gone from my studio. The 12-shaft Voyager Table loom is heading to Michigan to my weaver friend there, and the 12-shaft 54″ Tools of the Trade is heading to NYC to the weaving lab at FIT. And at the Shakespeare Theatre of NJ, we are working on costuming four shows at once. And this is the off season. My weekly volunteer day there is chocked full of entertaining sewing.
Or one row at a time, or one module at a time, or one inch at a time…
There is a great saying, used well by 12-step groups, “One Day at a Time…” The theory is that you can accomplish anything if you just take it one day, or even one minute at a time. I’ve lived by those words for my entire adult life, and it is how I accomplish much of what I set out to do…
This is a new year. And though I almost never set resolutions for myself, this year I have a number of goals. Continuing to clear looms is high on the list, but the most important one, is to finish the online class I started in Natural Dyeing with Maiwa. I signed up back in 2024, it was an expensive class, and I bought the kit, with all the fabrics, dyes, chemicals, tagging sheets, everything needed to take the class. It was shipped from Canada. I have three years to complete the course. I’m already half way into that time restriction. So this dark cold January, when I thought the music rehearsals and performances would ease up (Hahahahahah… what was I thinking…) that I could really take the time to work through all the modules, one a day.
I am actually doing well, I’m more than half finished the class, and have a lovely array of wool yarn, wool fabrics, and silk jacquard all dyed with natural dyes. Each of those skeins/fabrics, will then be cut into more pieces to experiment with modifiers, indigo overdyes, etc. The class is fantastic. Worth every penny I spent. Directions and videos are exceptional, and I look forward to cranking up the dye pot every morning.
My only complaint, and it is a humorous one, and I was warned, all the dye baths need to be saved for exhaust dye studies. So my basement refrigerator looks like this, and I haven’t even gotten to the cotton/linen/hemp module. It is hard to find large ball jars in the middle of winter…
I’ve already written in a previous post how I’m not great at babysitting pots on the stove, so I went to the loom with the Shadow Weave Sampler, in 8/2 Tencel, and I’d weave one section of one repeat, get up and check the temp on the dyepot, and stir, and then go back and weave another section of one repeat. After a couple of weeks of this, I finished two 2-yard scarves, and have enough warp left for a few more repeats, which I’ll use for zippered bags next fall for the guild sale. The pattern is from Webs.
Meanwhile, this morning it snowed. We got about 4″ of heavy wet snow, which I had to clear pretty quickly, because in NJ, temps drop at night, causing everything to freeze and turn to ice. But I made myself a deluxe grain bowl and sat by my garden window in the music room and watched the falling snow. It was beautiful.
Meanwhile, I had transferred the warp from one of my little Structos, which was set up for Doup Leno. I put it on one of my small 4-shaft floor looms. With a single shuttle, I blew through that warp in a couple sittings. Though it was painfully slow to twist all that fringe.
I had actually cleared that loom back in November or December and put on a run of Monk’s belt towels, which I talked about in my last blog post, from the latest issue of Handwoven Magazine, and blew through them in record time, which gave me a nice stack for holiday gifts.
The loom I was weaving on, sits tucked into a corner next to a shelving unit, and hanging from that shelving unit were two very large skeins of hand painted cotton, which kept getting in the way when I’d reach back to adjust the back brake. In disgust, I pulled the skeins from the side of the shelving unit, and then got distracted, thinking, how much fun would it be to weave up some yardage, using a draft I developed for Silk City Fibers, using a similar fat cotton floating over a finer ground. The draft is on my website, and is free.
It was great fun to go shopping in my stash. I refuse to ever buy yarn again, I have so much, and I pulled things that made the hand painted warp sing.
I went right to the warping board, once I finished all the towels, cut them off, washed and hemmed them, and gave them all away.
There is a fine thread of purple glitter yarn, which must have been something my daughter acquired because I can’t imagine ever buying purple metallic.
I am in the process of threading the heddles, again, a couple inches at a time, in between weaving off the shadow weave, and watching the next module for the Maiwa class. I’m more than half way, and can’t wait to beam this and start weaving to see what it looks like. Patience…
When I showed my weaving buddies the photo of the warp, my friend Ginnie, who lives on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where they are up to 137″ of snow, that is not a typo, sent me a gorgeous photo of a winter sunset, that looks exactly like the palette of my yarn choices.
Meanwhile, last Saturday I had a performance with one of my Early Music Groups, this one for a Viking coronation ceremony. It was so much fun, I played cello mostly, and we all got dressed up in our medieval garb, and played our hearts out, all through the ceremony. There was a wonderful Viking feast afterward, with all foods that would have been cooked back in the Viking period.
Meanwhile… first the back story… My daughter, many of you know, is a terrific weaver. Before Covid, she was even thinking of going into life as a craftsman, between the knitting machines, and the looms, five of the ones in the studio are hers, and we started teaching together, and planning to move in the direction of a mother/daughter team. Then Covid hit, and everything got cancelled, I don’t have to tell you dear readers, that so many people, including me, changed the direction of their lives as a result. I had hired my out-of-work daughter, to figure out how to do a YouTube channel, we bought the equipment and filmed more than 75 videos, one a week for more than a year and a half. It is called, The Weaver Sews, and if you haven’t checked it out at this point there is a tremendous amount of information on Sewing Handwoven Fabrics. It is everything I know.
Anyway, my daughter went on to finish her vet tech degree, and after a couple of different positions at vet practices, she now works the night shift as a critical care vet tech and sleeps all day. She loves the job, and the career, and spends her days, when she is not asleep doing things she loves, watching TikTok, playing video games, building small kits she finds online, and creating a life very different than mine. I have no judgement here, I miss her in the studio, but in our discussions, she has mostly just lost the passion she once had. It may come back, but it isn’t my life or my place to push her to do that which no longer defines her. She has a really tough career, some of the stories she tells are devastating. She does what she needs to do for her sanity. As I do mine…
One of my long term goals is to completely downsize my entire studio, move out things that no longer interest me, and though I’m down to under 30 looms, from my previous high of 64, I still have a long way to go to clear and find teaching homes for my equipment. I cannot keep a studio with 30 looms in the hopes that someday my daughter will want to return to my passion.
In 2021, my daughter loaded a trailer onto the SUV, and drove to Rochester NY to pick up a loom that had become available, a 12-shaft 54″ wide Tools of the Trade Loom. I wrote about the adventure here. It is a monster loom, originally from the Rochester Institute of Technology, which closed its weaving program some time ago. It takes up a huge amount of space in the studio. It is really too much loom for me, lifting 54″ rock maple shafts at 70 years old is a challenge. Originally my daughter commandeered the loom after I wove a small piece of yardage, and there still sits, a very long warp, for rainbow dish towels, taken from a 1959 10-shaft draft from Robin and Russ. (I would have been four years old…) Since we had 12 shafts, she rewrote the draft to use all 12. She wove a couple of towels for gifts, but the warp still sits on what is essentially my loom. I bought it and paid for it.
I have found someone who wants it, The Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan. It will be used in their new renovated weaving studio. It seems fitting that it is going from RIT to FIT… The problem is, I’ve repeatedly asked my daughter to clear the warp, and after a number of months, I realize she isn’t going to. So…
First I had to figure out what she did. She doesn’t keep records, it is all in her head… I sat for a long time staring at weaving software and came up with the draft, based on the original, the current threading and tie-up.
I will tell you, by the time I finish this warp, I will have the leg strength of an ox, and a bunch of powerful back muscles. This is pretty tough on the body. But I am weaving the warp off. I do about 4 repeats at a time, and it adds up. She probably won’t be happy with me, it is her warp, but it is my loom, and I’ve given her plenty of opportunity to weave it off.
And, of course there are bins and bins of spinning fibers, which haven’t been touched in a ridiculous number of years. I joined my guild’s spinning study group, and we meet once a month and just sit around as friends and chat, and spin, or knit, or whatever someone is currently working on that’s portable. My goal is that at least once a month, I have devoted time to just sit and spin. And today, I plied the last of this mystery fiber I bought too many conferences ago, I’m thinking it is Merino and maybe Tencel, or all Merino, it is beautiful. You can tell I started spinning it years ago, and with a dozen year’s gap, the spin isn’t the same as what I spin now. But I’ll make something from it eventually. One bobbin at a time, one month at a time, and eventually the job gets done.
All of my Early Music ensembles are gearing up for spring concerts and recitals, and events. I have more playlists than I had last December if you can imagine that. So when I’m not rehearsing or practicing, I’m in the studio, tackling a task an inch at a time, a repeat at a time, a dye class module at a time, one day at a time…
Tomorrow (or today, depending on when I finish this post) is the Winter Solstice, December 21st at 10:30am for the northern hemisphere. No matter what holiday you celebrate, or don’t, this time of year, the seasons remain strong reminders of the power of light and darkness. The winter solstice marks the shortest day of the year, the light will return. And plants will grow, and nature will thrive in spite of us.
I looked out my window earlier this week and saw this. It is/was beautiful, I say “was” because it was all gone quickly when we had 3/4″ of rain the other day, and the temps got up to 60 degrees.
Meanwhile, in prep for all the cold weather approaching, I did one final sweep of the vegetable garden, and harvested the remaining chard, and late planted arugula. They were washed and refrigerated, and I’m enjoying the last of my garden harvest, well into December. And there is all that tomato sauce and pesto in the freezer…
Performance season is drawing to a close, it has been crazy and wild and a true honor to perform at so many places for worthy causes. I’m not a professional musician, I don’t want to be, so performing with a group for a worthy cause, like a nursing home, is the ultimate way of giving joy to those who don’t get much joy during the holiday season.
There was the Randolph, NJ Historical Society open house with the Mendham Consort. We were the background music and I played bass recorder.
There was the Holiday Tapestry concert for Montclair Early Music, I played recorder for the main group, and cello with the beginner group called the Musettes. That’s me way in the far end of the semi-circle with my cello.
My new cello has been just an amazing piece of equipment. It is lightweight, super responsive, and I can be much more relaxed about extreme weather conditions. It is a 3-D printed carbon fiber cello from Forte3-D.
I’m thinking that somebody needs to start producing looms and other weaving equipment on a large scale using more contemporary materials and processes, because if they can make a performance cello from plastic, surely they can make a loom. Like the little Structo I used for teaching…
Anyway, I played with the Mendham Consort again, at an event sponsored by Project Self Sufficiency, which is an incredible non-profit charity spanning two counties that that helps low-income families achieve economic stability through comprehensive support services like case management, job training, childcare, and emergency assistance. They sponsor a toy drive each holiday season, so no child goes without. Area musicians provide background holiday music for the “shopping” experience.
And the one that I worked the hardest on, the annual Suzuki concert with the cellos and violins (maybe 30 of us?) at a local nursing home. This is just a small section of the full group, musicians as young as 4, playing some pretty challenging stuff. I’m way in the back with one of the other adults. On my carbon fiber cello.
Good thing I’m a textile artist… two days before a concert where I would be playing my bass recorder, a Kung, Swiss made, magnificent piece, really powerful, so happy with it except… the cork broke. Two days before the concert. I do not own a repair kit, however, before there were corks sealing the joints on recorders, there was string. I had a cone of 16/2 cotton, and a cake of beeswax, and with a lot of patience, I carefully strung the joint, and it works perfectly. ( I should mention that this recorder, a 70th birthday present to myself, was more expensive than what I paid for my used 54″ 12-Shaft Tools of the Trade Loom, why do I insist on jumping down rabbit holes of very expensive hobbies…)
One of the other members of the consort I play with, is also a handweaver. She approached me after one of our performances and said she heard I’d given up weaving… Hahahahahaha! Why would I do that?
In reality, I stopped using handweaving as something that produced income. I don’t want to do it anymore as a profession. I left an 80 video YouTube channel, The Weaver Sews, available free (though the ads are annoying); it is everything I know about sewing handwovens, and I make nothing from it. I did not monetize the channel, it is my gift to a community that supported me for 40 years. And I spent about a year and a half indexing the videos, so you (and I) could find the content we want to access specifically. That index can be found here.
But I am and will always be a handweaver, as long as I can still crawl under the loom. (’cause remember, I’m a floor loom fan, not a table loom fan…) I was sitting in my bathroom, where I keep all my unread magazines, and picked up the latest Handwoven Magazine (Winter 2025), and started leafing through it. I spied a photo of some lovely towels, in a Monk’s Belt pattern, on a 4-shaft loom, by Malynda Allen, and thought… “Oh crap, I need to get my December Towel Run on the loom, because it is yikes! December…”
And so, I grabbed some natural 8/2 cotton, I have a huge stash of natural yarns for dyeing, and put 10 yards on the loom. Took me about a day and a half. I work quick.
These towels are really easy, great stash busters (I used 5/2 perle cotton instead of the suggested 6/2 cotton which I have in a bazillion colors, for the Monk’s Belt borders), the entire middle is just plain weave.
I pulled the 10 yards off the loom the other day, threw the entire thing in the wash, and voila! There are 9 new towels to add to the stack.
So yes, I still weave. And I play music. And I am surrounded by so many wonderful new friends, from garden people, to early music people, to textile people, to handweavers, and sometimes, they are part of more than one community. In this return to the light, may your days be brighter with each sunrise, may the holiday season bring hope of a better New Year, where we all can respect each other, especially our differences. There is room for everyone at the table.
This is the weirdest year I’ve ever experienced, and there have been a lot of them. You’d think by 65, especially having lived through the 60’s and 70’s that you’ve seen it all. Hahahah!
I’m not going to comment on any of the current world situation. You don’t need one more voice in the cacophony of voices and events and situations screaming at you for attention. Because you all know or should know that the world is imploding like some sci-fi novel and that we just all have to buckle our proverbial seatbelts and hold on for the ride. A bottle of wine or something more powerful would help for fuel.
That said, my last couple of weeks have been wild and crazy, and that has nothing to do with all the drama and sturm und drang happening in the world.
In case you missed it, I did finish my Confetti vest, lined with a vintage leopard coat. It makes me smile in so many ways when I look at it. I’m ready for winter, this will be warm as s**t!
So this week is Spinning and Weaving week. It is a big deal in the fiber community, usually full of events, and gatherings and all sorts of fibery happenings. The Handweavers Guild of America is giving it the valiant try of doing a bunch of fiber related events virtually. While not ideal, in essence it allows participation by anyone, anywhere, in the comfort of your own home. I know our homes are getting too comfortable and we are looking to get out and go anywhere, but inspiration comes in odd packages, and basically all this is free and all you have to do is register for a specific event.( I think it helps if you are a member, because everything is free, but there are modest fees if you aren’t a member.) All this coming week, the HGA is sponsoring studio tours of various fiber artists they have selected, whose studios they think might be of interest to the fiber community at large.
And guess who is featured Thursday at 4pm EDT. Yeah, so there is that hanging over me. In preparation for a virtual studio tour, I mistakenly said, when they inquired if I would be willing to be a part of this, that sure, I’ll even have something on every loom that I can talk about and explain, and fill up space for an hour. I need to learn restraint!
So, in anticipation of Thursday’s live virtual studio tour, filmed by my daughter who will be tethered to the laptop, camera and sound system, we will walk through my wonderful new garage space, and then on to the basement where I have my cozy sewing room. But all the looms had to be warped…
So, my 8 shaft 36″ loom was unwarped and very lonely. I still had a couple of cones of Silk City Fibers yarns to test out, one was a Cotton Bambu, in Silver, and the other was a Chenille Tapestry variegated called Japanese Red Maple. I envisioned a light dark shadow weave, something sett well enough to keep the chenille from doing silly things like worming out of the structure. Some day I’ll recount my early experiences with chenille, but with a lot of experience behind me, I thought I’d give it another go.
I used the Powell book for inspiration, but since I’m aiming to publish the draft and specs for this fabric, I needed something that was mine. I started out with this 8 shaft version, and wasn’t completely happy. (Actually I started out with 24 epi, alternating the CottonBambu and the Chenille. Resleyed to 20 epi, and then resleyed again to 16epi. Don’t ever be afraid of changing course mid stream.)
The change might not be obvious, but I redesigned it to reverse in a more pronounced way, and to better square up with the sett. I’m pretty happy with this. Now I just have to weave it off, but not before Thursday…
And my big loom, the 45″ 8 shaft Tools of the Trade, my first loom and first love, still with me after all these years, purchased in 1977, delivered in 1978 was also naked and really not happy. Since every fall I put on a run of dishtowels for holiday gifts, I decided that that would be an appropriate thing to put on the loom, and then at the end of October into November, I could weave it off and have my holiday gifts.
Social media can be really challenging and full of untruths and misinformation and a lot of passionate people on both sides of the fence no matter what the subject. But the social media sites dedicated to fiber and specifically weaving has some very dedicated moderators and some very talented contributors and every morning when I wake up I feel like I have just been to a fantastic inspirational gallery opening.
The Facebook site Strickler in Color has been a tremendous source of inspiration. Carol Strickler wrote a lovely book, now considered essential for every weaver with 8 shafts on their loom, full of patterns, all black and white, and you could spend a lifetime with this book and not make a dent. So this Facebook site has talented contributors who post what they’ve woven, but in color, with a nod to the draft. Strickler 728 keeps coming up, and if you looked at it in the book, you would have just turned the page. It really is rather boring and not very inspiring. But I’ve seen so many people use this draft in eye catching ways that it was on my list to try.
In keeping with the need to stash bust, because I’ve acquired a lot of 8/2 cotton in the last year or two, I pulled a length from all of my cones and sat with weaving software until I was happy. I decided to put 15 yards on the loom because turns out, I can never have enough dishtowels. I’m always needing one as a gift, and I’m tired of running out in July. (I still have two left from last year because I haven’t been anywhere since March, but hey…)
My table top warping mill technically holds 10 yards. I’ve successfully pushed it to 14, but I decided that my AVL warping mill, now 20 years old, would probably serve for this purpose. I rigged up way to make a cross, and I wound 15 yard bundles in 2.5″ widths.
And I started weaving. I am completely in love. This is why we do this. I am so thrilled to have been forced to fill up my looms, because now, after Thursday, I can walk in my studio and just weave. A lot. I have a whole fall’s worth of looms to clear. Which will mean, except for the dishtowels, a lot of sewing this winter. I can’t wait when we reemerge from this protective cocoon to wear half the stuff I’ve made this year.
Speaking of…
In addition to studio tours and virtual vendor halls, the Handweavers Guild of America is also sponsoring a virtual fashion show next Sunday. Not the same as sitting in an auditorium at a conference and watching cool handwoven garments strut across the stage, but they are trying to put together a virtual fashion show. That would be next Sunday at 2pm EDT. Of course I’ll have a piece in the show, but I hear they could use more participants. WHERE ARE ALL MY STUDENTS, AND WHY ARE THEY NOT SHOWING OFF THEIR WONDERFUL GARMENTS! This isn’t like where you have to be juried. Just sign up! You need the ability to Zoom, log in and they will tell you what to do. The rehearsal was today, but I think they still want more participants! Come on guys, you have some great work! The link to enter is here. I know the deadline has passed, but I believe they are still looking for participants. The link to view the virtual fashion show next Sunday is here…
And finally, there is my new Youtube site. We now have four episodes of The Weaver Sews. Every Friday we film a new episode on something related to sewing handwoven fabric. Four are launched with Closed Captioning, which my daughter writes, so it is accurate and synced. Two more are shot and I’m planning the topic for next Friday as I write. I will create a script, which makes it easier for my daughter to write the Closed Captioning, and then I work all week on creating the samples and supplies I need for the video shoot. We are having fun with this and I hope it is helpful and informative. Sales of my patterns are certainly picking up!
So my head is spinning with all that is on my plate. I’m old enough to remember The Ed Sullivan Show, and the guy from some Baltic country that did plate spinning. He would keep 10 or 20 plates spinning all at the same time. I remember watching with fascination and thinking, “How does he keep them all going at once?” Well now I know. Somehow that skill managed to rub off on me and I’m doing that every day. And I wouldn’t wish for anything different. My days are full, I have plenty to keep me busy. I am lecturing virtually almost every other day, somewhere in the country. It is so great to log in and see familiar faces. I can do this… (though sometimes I wish I could redesign the plates).
I will admit, I am exhausted. It is hard to believe, this time last night I was somewhere over Kansas…
I promised you photos of my studio, after my bout of jealousy with Joy’s studio floorspace. There reallyisn’t any in mine. But it is what I have to work with, and it serves me well, and it stores a lot, and if I keep it picked up, I can actually function in it. And I’ve often said, though this is really just a justification for my 350 square ft oversized bedroom, “It isn’t the quality or quantity of space, it is what you make in it that counts”.
My studio is actually an old 10 x 10 bedroom where we knocked the outside wall out and extended over the downstairs den. There are beautiful floor to ceiling windows at the far end, but I keep the shades drawn for fear of fading of all my yarns and textiles. The loom in the foreground is my big 8 shaft 45″ Tools of the Trade Loom.
I have a great cutting table, that my husband built for me, and there are old kitchen cabinets
above the sewing machines and the computer desk. I do have a lot of storage for such a little room. The hardest part is keeping the cutting table cleared. 🙂
You’ll notice I have stuff stuck all over the face of the cabinet doors. I put up cards, notations, quotes, sketches, things that inspire me, small cartoons, and photos of classes or people I love. It is a happy wall to look up at as I work. Robyn had the same sort of thing in the form of a bulletin board next to her desk, and on it was a great quote, one I have to add to my own wall…
Powerful Woman’s Motto:
Live your life in such a way that when your feet hit the floor in the morning, Satan shudders and says,… “Uh, Oh, she’s awake!”
Well, damn, I like that. It left me with a big smile, and isn’t that what inspirational things are suppose to do?
After getting to bed last night after 1pm EST, I woke up at 7am, to throw on some grunge clothes and pack up the car, and drive an hour west, almost to the New Jersey border. My guild, Frances Irwin Handweavers, was having it’s end of the year one day workshop, free to members, and I was thrilled I made it back in time to finally get to take one of Kerr Grabowski’s seminars. First, I’ve known Kerr for 20 years, I met her when she first came to Peters Valley as their fiber resident. She is amazingly talented, creative, and a wonderful teacher, and she lives in the Surface Design World. It is odd that I’ve never been able to take a workshop with her, as a matter of fact, back in 2001, we both taught together at Montclair State University in their fiber department when the department found themselves without instructors for a couple of semesters. I handled the structural fiber classes and she taught surface design.
So it was with great anticipation and excitement that I finally got to spend the day with Kerr, learning deconstructed screen printing. She has a wonderful DVD of her class, available for about $40. and you can preview it on her website. Of course I bought the DVD…
(That’s Kerr in the red apron)
She showed us some very playful and spontaneous things, and I can’t wait to build a screen surface for my cutting table, and get a couple screens. I have everything else. A cabinet full of dyes, all the materials for dyeing, even the fabric, which I picked up on Friday in Seattle. My head is spinning with possibilities.
Here are a couple of my attempts at the medium, the silk chiffon scarves are still curing in a black garbage bag in my car in the heat.
I’ll take a photo when they are rinsed and dry.
One final note as my excellent adventure winds down, I picked up a birthday card in one of the galleries in Bremerton, WA during our Art Walk Friday night. It was actually a belated birthday card to me. It featured the artwork of a local artist Amy Burnett, who was actually there to sign the cards. In addition to the artwork, the year 1955 was written. She has a series of cards for all different years, as a celebration to women. Inside is a list of all the special things that happened that involved women in the year you were born.
I didn’t realize that Rosa Parks, refused to move to the rear of the bus in December of 1955, the same year I was born, and I didn’t realize that Rosa Parks was a seamstress. I didn’t know that Doris Humphrey founded Julliard’s Dance Theatre in 1955. I didn’t know Louise Boyd at 67 years old was the first woman to fly over and around the North Pole in 1955. I knew Annette Funicello was one of the original 24 Mouseketeers in the Mickey Mouse Club, but I didn’t know it debuted in 1955. It was one of my favorite shows. And most importantly, I didn’t know that Lenore Tawney, weaver and sculptor, exhibited nonfunctional weaving in shapes departing from the traditional two dimensional fabric form, thus introducing a new range of artistic expression, fiber art, in 1955. I feel like I am surrounded by women who made a difference.
“Uh, oh, she’s awake!…”
I don’t usually do commercial announcements, but I know two of the brave souls who have worked tirelessly on the project below. I did a brief bit of alpha testing, and the site has real potential. Of course I’m still hoping you’ll stop by my blog after getting your fill of online technology! 🙂
Today at noon, Weavolution the much anticipated new online gathering place for handweavers launched, and I have a brief press release here:
JOIN THE WEAVOLUTION
Weavolution.com, an online social network designed to meet the unique needs of handweavers, launches its beta test on June 8, 2009. Designed to bring handweavers together from around the world, Weavolution.com is a one-stop resource for every type of handweaver.
From hobby to production, from peg to dobby, Weavolution provides a place for weavers to meet, discuss and participate in moderated user groups and forums.
Members may post projects, looms, yarns, books, and accessories to share with others and solicit feedback from other members.
But you don’t have to be a member or even a weaver to explore the site and learn about weaving free of charge.
Weavolution aims to become an inclusive, global community that encourages weavers by enabling them to discover and follow trends in weaving; find local, national and international resources; and find businesses catering to their needs. Weavolution members can search the site’s databases to view items, group postings and research information catalogued by others.
Weavolution’s goal is to provide a website for handweavers that is useful, fun and helpful, and to be a resource for shops, products and ideas from around the corner and around the world.
The project began in 2008 when three weavers from across the United States, Claudia Segal, Tien Chiu, and Alison Giachetti, met online and formed Weavolution. Working together with a host of dedicated volunteers, the team forged Weavolution.com into a website with the potential to become a community.
Come, take a look. Weavolution.com is available for anyone to explore. You don’t have to sign up to see our site. But if you do, we hope you’ll decide to JOIN THE WEAVOLUTION
