www.daryllancaster.com – Daryl's Blog

Working Really Hard…

First, a huge thank you to all of my sewing friends who have stopped their lives to make masks. I feel hugely guilty I’m not participating, because, as I explained in the last post, I don’t have any materials, my daughter used them all a couple months ago for Australian Marsupial pouches for all of the injured critters in the fires. I’d have to go out to the store to procure supplies and that would really defeat the point of hiding at home. My daughter was able to find a small pack of elastic in the bottom of a craft bin, and used some scraps to make masks for us. She has a fine metal’s bench and rolled floral wire for the nose piece.

And so I’m working harder than I’ve ever worked, or so it seems. The big news is I actually managed to, after running a test by a bunch of trusted sewing friends, launch a pattern today. I started with the simplest one I have, to see how this all works. I edited the directions and the intro to the pattern about 19 times. To the point where I just didn’t care anymore, which is a dangerous place to be, I can assure you. So for better or for worse, you can purchase the PDF download of my bias top. More patterns to follow.

The pattern is available for purchase here, and the directions, which will continue to be free, are now on my website. It is easier there to keep updated. And while I was there, I redid my Extra’s page, because the amount of stuff on it was becoming untenable. Found some fun stuff I had forgotten about, like this essay I did on making paperdolls as a kid.

I’m always open to opinions and edits. Obviously the pattern will work for commercial fabrics, but I have always been a handweaver who works with the handwoven community, so yardage requirements are specifically for handweavers. We are working on the 500 vest now, as I write, that’s the one with the armhole band. We are into the fourth round of edits.

Meanwhile, we are fixing puzzles like crazy, I always have one up in the living room. The latest one, a lovely gift from my sister, is really challenging, I’m sorry to say not my favorite. It is all shades of grey. Dalmatian puppies. Except for a couple little areas with pink feet. I much prefer color. Lots of it.

I finished my dress. This was a challenge as well. Just about everything in my life right now is a challenge, but we weavers are made of stern stuff, and we know how to pick up a shuttle and carry on…

I want to say it takes a village, and after my last blog post, and how I wasn’t sure how I felt about the leather, one of my long time friends, Sheila O’Hara, extraordinary weaver who wrote the book on weaving contemporary Jacquard, before digital Jacquard looms became available, casually commented, “Why don’t you embroider on the leather?” Yeah, no. Embroidering on leather would be really really challenging, because you can’t sew into leather easily, usually it involves pliers. BUT… I could couch yarns, like the kind I wove with… This was a nail biter, I did samples and tests, but small ones, I didn’t want to waste the precious leather, and once I started in, there was no going back, you can’t rip stitches out of leather because the holes will show. This was quite the nail biter…

I’m so happy with how this turned out. And the closure on the back worked out brilliantly. One of the couched threads as it came off the back neck, I was able to crochet into a loop, and couch it back on to cross the upper back again and end up back at the neckline. Oh, and the dress has pockets!

The dress fits like a glove. It actually isn’t supposed to, but I’m packing on a little weight here, because all I’m doing is eating and sewing and sitting on my butt by the computer rewriting directions and intros and cover pages. I really have to go back to online yoga, since my local yoga studio is shut down for the quarantine. And stop eating cookies and drinking wine…

And so I was able to cut out the many pieces to make this motorcycle vest in the leftover fabric from the dress and the leftover leather.

I still have almost a full skin and a half to do something fun with.

I’m having fun sitting and sewing, and the 16″ metal separating zipper arrived today from WAWAK.com.

And so dear readers, I hope you stay safe, more than 2300 people have died in NJ, many of them first responders, EMT’s, hospital staff, store employees, police officers. I hope where you live it all seems overblown. I can assure you, it isn’t here. We are a dense state, and are suffering for it.

Play with yarn, do whatever it takes to be as distracted and productive as you can. I’ve actually started to pick salads from the garden. There is something renewing about that. Stay off never ending news, it is really really painful. For those of you making masks, I bow down with respect.

Stay tuned…

You win some, you lose some…

Actually, forget the winning part, I’m just happy when I’m accepted. All the notifications are out for Convergence exhibits. I received a couple of acceptance emails a couple of weeks ago, but was asked not to “announce” the decision until everyone had their written confirmation or rejection letters.

You may remember back in January, that I spent a feverish few days entering shows and applying to conferences, and I’ve heard back from all but one exhibit. So the count stands at Acceptances 4 :-), Non-Acceptances 7 🙁 That’s actually a 36% acceptance rate, and I’m pretty OK with that. None of my artwork was accepted this go round, but my garments, and yardage did well along with a couple of accessories.

I already mentioned in a previous blog that my yardage from last December, called “Some Enchanted Evening”, was accepted to the Convergence yardage exhibit, and two of my pieces, the Frosted Florals Dress, and the felted Celebration Bag were accepted to Fiber Celebration 2010 in Greeley, CO.

I got the results from the Convergence fashion show, and two of my garments will be included, as well as a scarf I wove in the Eye Dazzlers Exhibit, which covers just about every thing else except yardage, fashion, and Small Expressions (which I did not get into…)

In addition, this year I was accepted to teach at all of the conferences that I applied to, including one I hadn’t yet applied to because it conflicted with the ANWG conference. So I’ll be teaching at Midwest, MAFA, and ANWG, and I look forward to another busy inspiring summer in 2011. My schedule is as always, available on my website, http://www.daryllancaster.com/schedule.html. There may be some confusion about my web domains, I seem to vacillate between www.weaversew.com and www.daryllancaster.com. I’ve had the weaversew domain for so many years now, I hate to give it up, but the information is the same in both, as one domain is parked within the other one. Either works, and both will get you to the same place.

I added in this blog post this afternoon, two in one day is a bit much I know, but I was curious to see if something I did earlier this morning might help or heaven forbid, correct the fatal error messages. I actually went back to the original post where we started noticing the errors, and deleted all the revisions. There happened to be 10 that day. I had had trouble getting the photos to all line up the way I wanted them to with the text. So far, this is the first post in about a month, where I didn’t get the fatal error message about six times during the writing process. Could it have been that simple?

The Planets have Aligned!

For a day that started out poorly, it ended most spectacularly! I didn’t sleep well last night. I had too much partying, more alcohol than I usually consume (which is almost nothing, hence the problem) and rich food, and too much of it, and I laid awake most of the night, trying to sleep, but finally giving up and reading. (Joan Dideon’s Year of Magical Thinking). Which meant I was a wreck in the morning. And my daughter called from school to have me make a doctors appointment to have her checked for strep. So by the time I finally got up, made the appointment, drove to the HS to get her, took her to the doctor (she did not have strep, only a virus, and the doctor sent her back to school) and drove back home, it was lunch time. My plans of all I was going to accomplish were rapidly sifting through my fingers. And on top of that, a miserable cold rain made everything soggy and frigid. One of those bone chilling days where you just can’t get warm.

But I decided to try to make some headway on the new website. I only had four pages to go, and one of them was pretty critical. My schedule. I hadn’t updated the old site in awhile, and a lot needed to be entered. Once I decided on a format, I just had to look through all my files and emails to plug in as much information as I had, all the dates and contacts, and the topics I was teaching. Then to simplify the site, I linked PDF files for the prospectuses instead of all the lengthy descriptions like I had on the old site.

So I plodded along, got my son to take my daughter back to the HS tonight for jazz band, and sent him out for a Chinese Food run. And I continued to plod…

The upshot is, I FINISHED THE SITE! I can’t believe it. I’m done. I’m so proud of what I’ve done. And I put a temporary home page on the old site to direct to the new site, eventually when I’m sure everything is correct, and my husband returns from New Hampshire, I’ll wipe out the old site, and park it with the new one, so whether you go to www.weaversew.com or www.daryllancaster.com, you will end up in the same place.

Just as the last file uploaded, an email came in from Sandra Bowles, executive director of the Handweavers Guild of America, Inc. telling me that they have approved my presentation for the Challenge Project I did last year for them, and I’m OK to market the presentation on a CD, to any guild that would like to show it for a guild meeting or program. I have to say that Sandy went out of her way, doing way more than I asked, by carefully working through all 81 slides, and proofing, editing, and watching for copyright issues, in a very professional and thorough manner. I am very grateful Sandy. So, give me a few days and I’ll have the CD up on my eShop. I think I’ll offer it as both a PowerPoint and a PDF file on the same disk. If you are a member of a guild, weaving, sewing, whatever, or just plain curious, this CD presentation is intended to stand alone, without me, as an inexpensive hour and a half program, following the year long challenge presentation, where I was paired with a designer I had never met, given yarn I’d have never picked to work with, in colors that don’t appeal to me, and we had a year to come up with a runway ensemble to debut at the Convergence 2008 Tampa Bay Fashion Show. The 81 slide presentation starts with the design process, which was completely done with emails, and then the step by step sampling for the woven fabric, the design and pattern making , the cutting out and construction of the coat and dress, and the final embellishments, hand felting and beading that kept my partner Lorretta Dian Phipps up too many nights in a row. There are some great production photos, and I’m really proud of the finished ensemble and the presentation as well.

And I even got an hour off to watch the latest installment of the new HBO series, #1 Ladies Detective Agency, starring Jill Scott. (I had recorded it from Sunday night since I was driving to the airport while it was airing). It is as delightful as the series by Alexander McCall Smith, and I have to almost say, I like it even more. The gentle life in Botswana, the interesting cases that fall into the lap of Precious Ramotswe, the endearing characters, and the spectacular scenery all keep me captivated and yearning for more.

Dare I hope to get the lining done on the coat tomorrow?

Focused Friday

So far the feedback has been really positive on the site. I did, in one of my middle of the night awakenings, think that I really should have the galleries run from most recent to oldest work, so I reversed the 2000-2005 gallery. I think it is better to click on the gallery link and see the newest work added, rather than scroll way way down and find it at the bottom. Then I spent most of the day reprocessing images for the artwork gallery. Some of the older pieces there were originally shot in slides. Many of my slides were not great to begin with, and I think my scanner isn’t doing the best job anymore. But I did my best with what I had to work with, and vowed that next time I set up a photoshoot, I’ll reshoot some of the older important work in digital with proper lighting and a better backdrop. It was interesting to see how far I’ve come as a photographer.

The men made it safely up to Vermont for the last ski trip of the season, I got a text message at 2:15am letting me know they arrived safely. (That’s probably why I woke up last night and re-thought the gallery!) In spite of the rain yesterday, they had a good day of skiing today, and are looking forward to the weekend.

I worked on the jacket after dinner tonight, and got the upper collar/front facing in, and the backs of the bound buttonholes finished. So I can actually button the jacket. I love the narrow trim collar, and the lines on this are really really slimming. I took an interior shot of the jacket before I started on collar/facing, because I always loved what goes on behind the scenes in a garment like this.

There are a couple of blogs that I really enjoy, one of them is Tien’s Blog, the traveling tigress. Tien is a weaver who makes garments out on the west coast, and blogs about her adventures, like me, but she is a wonderful writer. I love her musings, and look forward to her latest adventures. We spent a lot of time emailing this afternoon, I gave her some advice on interfacings, and she gave me some advice on using WordPress and how to get my images to be clickable, but remain rectangular. Before when I used this feature, the thumbnails in the blog would be square, cutting off important information, like in a long gown, you’d only see the crotch. Not attractive. So she advised me on where to click in the settings to change this feature to eliminate the square thumbnails, and we’ll see if this works. Hopefully my interfacing information works for her.

The other blog I follow is from Susan Hinckley, called Small Works in Wool. Another fabulous writer, she is absolutely hysterical, and peppers her posts with old magazine images to get the point across. It is the best laugh of the day when she puts up a new post. And her work is great, she takes old sweaters and beads, and buttons, and turns them into little works of personally and politically charged art.