ozweaver – Page 63

Getting Reacquainted with Bobbin Lace

May 19, 2013 | 1 Comment

It’s a drizzly Sunday, perfectly May weather, and I have set up my bobbin lace table in an east-facing window.

In this spot in my living room I have morning sun coming in over my shoulder. I am quite lost at the corner of my most recent handkerchief border, so I decided to revisit a pillow with an older project on it. It is a straight lace that I used on my linen top last summer. It only has 12 bobbins and has a sewing edge, central spider, and scallop edge.

A great way to spend a Sunday morning! I’ve heard from Bob via sideband radio that he has been able to sail at 7 knots for the past 24 hours. He is now off the coast of northern Florida, east of the Gulf Stream, about 150 miles north of the Abacos. If this kind of favorable wind keeps up he’ll be arriving home in one week!

Home Alone

May 19, 2013 | 1 Comment

This has been such a productive week while home alone. I’ve made progress on my current tapestry, which has been neglected for the past 9 months. I finished plying the saffron mohair and am contemplating ideas for a striped fabric with some kind of warp-direction float pattern in the brighter stripes, like a rose path or other twill. Nothing has yet to strike my fancy.

Yesterday was the last statewide Connecticut weavers’ guild meeting, and I was thrilled to get there! It was my first meeting since last May when we moved up here… during the morning, I got a call from Bob (in Marsh Harbor, in the Abacos) to say goodbye and use up the last of his Batelco minutes on our Bahamas cell phone. He and his crew were planning to leave mid-morning to sail the few miles to “the Whale,” the eastern inlet just north of Marsh Harbor. He’ll be using the transponder on board to mark his progress up the eastern side of Abacos as he heads north toward the Gulf Stream. With luck, they will sail in the Gulf Stream, well off shore, all the way to Montauk at the top of Long Island. That is 1,000 miles! Thank heaven I don’t have to do that trip! If all goes well he will arrive home in about 7 days, in time to celebrate Memorial Day! (He missed that last year doing the same trip.)

If the weather does not smile on them, there are any number of places they can bail out, either south of Cape Hatteras or north of it. Doing that will mean that he won’t be home as quickly. He’ll be communicating with his weather router via sideband radio, and he’ll be sending me emails over the side band. As of late last night Pandora was here.

Here are some Bob’s last photos of the Bahamas. It’s already hard to believe that I was ever on beaches like this, with powder soft sand and aquamarine water!

We spent so much time looking for orchids and hardly found any. What a difference a few weeks makes! After a month in the wet season, Bob told me the Abacos are blooming with lots of these epyphytes (which I think are epidendrum) with pendulous flower stalks hanging down from trees.

I hope his trip home will be completely uneventful!

Time Warps

May 18, 2013 | Leave a Comment

“Time Warps: Textiles from Today’s Weavers.” What a catchy title for the biennial exhibition of works by the Connecticut Guild of Handweavers.

I’ve been looking forward to seeing this exhibition since I got the first announcement back in March. Nothing like cutting it close, since I am going on the last day it is on view! Whew!

This is from the Connecticut Historical Society’s event page on their website:

Time Warps: Textiles from Today’s Weavers

April 20, 2013 – May 17, 2013

This juried exhibit of handwoven goods displays the work of contemporary weavers who use both historical and modern techniques and designs. The Biennial Show organized by the Handweavers’ Guild of Connecticut includes articles of clothing (scarves, shawls, jackets), decorative pieces (wall hangings), and household items (table runners, rugs, towels, blankets). The work is produced by members of the Handweavers’ Guild of Connecticut, an organization of handweavers, spinners and fiber artists from all levels of experience who are dedicated to the education, preservation, and promotion of handweaving and spinning.

What they don’t mention is that Nancy Hoskins was one of the two jurors for this show. And what a wonderful surprise to see two of her pieces hanging in the show, both Byzantine portraits done in samitum.

There were two rooms of woven items, everything from tailored clothing, wall hangings, rugs, shawls, table linens, even a couple of wonderful soft sculptures. This is what greeted me when I entered the first room.

The rugs are particularly well displayed in these elevated cases on the floor. The items on the walls are displayed coming out of frames, which is a great idea, but would have been considerably better if the frames had been chosen to match the width of the items. Some of the shawls are ‘crumpled up’ in the frames, and I think that looks messy.

There are some wonderfully creative works on display. The two wonderful soft sculptures are Penelope sitting on a stool, holding her shuttles, with wild, jet black hair sticking straight out from her head and wrapped in yarn to make little pigtails. (I would love to show you, but I really can’t without permission!) The other wonderful soft sculpture is a felted owl standing on a perch. He is beyond description!

I was so inspired by the work in this exhibit! I’m not sure you can imagine what it felt like to walk through two rooms full of handwovens when I’ve been in such a very different living situation for almost 9 months. All that intense color and texture and fiber. It was a rush!

And tomorrow I will go to the last guild meeting of the year (my first and last this year). Bring it on!

There’s No Place Like Home…

May 15, 2013 | Leave a Comment

There really isn’t. And to top it off it’s May in New England.

My sister had offered to meet me at the airport. It would just be the two of us; we’d have dinner afterward so she could catch me up on her family and her long solo stint of taking care of our aging and difficult mother.

Instead, she and my sons planned a larger family gathering to greet me. Seven family members were waiting for me when I arrived, and because my flight was late all the other people waiting for loved ones had gotten in on the act. So, I arrived to a crowd of clapping bystanders, who were shouting, “Welcome home, Mom!” I was completely confused, which is a very good thing, because otherwise I would have cried…

Mother’s Day weekend was about as perfect as possible. The kids and I went to the annual Garden Club sale at the little park in the center of town, and we worked in the garden cleaning up the debris from winter and planting my purchases from the sale. It was a wonderful homecoming!

Today I plied the brilliant saffron mohair that I spun in the Bahamas. Here it is with the mohair skeins from Persimmon Tree that I plan to use with it. I’m envisioning a fall jacket….

Last Day

May 9, 2013 | Leave a Comment

We are anchored in Marsh Harbor on the eve of my flight home, surrounded by the winning combination of boats flying foreign flags. The three closest boats to us are flying flags from Norway (Bodo…that last “O” has a line through it, like a zero), New Zealand, and Thailand. Wow....

After four months in the tropics I am really tan. My feet are a little frightening actually…. Bob has always said I have macaroni toes, and now they are whole wheat macaroni. Time to get my feet back into shoes!

Tomorrow at this time I might be getting ready to sleep in my cloud bed. I am definitely going to give my washing machine a BIG hug and kiss….first thing, when I walk in the door!

Dinner at Curly Toes with another beautiful sunset!

Author name: ozweaver