Category Archives: Fine Craft

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My husband is renovating my studio during his time off from work between Christmas and New Year. Lucky me!
We were certain that there was humidity behind the walls in my basement studio. The humidifier seems to run all year ’round, I often feel groggy after working down there for any length of time, and I have just the slightest inkling that some of my migraines occur after spending time down here. So it was no surprise to find moldy, damp cement when Bob cut the walls away yesterday. YUK!!
And, of course, my stuff is a mess! There was no place else in the house to move my looms and other equipment and stash, so we just crammed it into the rest of the room.

Here Bob is jackhammering a French drain to help with the moisture situation. To cut down on dust he’s dexterously using one foot to guide the nozzle of the shop vac so most of the dust was whisked away!

Today’s progress: walls freshly painted with dry-loc! Tomorrow Bob will build the vapor barrier, and then get started on putting studs up for the new wall, which will come out past the French drains. There will be a shelf where the old walls end and the new walls join. More places for me to put stuff!

I will need to pick out new flooring soon!

So what are my resolutions for the New Year? Stay tuned….right now I need to get off the computer!

>Well, aren’t there a LOT of demands on every one’s time this month! Why would I be any exception….

Yesterday was the annual sheep party of a group of weavers in which I am a lucky member. There are only 10 of us, probably due to the burden of buying any more than 10 sheep gifts! I was the hostess this year….and the sheep presents were awesome!….as was the food and the company!

Here’s my favorite sheep

And here’s the funniest sheep, unshorn and shorn!

I am reluctantly knitting a Christmas stocking for my new daughter in law. I got the Ann Norling pattern years ago because I always wished my stocking was the nutcracker. My stocking is a snowman, made by my mother in law, who wanted me to have one just like the ones given to her children by their maternal great aunt. She also knit them for my two sons when they were born, but I believe we are the only family members who got them. Lucky indeed!…..until now, when I have to keep up this family traditon and make one for our newest member. Did I mention that I hate intarsia? Making myself work on this thing has been torture. I think I’d rather have a root canal. So much for the adorable nutcracker! I can’t stand him now! Anyway, it’s still not finished, although anything else with twice the work would have been done before Thanksgiving. I think I started the hateful thing around Hallowe’en, thinking it would be done in a week. Ah….I’d forgotten just how much I hated intarsia since I haven’t done that technique in almost 20 years when I made Kaffe Fassett’s “Jack’s Back” and hated every minute of that!

So, every moment I work on anything else is loaded with guilt. I have now blown by two dates when I was supposed to deliver the stocking. I have knitting rage when I work on it, and that’s really not good. In fact, I fear I am polluting the world with bad knitting karma every time I touch the thing. I’m not sure I can give it away full of such bad vibes. Hmmm….

>This year I spent two days at Rhinebeck, quite a luxury! The first day I shopped like a fiend, and the second day I enjoyed the events, like sheep dog trials, the sheep to shawl, the vendors selling local cheeses and wines. The highlight for me was the sheep to shawl:


Second to the sheep to shawl would be the sheep dog events, like the trials and the frisbee events! Those dogs are fast and smart!

Isn’t this a great hooked rug? Definitely worthy of a blue ribbon!

alpacas, and a suri alpaca!

Vendors: I loved Gita Maria, who was new to the show this year! She makes wonderful cloissone buttons and jewelry. I bought three pendants which I hope to use as zipper pulls on sweaters and vests. One will go on my Arwen Cardigan (sans hood) which I will write about momentarily, and one is for my teal green handspun wool/mohair vest which is still a changing design in my mind. The third pendant I just had to have, and maybe it will actually become a necklace!

Yarns International had an amazing display of Fair Isle sweaters. I was truly mesmerized and couldn’t leave their booth, even though I was in no position to make a decision on buying a sweater kit at that moment. I have too many things in queue, several which have deadlines in the next several months….but it was so hard to tear myself away. I ended up in that booth again on Sunday, struggling to tear myself away again!

Homestead Heirlooms makes their own leather handles for purses and bags, in lots of colors and styles. Their booth was full of knitted, felted bags that showed the handles to great advantage! This was another booth in which I could have bought everything! They are the answer to my unfulfilled dream of making woven purses, like I’ve admired at Avoca (from Ireland) in Annapolis. I can’t wait to do something toward this! Meanwhile, I bought a pair of bright fuscia handles to knit a small felted bag for a friend for Christmas!

There were several booths with natural dyed yarns, but the one that appealed most to me was a woman from Waldoboro, Maine, named Jody McKenzie (yes, I did a double take, reading her name as Judith!). Botanical Shades is the name of her company, and she does beautiful hand painted yarns in natural colors as well lovely solids. I have a very tempting dream now of visiting her next summer for a day of dyeing under her tutelage when we are sailing in Maine. I hope it happens!

I bought a Golding spindle, some lovely autumn colored 50/50 alpaca/silk top, some Icelandic lamb roving, and several books. When I arrived at 10am on Saturday, I went straight to The Fold’s booth only to discover that the line for their sock yarn was already winding around the corner and serpentining through all the open space in the main aisle! I wanted a spindle, and since they hadn’t brought any this year, I could walk away! Whew!

The other highlight of the weekend for me was having people compliment my newly finished Icelandic Lace Shawl On Sunday, I heard someone yell, “Hey! Icelandic lace shawl woman!” And I turned to find a woman trying to catch up with me. She was from Viriginia, and she pulled out her partially finished shawl so we could both ‘ooooo and aawww!’
(why is this photo coming out sideways…it’s not this way in my files)
I should mention it seemed to me every one in three women was wearing ‘Clapotis.’ Looked positively lovely on some people and awful on others. It was nothing to do with the knitting….I guess that design is really meant for the svelte, so perhaps I will shelve my plans to knit it!

Lastly, I returned home Sunday evening to discover that one of my favorite scarves had sold in my etsy shop! It’s been a wonderful weekend!

>It’s my first day home from our late-summer vacation, sailing in Maine for the two weeks following our son’s wedding. It was a wonderful time to relax and be out of touch, quiet, letting all the busy-ness of this summer (our younger son’s graduation and move into Manhattan for grad school, as well as our older son’s wedding) subside and filter into memory. I always find that vacations are when I take stock of my home life and make mental adjustments on where I want to go and how to get there! I slept a lot, ate wonderful food, and gave a lot of thought to the the designs I’d like to pursue for future tapestries.

My tapestry group (The Wednesday Group) are working on tapestries with a common theme of the Hudson River. Next year will be the quadricentennial of Henry Hudson’s trip up the river, and since we all travel along and across this river each time we meet we all agreed to do something to commemorate this historic anniversary. I spent a couple of months thinking about images of tug boats, the wonderful colors of red and black against water and sky….then I played around with images of lines (meaning ropes) and how delightfully textile they are which seemed so compatible with tapestry. After all my mental wanderings, I have settled on a study of water itself. It was a seminal part of all my other ideas, and suddenly I felt that it was the one crying out to be heard. So although I was not sailing on the Hudson, I did take lots of photos of water and have some idea of what I’d like to do. The group has some simple guidelines that should make our pieces somewhat compatible to hang together as an exhibit. We’ll work in sizes that are a multiple of 6″ x 8″, and we’ll all use two specific colors of blue in any proportion we choose. I’m going to start designing now that I’m home, and I’m planning on working at 12″ x 16″. I’m enthusiastic about getting started!

I did just a the smallest bit of work on my Pre-Columbian study….not enough to even photograph yet. I had brought lots of yarns in colorways that I think of as Pre-Columbian: various shades of cocchineal, mustard golds, and the natural shades of alapacas. But when starting to weave I realized I wanted to include some green, and I didn’t bring any! I also decided I wanted to add just a hint of something representational to my geometric design. It would have been helpful to look online but we rarely had internet service where we sailed, and when we did it was torturously slow. So I’ll spend some time next week looking at Pre-Columbian imagery and deciding on some kind of little animal or figure….or decide against it!

The routine of my days sailing was very conducive to contemplation so I did get a lot of thinking done while we were away. I slept later most mornings than I do at home, and my first activity on rising was usually knitting or drawing. I never get to do that at home! I think I spent between 3 and 6 hours a day doing hand work, depending on how challenging the sailing conditions were. But it’s still a great deal more than I can manage at home most days. We often sail to uninhabited islands where we take walks and take photos and sometimes gather interesting materials. I have seen so many different mushrooms, lichens, seaweeds…if only I could figure out how to set up a dye pot in our tiny galley!

There are no chores for me on the boat. My husband does all the sailing single-handedly, and he does all the boat chores. I often cook dinner, but he makes both breakfast and lunch and cleans up from all the meals. So it’s pretty much like being at a resort where I’m coddled and cared for….except that sailing is certainly a lot rougher than resort living! It’s an odd balance.

This is the Olson House, well known from Andrew Wyeth’s painting, “Christina’s World.” This is the field in which Betsy Wyeth modeled for the paining. I was so happy to visit this place! Just behind where this photo was snapped is the little cemetery with Christina’s grave (yes, I have a photo of that too), and in this field we saw an amazing, and creepy!, spider in her orb web with a freshly caught moth. That photo haunts me! I’m sure I’ll use it here sometime!

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These sheep are making their way around the internet for a second time. They are Jean-Luc Cornec’s telephone sheep from the Museum of Telecommunication in Frankfurt, 2004 (?). Guess I’m not terribly current, but I’m posting them anyway!

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>I have been waking up different since the ATA Workshop. I have some good design ideas floating around and have assembled the tools I need to begin working with them. Have I done this yet? Well, I’m not perfect!

My photos from Convergence are kind of strange. Since there was no photography allowed in any of the exhibits my photos are all bits and pieces of other things, mostly the ATA Workshop. As part of registration at Convergence we all got a CD with images from the various exhibits, including the fashion show after it was hung as an exhibit. I still have not looked at the CD because I’m saving it for a quiet, special time! Ha! I may never get to look at it!

At ATA, Joan Baxter brought lots of images of her work and many samples. The samples do a great job conveying how she works to create such a wonderful sense of transparency. I’m smitten by her use of color and shape in creating that illusion. I do know that if I’d been in her class I would turned into a ‘Joan Baxter clone,’ something fate kept me from doing!

Joan lives on the northern coast of Scotland which definitely influences her work. I’d love to visit someday, and I’d love to spend a few days (or weeks) studying with her, once I’ve squelched my desire to be just like her.

This is a photo I took of a postcard of one of Joan’s tapestries, so the quality is not what it should be. Still, it just stops me in my tracks, rivets me. I can barely tear myself away!

So…..I’m off to work on my own designs!

>There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost.
–Martha Graham

Mary Zicafoose read this quote at the beginning of the ATA Workshop which she titled “Wake up Different!” For three days she gave us exercises to try different methods of understanding how to design, how to use color, how to get over our resistance to creating art.

We learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. One becomes in some area an athlete of God.
–Martha Graham

Here are some photos I took at the ATB7 opening which occurred during Convergence.

ATB7
Margo MacDonald,
Shimenawa for Puget Sound

ATB7, Marcia Ellis, WindSong

Mary Zicafoose, from her Chromosone Series,
at Tampa Airport

Sarah Swett, Blue Day

The ATB7 Catalog is wonderful! You can order it here. The works have such a human element this time, and such emotional force.

>I’m just back from Convergence and the ATA workshop “Channeling Your Muse,” as well as a long weekend sailing in Narragansett Bay for the July 4th holiday. What a whirlwind! It was all great, but the ATA Workshop stands out way above the rest as an experience I won’t forget anytime soon!

I’ve got photos! I bought a new camera the night before leaving for Florida, since my husband and I are always needing the camera while going in different directions. So….I have to learn how to get the photos from the camera to the computer. I’ll be back shortly with images!

>Well, I have not managed to learn how to make a photo collage. Everything technical is such a steep learning curve for me!

The garden is looking quite nice….the peonies have just opened, along with the pinks and cranes’ bills and Siberian iris, while the bleeding hearts are fading. My weld is huge and just about to bloom so I’m looking forward to some dyeing! Hopefully I can rejuvenate my indigo vat and get some wild lime green like I saw at Vicki Fraser’s studio two years ago!

My catalog for ATB7 arrived in the mail just before Chris’ graduation. What a wonderful surprise to find part of Buddha’s face on the cover! I’m very honored!

Wedding plans abound, Convergence is just around the corner, I’ve got homework from my Pre-Columbian workshop with Susan Martin Maffei, and three tapestries in various degrees of completion (one that is still in the design stage). My knitted kimono is almost done! It’s sewn together and the knitted band is about 1/2 done. I’d like to wear it to the wedding shower in mid-June….next weekend! Yikes! I’m partially done with a silk kimono style vest that tempted me at the MD Sheep and Wool. It’s a kit from Just Our Yarn. The only downer for me right now is that somehow I’ve caught a summer cold that’s been making the rounds here.