travel

For some, summer ends this weekend. I’m an equinox/solstice season follower, so it will be summer until September 21.

This summer has held some wonderful distractions. I’ve missed my weaving guild meetings during our summer hiatus, and I missed our regional conference too….but other things have called my attention and been incredible opportunities.

The biggest event of my summer happened just earlier this month. A friend of mine who now lives full time on the Cape (in what was previously her summer home), invited two of us rather old friends to spend a week with her studying with a well known Sailors’ Valentine designer. Full disclosure here: I am not a huge fan of sailors’ valentines. They are overly fussy to me, and it’s hard for me to take in so much visual busy-ness. But there are also shell compositions that evoke garden scenes, or flowers in a vase. Those really get my attention. This small arrangement really pulled me toward wanting to try my hand at some shell designs.

We spent 4 days learning to make a few flowers under the tutelage of Sandi Blanda, in order to create our own floral designs. Here are a few of the flower techniques. We were using E5200 glue, applied with a toothpick or bamboo skewer.

You have to make a lot of flowers to create a design! You need more than you’ll actually use just so you have some possibilities for arranging. At this point I felt mine design was ready to frame under glass in a shadow box. I did not want the look of a vase of flowers; I was trying to achieve an underwater garden of things growing out of a shell and bending in the current.

My more experienced friends made beautiful flower arrangements in shell vases.

One of the afternoons we took a break to visit the Sailors’ Valentine exhibit at the nearby Cahoon Museum. This is shell extravaganza!

Now you’ll get a good sense of how many tiny shells it takes to make just one flower in these elaborate valentines! Egads!

This is just a small section of a large valentine. It just boggles my mind that someone could make something so intricate!

For many years, people thought sailors made these valentines for their sweethearts during their time onboard, much like the ivory work and Nantucket baskets made during this same time period. In recent years it has come to light that many of the shells used in these designs came from Barbados, and often the valentines were wrapped in newspapers from that island. It now seems more accurate that islanders made these elaborate shell arrangements, and sailors bought them for their loved ones.

The exhibit at the Cahoon, which ends tomorrow (Sept. 1), features traditional valentines as well as the work of some talented current shell artists. Our teacher was featured in the exhibit, and she has a solo exhibit in one of the upstairs galleries.

Sandi Blanda is in the center of this photo, showing us something on her ipad while we admired one of her pieces in the main gallery. My friends are experienced basket makers too. Take a look at their wonderful Nantucket tote bags!

This type of shell work is incredibly fiddly–as you might imagine! It was tremendous fun while we were together. The thought of tackling another, especially on my own, is a bit daunting. I don’t know if I’ll do it again. Meanwhile, here it is, framed under glass.

During the rest of this month I’ve been sewing. Yes, sewing. I’m not terribly proficient at it in spite of learning when I was about 12, and in spite of having two grandmothers who were quite excellent at it. I’m ever hopeful. I have some wonderful handwoven fabrics, and someday I hope I’ll be wearing them as garments.

My local sewing shop has been offering some classes in fun techniques and a couple of cute shirts patterns. Both shirt patterns are from The Sewing Workshop.

The London Shirt is one that I’ve now made four times. I love it! In my favorite version I used a French fabric–a lightweight linen print that I bought in Martinique.

And the other is the Liberty Shirt that I just finished last week. It has a bit more fiddly construction.

Someday I’d like to make a little something out of any one of my handwoven fabrics, but I’ll need a lot more practice sewing first…

WAIT!!! How could I forget that there is one more BIG thrill to my summer! Tomorrow I’m leaving for two weeks in France! At the top of my must-see list is the “Unicorn in Captivity” series at the Cluny Museum*, followed by the Bayeux tapestry on our excursion to Normandy. I will also see lace in Bayeux and in Alencon, and a couple of special haberdashery shops in Paris (what I would call notions shops). I can’t believe the time has finally come to have this adventure! I’ll be taking my Liberty shirt and three of my London shirts. In fact, I’m calling the one made with French fabric my “French London.” I can’t wait to have an end of summer fling in France!

*Oh boy, was that a senior moment! Not my first either. The “Unicorn in Captivity” is the title given to the last tapestry in the set at the Cloisters, which is known as the “Hunt for the Unicorn” in its entirety. I’ve known this forever …..so why did I have that little brain malfunction? The set at the Cluny is called the “Lady and the Unicorn.”

Isn’t it grand? There have been summer classes to take, regional conferences to attend, as well as some down time for sitting in a chaise lounge in the shade, doing some knitting and reading a few of the latest weaving periodicals. I’ve done a bit of all these things.

Bob and I made quick trip to Camden, Maine about a week ago, so on the way home I got to make a stop at Halcyon. I bought the Sept/Oct issue of Handwoven as well as an issue of Selvedge. With a price tag of almost $30, I don’t buy Selvedge too often. But I ask you, how could I resist the Renaissance issue??

With articles about the global textile industry, costumes for Anthony and Cleopatra for the National Theatre, a renovation of the Whitchurch silk mill, two articles on lace– and the clencher for me–an an article on “text-iles.” Oh boy!

My summer got off to a great start at the last meeting of the year of my close-knit weaving group that goes by a couple of names–Wacky Weavers, The Flockettes, or simply the Marymount Weaving Women. The group has been going for 40 years, led by Sr. Bianca from the order of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary. Although I’m not Catholic, I’ve been in the group for more than 25 years now. In May, I arranged for Mae Colburn to speak to us. She is currently involved in a number of remarkable textile projects, and she is likely to be an important voice in contemporary weaving.

Mae is the daughter of a weaver with Swedish heritage and expertise in Scandinavian weaving traditions. Mae’s mother teaches traditional wadmal weaving and has developed a fulling mill that will soon be available in the US. Here’s a link to some of Carol Colburn’s interesting projects.

Mae is currently Helena Hernmarck’s assistant. She is taking to tapestry as well as she took to weaving cloth for clothing. Mae is also part of a group of weavers producing one of a kind garments for well to do clients. You can read about that here. Mae’s presentation to us was about finding one’s way in a fast paced environment with high technology, by choosing to make things entirely by hand without any modern technology (beyond the use of administrative technologies). Her company, called Friends of Light, uses only locally sourced fibers that are then spun and dyed and woven to shape (no cutting!) by members of the group. The group intends to pay themselves a fair wage for their labors. I hope they can make this work! They already have a handful of commissions, and they’ve already realized that they did not account for a number of administrative costs. One of Mae’s interesting points in her presentation was that although we now live in an age where ‘time is money,’ there may be a desire for things made entirely by hand and for the benefit of one client only. I hope she and her Friends of Light collaborators are successful. That would be a boon for weavers everywhere–not to mention a boon other crafts as well.

Here is Mae wearing one of the made to order jackets. There is not cutting–each piece of the garment is woven to shape for it’s intended recipient. Yeah….

At the end of the day, I happened to get this photo of Mae and Sr. Bianca together. For me it’s a touching image of the generation of weavers who taught me to weave, holding hands with the future generation of textile artists who are now coming of age. Sr. Bianca is 91 now, and Mae is….well, she is a beautiful young woman! It was a memorable meeting.

Along the way to this moment in high summer there were regional conferences everywhere. I did not make it to NEWS this year, and I was pleasantly surprised to get a survey asking me why I did not attend. I guess the powers that be in New England want to know what they can do to entice some of us to attend. I wish I had gone for a day, to see the exhibits and to visit the vendors, and, most of all, to hear Mary Zicafoose give the key-note address. She is a great speaker and I’m still smarting a bit from missing it. A few friends let me know I really missed a good presentation (but I already knew that!)!

There are big changes afloat in my weaving life. I have decided to make a total re-do of my studio space. Over the few years I’ve lived here in what is our ‘retirement house,’ I have managed to to fill my generous space so that I can barely move. I have made the decision to sell my two biggest floor looms and replace them with only one loom. That will make a noticeable difference in my space. My big Toika (60″ weaving width) is already gone! It’s seems miraculous that it sold so quickly, and I give all credit for that to the Weaving Center at Marymount Convent. The weavers there are not afraid to dream big, and they all love Toikas, since that is what Sr. Bianca has in the studio. That loom was sentimental to me. It came from my dear friend June, who was part of the small group I mentioned earlier–the Wacky Weavers– and who was responsible for my joining the group. Now her loom lives with someone else who weaves at that center. Perfect.

Soon I will put my 40″ AVL (16S mechanical dobby) up for sale. I have already scoped out the loom I want!– a 60″ AVL computerized dobby with 16S. I have the very loom in mind and have agreed to get it as soon as my AVL leaves the premises. Want a mechanical dobby? Get in touch! It’s got lots of great features, and if you live in an area that loses power due to storms or severe winter weather, you can still weave on a mechanical dobby.

This is the latest fabric I cut from the AVL. It’s a JOY (Just Our Yarn) warp with a Treenway silk weft. I wanted to make a jacket with the fabric, but I’ll be lucky to get a vest out of it. Somehow my 5 yard warp turned into only 2 3/4 yards when woven. Clearly, my warp was not 5 yards!

It’s an interesting weave structure–sort of a broken twill on 10 shafts that creates little pebble shapes. It has great drape.

When all these changes fall into place, I’ll have my big Shannock vertical loom for tapestry, a big dobby for fabric weaving, a taka dai, and a sewing machine and serger in the main room, with plenty of wiggle room to actually get to these things. In the adjacent room I have two walls of bookshelves that hold my textile library, and in the middle of that room is my small 8S Baby Wolf. I’m so excited to get to this next phase of organization.

It’s high summer, and I have great hopes for getting more space with better organization by the time fall rolls around. Here’s hoping!

Do you get a lot of promotional emails from places where you’ve placed orders, or looked at websites? These days my inbox is mostly full of promotional emails. It’s such a drag to delete all these unwanted messages. In spite of UNsubscribing from many of them, and making a filter that sends many of them to the trash automatically, I still have to wade through so many unwanted messages. Ugh.

Sometimes there are nice surprises in all that junk. Earlier this week, I got an email from Knitting Daily about a new book of adorable knitted animals. I haven’t seen a book this cute since Spud and Chloe!

Sorry to show you a promotional video after just complaining about my inbox clogged with emails. It’s cute though, isn’t it? I have a partially finished Spud that will go to my granddaughter Tori eventually. I put it away when it came time to add plastic pellets and stuffing to Spud’s body. I didn’t have either, and I never ordered them. Well, today I’m back on it and expect to have those materials tomorrow.

BECAUSE….. I need to make a few of the adorable animals from Knitted Animal Friends next! It would impossible to choose which animal to knit first, so I feel a bit lucky that the dog (George) called out to me as an almost-Bobi-look-alike. Bobi was my son’s dog for about a decade, and when Tori was born she quickly loved Bobi almost as much as she loves her Mom and Dad. Bobi died in January, and Tori still talks about him. When she colors dogs she always makes them “brown like Bobi.” This knitted dog, done in Bobi colors of white and brown, will look very much like him. The dog in the book even has a red neckerchief very much like Bobi used to wear.

Here’s an iconic moment in the Osborn family of Rob and Bobi.

Both books are full of fun things to knit….if I didn’t have grandchildren I would definitely knit some these for myself. And at some point I will knit a Tori-type Chloe to go with the animals.

Yesterday my small group weaving guild met at Jan Doyle’s weaving school, in the Octagon House in Carolina, Rhode Island. It’s a fun place to visit, and a I know it’s a fun place to weave. I think spending time with other weavers, or other people in whatever activity you love to do, always enhances your own work.

There is a shop in the center where weavers can sell their work. Pretty tempting stuff. I managed to get out of there with a wonderful indigo ikat woven pin cushion. I dearly wanted a wool tweed overnight bag. Maybe it will still be available next time I visit.

In other news, my little Portuguese Man of War tapestry got returned to me yesterday. I’m quite thrilled with these beautiful ribbons, and I plan to frame them together. I love the HGA pin most of all.

This is short because I have a date with my Baby Wolf Combby. Linda from the service department at Schacht spent some time on the phone with Bob earlier this week. In fact she ‘facetimed’ Bob in order to take a look inside our combby to see what might be malfunctioning. She instructed Bob on straightening all the wires that connect the shafts to the solenoids, and now the loom weaves like a charm. At least it did for 20 minutes with no misfires. I’m going to weave for an hour or two now. I am SO hopeful that I can begin to trust this loom. That’s a big hurdle!

It’s a damp, bedraggled Monday after Easter, but spring is definitely here.  Bob saved a nice bouquet of daffs before the deluge began.  We’ve had our share of April showers now.

This was our first Easter without any family.  It was odd for sure, and I don’t plan to do it again, but I had a wonderful afternoon on Saturday with my sister, sitting in a coffee shop and catching up on a couple of months of news together.  Before that, Bob and I spent 10 days in California with Chris and Melody!  Those wonderful days should keep me smiling for a long time.

Northern California is a wonderful place, even without the added treat of being of with family, and being there in April when the hills are so alive with poppies and Indian paintbrush and myriad other wildflowers was just the thing.  It was a perfect time away.  To top things off, Melody and Chris made sure I got to visit some places that have been on my ‘wish list’ for many years.

How about dinner at Chez Panisse?  I actually never thought I’d do this because it is on the other side of the country, in a town I’ve never visited, even when I was visiting the West Coast.  But fast forward to now, when our younger son works in Berkeley and lives just a few minutes south! I’ve been intrigued with Alice Waters since she started this restaurant, when I was a teenager on the verge of falling in love with cooking.  Remember the 70s?–the back-to-nature movement to whole grains and locally sourced, sustainable veggies?  Molly Katzen and the Moosewood Restaurant?  And how about  The Vegetarian Epicure?  For me, Alice Waters is all tied up with my initiation into cooking.  Her restaurant conjures up all kinds of magic for me, and the reality of it was every bit as magical as all my years of imagining!  We got keepsake menus for the night…. Amy Dencler was our chef that night, which was a thrill to me since I’d read about her joining Chez Panisse.  And to top off a stellar evening, Alice herself showed up for a while during during the prep of our meal.

Dinner is served.

My favorite course may have been the soup, which was a pureed asparagus.  I decided to make it for our Easter dinner yesterday.  I looked online for a recipe by Amy Dencler, or even Alice.  No luck, so I fell back on Julia’s recipe from the first volume of Mastering the Art…. which I already knew from years of making it that it would be delicious!

The Lacis Museum has also been on my wish list for eons.  It is also in Berkeley.  All these years, Berkeley has just been a place name to me.  We’ve been to San Francisco and along the northern coast of California numerous times, but I’ve never included a stop in Berkeley.  I never even bothered to look up where the Lacis Museum is located.  So I’m not sure you can imagine how excited I was to learn that Chris works only a few blocks from there!

Inside is an unbelievable opportunity to buy lace supplies for lace knitting, tatting, bobbin lace, embroidery–I think that’s just the tip of the iceberg!  I got some supplies that I’ve been putting off searching for online.

Upstairs from the shop is where the lace exhibits and classrooms are.  At the moment there is an exhibit on embroidered shawls from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  Jules Kliot arrived to take us up to see the exhibit.  I have been getting the email newsletters from him for at least a couple of decades.  Now I’ve met him!

There are so many shawls in this exhibit, and all beautiful.  The early ones are all hand embroidered with hand tied fringes; Jules said they took 10 years to make.  Later shawls were machine embroidered with machine tied fringes.  I took a lot of photos which I’ll enjoy looking at in detail for years–some in natural shades and some in such brilliant colors.

I want to include all the photos I took, but how about just this one shawl?  It is hand embroidered with attached faces done in painted porcelain.  The embroidery was all done in shades of cream, natural, ecru. One or two of the faces were missing, and underneath the missing porcelain faces there were still embroidered faces.

The hand-tied fringe is pretty elaborate too.

Next on my wish list was a shop called A Verb for Keeping Warm, or AVFKW….kind of a mouthful!  It has only been on my list for a couple of years, since I keep reading about it in the Making and Madder magazines.  I didn’t even know it was in Berkeley until I just happened to be looking at one of my knitting patterns while out there.

What a fun shop.  They dye all of the their own line of yarns with natural dyes.  Their own yarns range from worsted weight to lace weight, in wonderful wools and blends that include silk and alpaca.  As you can see the shop is full of luscious yarns and wonderful knitted items to entice anyone.  Look at all that dried indigo hanging along the wall.  They grow about 250 pounds of indigo every year.

I fell for a knitted shawl on display designed by Andrea Mowry of Drea Renee Knits called “Find Your Fade.”  You can make it in as many as seven different colors, or just one.  I took a look at the naturally dyed, laceweight merino/silk blend yarns and chose two skeins that were dyed with logwood. My version of the shawl will use these two skeins.  I also bought a packet of ground madder.

There were so many highlights to this trip–a visit to the UC Berkeley campus where we could see all the way to the Bay from Sather Tower.  We visited Pegasus bookstore which has been an online resource for me for years.  Now I’ve been to the brick and mortar shop, where all three of us–Melody and Bob and I–found books we had to buy.

And then there was a long weekend spent up in Mendocino County, a place Bob and I have returned to since our children were young.  Chris also loves this part of California, so he arranged for all of us to spend some time together there. We knew the years have flown by when our son, who once stayed home with grandma on our first trip to this area, now drove us around while we relaxed in the back seat!  Bob and I loved it!

Chris found a house right on the coast for us to stay.  See the bit of deck railing in the lower left?  What a view we had from this house!

Melody and Chris playing with new family member, Mila.

Chris brought his barware, including glass coupes, for several kinds of cocktails.  He is becoming quite an accomplished mixologist. We loved this comfortable house!

We visited wineries, took walks along the coast, and ate some amazing meals, both that we made ourselves at our rented house and in restaurants in Mendocino.  You can get some creative meals at various wineries too–like Pennyroyal, where the daughter of one of our long time favorite wine makers has started her own business.

I can’t resist sharing this photo of Chris and Mila at our favorite vineyard in the Anderson Valley, Husch.

We spent our last day in San Francisco.  It was a wonderful time of year to be on the coast of California and to be with Chris on his birthday.  We got to know Melody better and see Mila for the first time.

I was thinking of the poppy seeds I scattered in my garden at home as I visited this wonderful garden in Golden Gate Park.  It’s one of Chris’s favorite destinations and now one of ours as well.  He used to live only a short walk from this park and wouldn’t mind moving back here someday.

And back at home, I have about a million little poppy seedlings coming up.  I know that they will not fare as well as they do in California, but I’ll think of this garden if/when my own poppies bloom.  I’m knitting the shawl from A Verb for Keeping Warm now and then in the evenings and reading one of the books I bought at Pegasus. Best of all, I’m feeling quite re-energized and ready for spring in New England.

Happy spring!

Handweavers of Connecticut has a juried biennial show during the month of April in odd years.  This year we have returned to an interesting venue called the River Gallery in New Haven.  It is part of a furniture store that features handmade furniture and accessories.  The gallery area has furniture arranged into living spaces.  My guild’s handwoven items look great in that setting.

The awards table is set up, and our leader, Julia Ludlow-Ortner, is about to begin announcing the awarded pieces.  Take a look at the gorgeous runner on the table in the foreground, woven by Stephanie Slattery.

Aren’t these ribbons beautiful?  I was thrilled to get two of them! –a blue ribbon from the left side of this photo for 1st place in the Wall Hanging category, and that wonderful red and black ribbon all the way to the right, which is the Handweavers’ Guild of America award for Outstanding Fiber Art.  Woohoo!

The opening was a success with lots of attendees.  Not only are we a large guild — and our members brought family and friends–but the gallery did a good job promoting the event so there were other visitors on hand.  Bob caught a shot of me with some of my dear weaving friends.

A reporter from the New Haven Independent interviewed me about my tapestry!

The article is called “Art and Story Interwoven at River Street Gallery,” and it came out today!

These kinds of events take a lot of work by a lot of volunteers, but you always need the guidance of a leader, and this year Julia Ludlow-Ortner was our intrepid director.  She did a great job keeping all her volunteers on track and allowing them to use their creative gifts to the fullest.  She is also my braiding friend, and we have traveled together for a couple of memorable kumihimo conferences.

The story of this piece has dragged on for a few years. If you want the backstory, you can read it here.  Finishing this piece last October and finally bringing it out in public has energized me to return to my larger vision for these creatures.  I have a lot of work to do!

But, for the moment, I’ll just take a little time to bask in the satisfaction of finishing something and the thrill of getting two awards!

Thanks for looking!