I feel like a dunce sometimes...

How could I? I've been knitting since I was a little girl and today I had to frog the summer top I've been knitting of and on for over a week. The wool tabi socks (mitten-like) have been put aside in favor of a more light and airy cotton/silk blend summer top. I had accomplished about 5 inches when I discovered that I was creating a mobus!!! I had twisted the stitches at the beginning when the 272 stitches were joined together to make a circle... and instead of a simple circle I had never-ending circle! It certainly wouldn't work as a top... so it had to be unravelled. I took a deep breathe and pulled it off the circular needles and wound it back up into a ball to start anew.

SO... today I wanted to jump back on the horse and get back into it.. and I'm having trouble getting motivated. I'm second guessing myself over and over... do I have it right this time, do I have it right??? I still can't believe that I went that far before I realized my mistakes.

The baby shower for my daughter and her wife who are expecting a little girl September 8th is this weekend. Brave new world -- 2 women can have a baby if one decides to undergo the rigors of invitro fertilization! SO... I will be able to reveal what I've been working on soon...

AH... Summer!!!

What fun it is to be back at the lake! We survived a 5 day heat wave of mid to high 90 degree humid days with no air moving by taking up residence poolside under the gazebo. Thunderstorms this afternoon have brought in cooler temps. We've already had several days of great sailing.

It was especially nice was this past weekend when both daughters and their families were here to enjoy the 4th of July. Sailing, followed by ice cream for our adorable grand-daughters, swimming and a traditional hamburger, hot dogs, watermelon cookout at the gazebo.

I've been working on some small knitting projects that I can reveal later this month. Other than that I've finished four novels! Life is good!

me and Bobby Rydell

Me and Bobby Rydell - 1962-ish

We are back up on Lake Champlain in upstate New York, avoiding the 100 degree heat in Savannah and JuYeon is on her way to Washington, DC to install her pieces. You can read about the exhibit on the National Women in the Arts website... http://www.nmwa.org/exhibition/detail.asp?exhibitid=208 I can't wait to see it completed! We plan to attend the Closing Celebration in DC on September 13. Then the pieces return to SCAD Savannah for deFine Art in the Fall.

One Sunday afternoon while I was picking up some more of her drawings to trace in PhotoShop for the embroidered fiber piece, JuYeon offered use the computerized embroidery machine to embroider one of my drawings. The evening after my first meeting with JuYeon, I used my finger instead instead of the more advanced toWaucom electronic drawing pad and stylus to trace an ancient photo of Me & Bobby Rydell. JuYeon took my PhotoShop tracing and created a couple embroideries for me. I hope to make one into a pillow top and incorporate one in a tote.

The image is quite meaningful to me... I had a huge crush on Bobby Rydell when I was a teenager and even was president of his local fan club. (Didn't do much, but I still felt it was an honor!) Dad and I had a disagreement and to win back my favor my Dad arranged for me to meet Bobby Rydell! What a cool Dad!!! He had a friend in the radio business who got us tickets to a nightclub where Bobby was performing. We had a real dinner date and after the performance we went backstage and I was able meet my idol! We have 3 Poloroid photos of that event and this image was one. My brother Jeff, who is quite a talented artist painted a huge oil painting of me seemingly swooning over Bobby -- actually I blinked and was grinning so it looked like a swoon! Anyway... great memories over that image! And now I can have a memory of my involvement with JuYeon, too!

Me ironing one of the panels for JuYeon's piece during a work bee with other Fiber Guild members and some SCAD students at SCAD's Pepe Hall fiber studio.

Inspiring experience....

I haven't been weaving at all lately because I've been involved in an amazing project with Savannah College of Art and Design's (SCAD's) visiting artist, Ju Yeon Kim. My boss in the Exhibitions Dept. asked if anyone was interested in helping her and I said... I'd love to! Well, it has been an incredible experience! Getting to know Ju Yeon and have the honor of tracing about 150 of her drawings using PhotoShop has been a privilege.

Let me back up a bit... Ju Yeon had been involved with SCAD at the Savannah campus teaching here a couple years ago and again last year at the Lacoste, France campus. She was chosen to do a collaborative installation with the SCAD Fibers and Sculpture students. The finished installation will be exhibited at the Museum of Women in the Arts Museum in Washington, DC opening June 25th. (The museum will have a Closing Reception September 13.) So... the problem was a deadline rapidly approaching and students in Spring Fever mode (in love, stressed with work they had put off for other classes, and I hate to say it... for some, lack of motivation... having their work in a major museum just wasn't cutting it...) So... I offered to help and also recruited some of my Fiber Guild of the Savannahs friends to help too. Those of us who have participated look forward to doing a program for the rest of the guild when the installation returns to SCAD Savannah in the Fall. It then moves on to SCAD Atlanta and SCAD Hong Kong. Read more about the installation on SCAD's website: http://www.scad.edu/news/2010/jukeon-kim-in-between.cfm

The installation will include 2 major pieces that represent human figures that represent different phases of the human condition among them... depression, to happiness, to natural resources and pollution and ways to die. A masculine sculptural piece and a more feminine embroidered fabric piece. Visitors will be able to part the hanging panels to reach a calm meditation space at the center.

The one that I am working on is the Fiber piece... 108 strips of fabric that are each 9 foot long by about 9 inches wide. They will hang from 3 concentric circles... the outer white layer is the Future -- heavy free machine embroidery in white, beige and golden threads done by the Fiber students... the middle layer is the Present and JuYeon has drawn the figures on the white strips and colored them with paint for the students to add embellishments. I am working on the inner layer... the Past which will be on gray fabric panels stitched in white primarily with a fancy computerized embroidery machine (which JuYeon taught herself to use!) Some of the guild member are doing some embroidery on this layer using a free arm sewing machine technique and others have helped by cutting and taping the fabric panels and ironing the finished panels. My job as I mentioned was to trace Ju Yeon's drawings so that a computerized embroidery machine could read her images and embroider them on gray fabric strips.

Then there's the sculptural piece... JuYeon and the students have created 3 dimensional relief sculptures of the human images reminiscent of Rodin's Gate of Hell but the forms are much larger. They are sculpted in modeling clay that is reused after the finished form is molded and then a casting is made in an acrylic resin. This casting is then affixed to wooden panels... 6 of them that make a hexagon. The images will be painted a medium weathered gray and will be in the inside of the meditation space. Viewer will enter through an archway and be met by these forms of people and animals and plants and trees... At the top panels are attached sloping in to make a circular opening at the top. The outside of the piece is furniture grade wood.

Yesterday SCAD held a preview reception of the work to date. As today is graduation many students are going home for the summer and won't be here in Savannah the next few weeks when the finishing touches are made. I too will be leaving in a week... so my involvement is coming to an end. The illustration above is of one of the Future embroideries by the students. I also traced this image for the Past panel. I'm attaching that tracing and the drawing done by JuYeon, as well as the embroidery done in white thread on the gray panel... it is from the Historic Leaders panel which also included people such as Ghandi, Buddha, the Dalai Lama...

the original drawing...

my tracing done with PhotoShop

the embroidery of my tracing done with the computerized embroidery machine

Legacy

WInona, my dear friend Susan's mother passed away on April 25th in Charleston. Susan was one of the main reason's we decided to move to Savannah. Our children grew up together in rural central New York where Susan and some other dear friends and I met for lunch every month. We still try to have a multi-generational reunion each summer. It was at these wonderful gatherings that I would see Winona as she stayed with Susan each summer. It was Susan's stories of growing up in Savannah that gave it a sense of romance and adventure. So... it was fitting that Winona came back to Savannah be buried.

What struck me about WInona's passing was a huge sense of the legacy she left behind. Two of Susan's daughters - Pamela and Jennifer traveled together from California to be there for Gummy (their grandmother.) At the calling hours I was struck by how much they are like their mother. Jennifer talked of her excitement discovering the flowers and trees in her new backyard and Pamela talked of her children and their love of nature.

The next morning friends and family gathered at Wesley Gardens an Methodist island retreat south of downtown Savannah where Winona and her husband were caretakers for many years. I learned from the minister during the service how they cleared the brush and reclaimed the beauty of the retreat which had its history as a barrier island plantation. He talked about how you can find Winona... and God... in the wind. The whole experience epitomized wabi sabi - rustic, melancholy, slightly imperfect beauty...

After the peaceful service in the little chapel we went to the burial site at Forest Lawn near the famous Bonaventure Cemetery. I realized that one of the reasons I was here in Savannah, was to be there at that moment... representing "home" to my dear friend, Susan and her beautiful daughters. I was there to be a part of Winona's beautiful legacy. She lives on... through her daughters (Susan and her sister, Linda)... through her grandchildren and through her great-grandchildren. LEGACY!

Go to this link to see a SmileBox tribute to Winona...

http://smilebox.com/playEmail/4d5459344d5455794d5468384d7a55324e4451314f446b3d0d0a&sb=1

Ready to sail...

In about six weeks we'll be back on the boat on Lake Champlain enjoying the wind and the water and the mountains... and our wonderful friends at Treadwell Bay Marina. For those cool evenings I wanted a nautical striped sweater. My daughter Kristin surprised my with a gift certificate to my favorite LYS, WIld Fibers so I had a great start. I found some Rowan Denim cotton yarn that would be perfect. I chose the medium denim colored because I was afraid the darker navy would bleed into the natural cream colored stripes. I found the natural cotton yarn online at WEBS called Araucania Ulmo. Beautiful yarn with a crazy name!

Louisa Harding's book Modern Classics had a great pattern for my boating sweater. Wanting to put my mark on it... I decided to change the stripe pattern and the neckline and add several stitches to the width and rows to the length. The challenge was making the sleeve stripes match. Love it and I'm sure I'll be wearing it alot on those cool upstate New York nights.

This weekend we enjoyed Blessing of the Fleet in Darien, GA. Each year in April at the start of the shrimping season, Darien holds this festival. We've decided to make it a yearly trek and consider our sailboat in NY blessed, too.

a magical journey...



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