lots to share...

I really have been neglecting my blogging for the past month and so much has happened!

In early May I went to Black Mountain, NC near Asheville for the annual W.A.R.P. conference. Weave a Real Peace is a group who supports indigenous weavers in countries throughout the world. As my first WARP event, this one was special to me because it took place at the Blue Ridge YMCA Assembly in Black Mountain nestled on the hillside overlooking the Blue Ridge Mountains. My book, Woven: a Bauhaus Memoir ends with my alter ego Anna in one of the tall-backed forest green rocking chairs on the porch overlooking the mountains, having followed Josef and Anni Albers to Black Mountain College which started at this spot So... not only did I have the opportunity to spend a weekend with many intelligent, articulate, inspiring women who have dedicated their lives to help weavers sell their wares through organizations like Mayan Hands, in Guatemala, but I was able to absorb the atmosphere that inspired the Black Mountain College students and faculty. I have dreams of writing another book, a sequel to Woven about my Anna at BMC.

One of the benefits of not being able to sleep, was seeing the sunrise over the mountains!

I completed a couple more woven scarves on the same warp as the ruffled scarf I showed in the last blog entry. AND I designed and knit a sweater for baby boy Justin born to Heidi, a lovely young woman my daughter Kim has known for several years - a fellow UMaine hockey player! I designed it because I misplaced my pattern shortly after casting on stitches. I wanted to knit it on circular needles with few seams, so I knit it from the bottom up front and sides and then added stitches for the sleeves. I found adorable brass-looking buttons that really jazzed it up. Here are some photos...

Baby boy Justin in his sweater.

And my wonderful husband, Doc requested that I knit him a striped cotton sweater. He loved the sailing sweater I knit last year so I based the design of stripes on that sweater. A Swede through and through... he wanted the stripes to be in yellow and blue, the colors of the Swedish flag. I chose a muted yellow and blue and a pattern for a top-down raglan. You can read more about the project on my Ravelry page.

He loves it!

I've also spent a lot of time spinning on my wonderful Kromski, Fantasia. Last night I started a triangular shawl from the yarn I spun from the beautifully dyed roving I got from Beth Dinoff of Whorling Tides. More on that later...

We head North for life on our sailboat on Lake Champlain soon! I'll be sure to pack drop spindles and yarns to spin. And I hope to do some cardboard loom weaving, too! The 3 months we are there will fly by!!!

Busy Busy Busy

YUP... it's been busy...

First and most important - I wanted to make sure I had all my ducks in a row to donate my Woven Olympic Haori to Art and Crafts United for Japan to be auctioned April 8-10 on eBay to benefit Global Giving's Earthquake and Tsunami Relief. My young friend Anastasia helped me by photographing my haori on one of her friends. We had hopedto do an outside shoot against one of the beautiful weathered walls in Savannah... but it poured just as I got to town (& even hailed later.) We found a conference room with some natural light (gray rainy light...) and got to work. Her photos were much better than the ones I had taken with my iPhone. I NEED to get a decent camera! Outdoor photos are usually pretty good on an iPhone... but indoors, forget it!

Here are the photos I submitted...

To complete the submission I needed to get to the Post Office to find a box and to weigh it. Mission Accomplished... and I was able to get my digital application in two days early! It was fun to see the photos on their Facebook page. After midnight EST tonight when the deadline for submissions passes the challenge will be to tell as many people as possible about the April 8-10 eBay auction so the group makes lots of money to help the Japanese people! A similar group, though mostly potters - Handmade for Japan - made over $75,000 in their March 31st auctions. Hopefully we can do as well... or better!

The link for the April 8-10 eBay auction is here.

Auction Begins: April 8, 12:00pm EDT/4:00pm GMT/

Auction Ends: April 10, 12:00pm EDT/4:00pm GMT/

People from all over the world have submitted work and are "attending the auction!" Please help by sharing the information with all your friends... through email, facebook, twitter, etc etc etc!

The second reason for my busy - ness.... was helping our Fiber Guild of Savannahs set up our brand new Weaving Studio - Oatland at Oatland Island Nature Center. Oatland was the guild's home for many, many years and the guild had to move to Armstrong Atlantic State University when the administration building where they were housed was condemned! Ten years later the building is beautifully renovated and we were offered a room in exchange for working with children and adults in the community to share our knowledge of weaving, spinning and other fiber arts.

We welcome the chance to have our looms and equipment all together in one space - a beautiful space to work. When it looked like we couldn't get our looms from AASU, the guild members rallied and loaned looms, warping reels, a spinning wheel, etc. etc. etc! What a group! It is now FULL of wonderful equipment after our last minute move with Two Men & a Truck yesterday transporting 3 large floor looms - 2 counter balanced and one wonderful 12 shaft 45" Leclerc (we'll be fighting over THAT one!) and lots of other equipment including a huge warping reel, reeds, raddles, lease sticks, inThey are still disassembled (unless Bonnie and her supportive hubby AJ got over there today to re-assemble them.) but soon we will have an organized working weaving studio to share with the Savannah community. HOORAY! It is really VERY exciting! Take a look...

Look at all the looms and that huge warping reel in the back corner with Bonnie!

Warping reels, spool racks, bobbin winders, and 2 wonderful looms, etc. are on this wall.

Yes... that's a dogwood tree outside our windows!

Wouldn't bookshelves look great on that back wall? Have any to donate?

our moving team less AJ (Bonnie wonderfully helpful hubby) & Rachel at AASU

me (Suzy), Annie from Oatland, Bonnie & Anastasia

Our members will have an opportunity to weave and work on projects here - 7 days a week between 10am & 4pm with additional hours possible. We are anxious to begin to teach young and old members of the community the fine crafts of weaving, spinning, and other fiber arts here in our wonderful new space. Plans are underway for a Summer Fiber Arts Camp at Oatland! Stay tuned.

My other busy-ness was getting ready to present a program to our guild this Saturday - Fiber Arts of the Bauhaus. I've organized some hands on activities and will have a slide presentation of work created at the Bauhaus. The material was from research I did for my book, Woven: a Bauhaus Memoir. It should be fun!

PHEW... tonight I'm going to a presentation put on by the SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design) Fiber Department on Mayan Weaving. Tomorrow afternoon there will be a workshop and demonstration of back-strap loom weaving.

What a weaving-full week. Now... if I can just get to my loom!!!

Happy New Year!

I have lots of ideas bouncing around my head for projects for 2010! I can't wait to get started!

But first, I'd like to share some of what I have been doing since I last posted:

I completed colorful sweaters for my adorable grand-daughters -- Abby and Chelsea who live in the frozen Northeast! My LYS had a display of yummy colors of wool yarns that caught my eye. I decided to knit striped cardigans - in warm colors for Chelsea

and cool colors for Abby. I used a Lion Brand free pattern I found on-line as a starter and changed the stripes using Fibonacci's number sequences (1,1,2,3,5,8...) to create interesting stripe sequences. The challenge was to make the stripes match at the sleeves. I also decided to make the closure a separating jacket zipper instead of buttons. It was great to see the girls in their sweaters when we visited early in January!

While taking the train from Savannah to New York State I realized that I didn't have a hat to wear when we walked around New York City to the Museum of Modern Art. I had brought along several things to keep me busy including some 2 oz. of handspun singles I had spun at our January Spin In earlier that week. The fiber was delicious -- a combination of alpaca, milk, bamboo, bunny, and sparkle from Roo at Moonwood Farms. So I started my hat... and was pleased to finish it before we arrived in NY. (Of course, I stayed awake most of the night to finish it!) I must admit it came in handy keeping my head warm against the breezy cold air.

MoMA was marvelous! I wanted to see the exhibit of the Bauhaus Workshops that was going to end January 25th. It was all I had hoped for and more. Seeing Gunta Stolzl's African Chair up close, was thrilling as I had seen it in so many books I had researched while writing my book Woven: a Bauhaus Memoir about the Bauhaus weavers. There was a fascinating movie taken in the masters homes in Dessau during the Bauhaus years and Moholy Nagy's Light Space Modulator gracefully moved and cast wonderful reflections on the walls and ceilings as it did when I saw it several years ago at its home at Harvard's Busch Reisinger Museum. (His original film can be seen here.) The exhibit took me back to my trip to the Bauhaus sites in Germany where I had seen some of the pieces. The exhibit had so much MORE... and was displayed so beautifully. I was happy that I had ordered the book on the exhibit so that I could refer back to the experience as photos were not allowed. I spent some time in the hands on workshop where they had lots of texture materials available for participants to create their own tactile artwork based on Johannes Itten's classes from Vorkurs, or Preliminary Studies classes.

While in Albany, I completed a woven bag for my camera on a cardboard loom and have started to felt some handspun French Press slippers I knit from a pattern I bought through Ravelry. I used some of the yarns I'd dyed with Koolaid on beige wool which created muted colors. The tapestry design incorporates geometric designs and 2 shuttle columns.

I realize that I never posted the images of the scarves I created on a charcoal tencel warp that I mentioned in my last blog entry... Here goes:

handspun milk fiber, cotton and handspun silk weft

silk/cotton blend weft

silk/cotton blend weft

handspun white bombyx silk & sparkle novelty black weft

Mobus scarf of milk/cotton blend, silk/cotton blend & handspun bombyx silk weft

Sock it to me...

My socks are done and I love them!  I can't wait for cooler weather when I can put them on my tootsies to warm them up.  (I'm lying... love the summer-like 80 degree weather we're having!)   

My only real problem aside from losing concentration making some mistakes that I had to frog and frogging yarn-overs are challenging, was binding off!  It took 3 tries and I finally have it loose enough that I can fit them over my instep.  I used a sewn bind-off that I found online and thanks to Ravelry postings.  (YEA Ravelry!!!) YouTube had a short video that did a great job demonstrating the technique.

What was really exciting was knowing that I can knit again.  With my Rheumatoid Arthritis the last thing I knit, last May, was a baby sweater for a dear friend... and it was agony.  Thanks to Humira (which I had to agonize over whether to start or not as it's an injection -- epi-pen) I have somewhat of a grip again and can hold knitting needles without pain.  HOORAY!

I've been working for the past two weeks on the powerpoint presentation for the program I be sharing in a few weeks a the Clayton Weaving History Conference.  My program on the research I did for my book... woven: a bauhaus memoir.  It's been fun getting back into it again.  The aethethic of the Bauhaus really resonates with me!  It's fascinating to see how the artists who taught there (Kandinsky, Klee, Itten, Albers) really influenced the designs that the Bauhausmädchen wove.  It was great getting in touch with my alter ego, Anna, whose memoir I wrote.  In order to try to experience what happened at the Bauhaus during this interesting time between WWI and WWII, I developed an alter ego for myself of a young female student.She is a composite of me and the members of the Weberei (Weaving Workshop):  Gunta Stölzl, Anni Albers, Otti Berger, and others.  Tomorrow I'll ship some of the items I wove for my thesis (where my book started) and some copies of my book that hopefully I'll be able to sell.  

I try to weave a few inches a day on the Queen Anne's lace.  I hope to get it off the loom by the end of next week as we are packing up and moving onto our sailboat up north on Lake Champlain for the summer.  No loom weaving there...  Hope to knit a Nora Gaughn sweater and do some cardboard weaving... and of course do some drawing and painting of the beautiful lake scenes surrounded by the Adirondacks on the NY side and the Green Mountains on the VT side.