true vacation

We went to Maine again. That's how long it's been! We went to Maine and had a lovely week doing just about nothing. I took naps. Christopher did some writing. I read a little. Christopher wrote some more. We made pasta from scratch. I started a blanket. It wasn't enough time. I feel terrible saying that, since this was the fifth week I've taken off this summer, but it was the first of those weeks that I really felt able to relax. Italy was good until my eye fell apart. And my trip to Haystack was overshadowed by bad weather and my cold. Next summer we are thinking that a month might in Maine be nice. Maybe we can sublet our apartment, and not worry about the lack of income, and we can settle in and just be.

quilting

I feel like apologizing every time I blog, because it is so long between posts. I am sorry. I am a little checked out these days, and I'm finding it hard to come up with witty and interesting posts. But I do want to share my quilting with you before it is so far in the past that it is obsolete.

So. I have always wanted to quilt. In high school, I made a few quilt squares by hand with some of my mother's scrap fabric. I like how quilts often have histories and contain objects of the past. And I love the patterns you can make with fabric, and how practical they are. So when my mother invited me to join her at Session 3 of Haystack this summer, I was immediately attracted to the Quilting as Art class. It's an interesting choice, really, since what I love about quilts is their tradition, and the point of this class is to break tradition.

We started the class by doing a bunch of creative exercises with color and line. Part of this involved us each picking an image or object that we found interesting and playing with it. My image was a dress. I placed in on my square in different ways and played with applying dress images onto different fabrics. I was also interested in exploring quilting lines and how one can draw with texture just using stitches.Throughout the two weeks, my dress evolved, until at one point I decided to make many squares using just details of the dress image, and to piece them together into a small quilt. (Unfortunately I don't seem to have a lot of photos of this process, which surprises me, frankly)

I drew out 9 details of the dress, which I thought could translate into 9 squares. I made cardboard templates and cut them out, and then I cut out fabric and made 9 squares. Except that I didn't like how all of them went together, and then I thought that 9 looked sort of measly, so I made 3 more squares. And I rearranged them and made more, and I dyed some red and yellow fabric that I thought might look good with my green and blue theme. Basically, I guess you could say that I approached it like a piece of art. But that's probably typical for this sort of thing, right?I also learned how to sew angles, which was pretty fun.

Once I had decided on my squares and sewed them together, I had to figure out a border.These are just a few of my options. I decided to go with green, with a thin brown border around that. But it's still not done.

When I realized that I wouldn't have enough time, I took a few of my cast off squares and made a mini quilt. You might also call it a rectangular pot holder, or a mini-placemat. it's really not much of anything, except an exercise. I took these two squares and made them into a quilt, so I would learn how to sew a binding on, and how to quilt it, and all of that, while I still had quilting colleagues to ask advice of. Of course, I didn't photograph this piece, and I left it in Maine...

Here is how my quilt looks now, along with some of the fabric I dyed for it. Yeah, I didn't finish it. And I left it at my parents' place in Maine, since I figure I'll finish it when I go back up there in August. But it's a start. I still have to figure out where to put my quilting lines, and then finish that border.

I feel like I have a dialog with my little quilt, and the fabric that reminds me of water and the sky at the same time. It will tell me where to put those lines.

I don't know how many more quilts I'll make. Frankly, they aren't so portable, and I find them much less tactile than knitting. But we'll see. I do have a lot of fabric that needs to be used...

Home from Haystack

It has been awhile! And so much has happened.

First things first, my eye, and only because it is good news. I do not need surgery because my eye is healing itself. I may have some long term scarring, but honestly I barely notice anything now and I will be happy if this is how I see for the rest of my life. Phew.

I actually didn't realize until yesterday (when I got this news) how much my eye issues have been weighing on me down since it all started in early June. Yesterday I emerged from the hospital a happier person, smiling and squinting at the sunlight, so thrilled that it would be alright. I find this interesting, because I don't feel like I've been dwelling on it very much, but I guess it's just been there, dragging me down.

So. What I've been up to, though I think I'll give this to you in installments.

Week One.
At the end of June I went to Maine with my mother. She taught a drawing class at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and I was her guest, and a student in a Quilting as Art class. I had never done any quilting, though I could do some basic sewing, so the whole thing was really new to me. After some initial design exercises, we learned about Shibori dyeing. (Maybe it's just me, but I thought that Shibori was just for knitting!)In any case, Shibori is a little like tie-dyeing (you might say that tie-dyeing is a form of Shibori) but bigger and better. We tried different techniques, including wrapping, stitching, folding, clamping, rolling our fabric to create resists. And if it came out badly (as mine sometimes did), you just refolded it in some other way and overdyed it. Nothing lost.We had a whole dyeing room at Haystack, with lots of big pots and tall tables for dyeing on, and there was a whole set of primary colored dyes for us to mix and experiment with.The unfortunate part of our first week was the weather, which basically looked like this the whole time. Fog. And more fog. (These pictures were not all taken on the same day.) That's the ocean out there, with lots of islands and a mountain. We didn't see it until the second week.And it was really very cold and rainy too. I can usually handle this sort of weather, but we didn't have any heat in the studio or the cabins, and I didn't bring the right clothing for cold weather, and I was miserable.

And I got sick. But that's week two, in which I also tried to make a quilt!

it's that time again

My parents are renting their house in Maine by the week in the summer. It's cheap. It's simple. It's a great base for exploring, and a nice spot for just hanging out.Check out the site.

in between

Our apartment is renewed, the floors were a success! Christopher has decided to sand and paint our baseboards before we settle back in, so we're still living amongst boxes and our bedroom is still stuffed with living room furniture. It seems that I left my camera cable in Maine, and my backup one is in some box somewhere, so until we unpack and locate it there will be no New York photos.

One nice thing about this situation (not the camera situation, the living out of a box situation) is that everything seems intentional. We can make some improvements and throw some things out as we unpack, upgrade a little. A trip to Ikea is scheduled for next week.

Maine was wonderful, a combination of visiting with friends and family and relaxing and being alone. I feel like I savored just about every moment, really making the most of that rare chance to be alone and of the silence. I do feel like I could have used another week (or month) but now that we're back I'm knee deep in design work. It's kind of annoying how these things don't seem able to coexist.

Highlights of the week:

Christopher made the most delicious blueberry cobbler for his birthday dinner, which was attended by his cousin and the cousin's family. It surprises me sometimes how someone with absolutely no interest in food is able to cook well when he tries, but really it comes down to him following a recipe, and he can do that.

My father installed a shower for us! Of course, it wasn't the most practical shower, but it was better than using the bathtub, which we've done for the past 10 or so years. Yeah, that's him installing the shower. See how it's not so practical? where would you put your clothes?

My friend Laura (the one who lives in Germany) visited us for 24 hours or so. She was visiting her parents down in the Casco Bay, and I convinced her to leave her husband and children and see me. We had a grand time, swimming in the cloudy cold and visiting Hope Spinnery, a wind powered wool spinnery in Hope, Maine. We got a tour of the facilities and I bought 2 skeins of his wool, which is from local sheep and dyed with natural dyes. This is dyed with indigo and cochineal, and I am planning to use it on the cuffs of the sweater I'm designing.

It is a pretty awesome place. (I went back later with my mom and got naturally dyed roving, too.) He'll be at Rhinebeck in October. You all have to check him out. It's really truly yarn with integrity.

I met Mary Jane! She lives about 10 minutes from my parents' place, which is just too funny. I had dinner with her and her husband at their amazing self-designed and built concrete chateau, and she showed me tons of fiber goodies and we talked about everything. It was like meeting an old friend, and she even gave me pickles that her daughter had made with ingredients grown by the daughter's boyfriend. How's that for awesome!?

We spent a day with Christopher's grandparents. It was actually kind of fun. We went with them for lunch at about 2, ate tons of food and dessert, and then at 4:30 his grandmother suggested that we go get dinner, so we did even though we weren't at all hungry. But dinner consisted of the most delicious lobster rolls ever, in a totally gorgeous (but suddenly foggy) spot, so it wasn't so bad. And then we got ice cream, in honor of Christopher's birthday.

And that's about it, other than dyeing wool with goldenrod, which I've already described.

Edited to add the photo of the indigo vat, and to say that I did overdye the earlier tinted wool with goldenrod, and it turned out well, but alas I have no photos...

time's a tickin'

We are leaving on Sunday, and I feel like I could use another week here. We're starting to think about what we need to do when we get back. Mostly move our furniture back into the living room, and Christopher wants to sand the living room baseboards before we do that.

Today is Friday, however, and I'm trying to finish up my natural dyeing before then. Everything seems to go in slow motion with this process. On Wednesday I scoured my wool, which meant soaking it in a soapy solution for several hours, and then soaking it in water to rinse it. (Don't want to agitate too much, since it may felt the fiber!)

Yesterday I pulled out my new dyepot, mixed up my mordant (cream of tartar and alum). I made the mistake of filling the dyepot from the hose, and the water was icy. It took several hours to get it to simmer, and then it's supposed to simmer for several hours before letting it cool overnight.Today, well, today I'm hoping to dye, though we have to leave in half an hour to have lunch with Christopher's grandparents. I've collected my goldenrod and it is simmering out there on the lawn. I'll probably turn it off and let it sit while we're gone, and when we get back I'll strain it and add my fiber. I seem to be stuck with just goldenrod for dyeing this summer, which is a little unfortunate. It apparently makes a beautiful yellow dye and it is growing everywhere, but I don't like wearing yellow. And I've got a bunch of different fibers to dye: merino, superwash merino, blue faced Leicester, and the silk/wool blend that I spun a month or two ago. I'll have yellow fiber and more yellow fiber. Maybe next year I can overdye my yellow fiber with something else, like black-eyed Susans. (I looked for them this morning, but only found a handful and half of them were covered with little black bugs.)

we're here

and there's too much to write. It's all good. Words just don't do it justice.

Today I bought a pot for dyeing, along with a candy thermometer. It looks like my dye plants didn't grow so well, so I'll be starting with goldenrod.

Stay tuned...

packing

We're heading north tomorrow, to Maine. While we're gone, men will come and refinish our floors. Which means that the floors need to be clear when we leave for Maine.

They're not actually going to refinish all of our floors, just the ones in the living room and in the room where my computer and knitting are, our den. It's something we've wanted to do since we moved in, but it's so much of a hassle that we've been dissuaded up till now. This summer we bit the bullet.

So, while we pack for our week up north, we are also packing up these rooms and stowing their contents in the bedroom and office, and any closets that seem to have space. It's slow going. I'm hot. I'm feeling overwhelmed. I get distracted by my yarn, the knitting patterns I want to bring to Maine with me, the piles of receipts and phone numbers sitting next to my computer. It's good to sort through these things and do some purging. And I'm sure it will make our return (and unpacking) much easier. But it's hard to motivate.

It's also hard to pack for our trip. It is muggy and 85 degrees in Brooklyn today. There are thunderstorms and it's close to 60 in Maine. My mother keeps reminding me to bring a wool sweater along. The idea of wearing a wool sweater in the next few days is really inconceivable to me. I haven't worn pants in months. The only sweater I've pulled out recently has been cotton and good for an over-air conditioned theater. I find myself staring at my sweater drawer and thinking, "You're kidding me!" as sweat rolls down my back and I long for a shower.

Anyway, I'm really excited about going to Maine, packing not included. I'm really psyched to wear pants and a sweater (even if I can't wrap my head around it right now), and I am looking forward to seeing lots of people who will be there. My cousin and her daughter, Christopher's cousins and grandparents, my friend from Germany, who is summering with her family near Portland. I'm even going to meet Mary Jane, who lives very close to where I'll be. And of course, I am still entertaining my dyeing fantasies, even though I hear that the only seeds of mine that grew were the purple basil. And apparently my dad mowed down the wildflowers, so I might not be able to find black-eyed Susans, goldenrod or Queen Anne's Lace so easily as a back up. Mary Jane talks of dyeing with a certain lichen, so we'll see what happens!

dying to dye

The last week or so has been full of work. The play that I'm workshopping culminates with two presentations/performances on Sunday and Monday, and my free time has been spent sewing storage pouches for the props and organizing what else needs to be done. This morning I'll be sewing a baby, something that feels more real and has more weight than the bundle of fabric the actress has been using until now. I'm pretty excited about having a craft project. It's fun to figure out how to make these things. (If only I had more time in my life to sew for myself as well as knit and spin!)

But my mind has been scheming. As we have for the past few years (and my whole life really), in August we're going to spend a week at my parents' house in Maine. As is typical, I have starting thinking longingly for it. I want to bring my wheel this year and spin tons of fiber. I want to lie on the grass and just listen to the wind in the trees. I want to visit the Hope Spinnery (which I've only just heard of but is very close).

And I want to dye. A few years ago, back when I was in my first year of grad school (1999) and doing research on the colors of natural dyes (which is very important if you are designing costumes for a play set anytime before 1856) my mother gave me a book that she had: The Dyer's Garden, by Rita Buchanan. I am not really sure why my mother had the book, but it's been on my shelves since then. Until this week, when I transferred it to my purse and have been reading it whenever I can.

At first I thought I'd just gather what I needed when I got there. Goldenrod (yellow) and Black Eyed Susans (blackish green) grow wild all over my parents' property, so I could just wait till I get there, harvest a bunch and get to work. But then I started to really read the book, and discovered that St John's Wort has some really interesting dye qualities (the color changes drastically depending on very small variations). And, well, I'd like some other colors besides yellow and blackish green.

I'm a little lucky because my father is currently in Maine putting in their vegetable garden, opening up the house and more or less feeding the black flies. I'm also lucky because I am not such a great gardener, and in this case if the plants can be planted in Maine I don't have to deal with keeping them alive. (Witness my window herb garden, which is all dried up)this was basil

So, yesterday I got on the Fedco Seed site and ordered purple basil (purple), woad (blue), dyer's coreopsis (goldish browns, orange), St. John's wort (brown, orange, green) and bronze fennel (yellow, brown, black). I also ordered parsley, cilantro and beets, but those are my contribution to the vegetable garden.

I called my father to tell him to expect some random seeds in the mail, and said that some of them were for dyeing, and I hoped they wouldn't eat the basil (especially when you need 18 plants to dye 4 oz of wool). I wasn't so assured when he was genuinely excited that I'd ordered purple basil seeds (bad sign) but then, with 7 plants to dye from over the course of a week, it might be alright if one of them isn't available. Right?

one more day

We are heading south tomorrow, first to my mother's art opening in Portland, Maine and then to Cambridge, Mass. We'll visit with my cousin and spend the night in Cambridge before Christopher heads off to his residency in northern Vermont and I return to Brooklyn.

I've been meaning to blog more about our vacation, but the DSL connection up here is very slow and the photos take ages to upload. Here's a rundown. Maybe I'll add some photos when I'm back in New York.

It's hot, but not as hot as New York.

Christopher is doing lots of reading and a little writing. I've been swimming nearly every day with my mom. One day a huge lab thought I was a stick and jumped in after me. I shoved it back to shore but then it shook itself off all over my clothing and towel. My father has installed a washing machine. He is currenly sitting in front of it in a chair watching it work and exclaiming over it. Just now he called my mother in to see what it's doing. (The machine has been moody, so it's not without reason that he would want to know whether it was working or not.)I have been doing a bit of knitting, both working on Christopher's sweater and finishing up some odds and ends of old projects.

One day I had to help my father shingle the side of the screen porch. It was really hot and I was dismissed as I kept wandering off. (I can't say it was all my fault; my father also kept wandering off and rather than hang around I left too.)We visited with a bunch of Christopher's family members who live nearby. I have no photos of it but it was fun and Christopher's cousin's 2-year old son is completely adorable and friendly.

Tonight we are going to celebrate Christopher's birthday, since it is next week and he'll be in Vermont. I am making a chocolate bundt cake, which I have made before. The last time I made it I wasn't so happy with how it turned out, so I'm hoping this time will be more successful. We are also having lobster and mojitos.Two people have contacted me in the past week about designing sets for them. One is still pending; the other is a very last minute design for a New York Fringe Festival play. Interestingly, the director from the Fringe Festival show was impressed with the set from the last show I designed, which looked great in the end but which was also quite a struggle to pull off. I guess all that pain it was worth it!

We are about to have a thunderstorm.

what we do on vacation

Our vacation is going well, though it's taking some getting used to. First of all, my parents are very social. It has been hard to find time for myself to draw, read, write, etc. Yesterday afternoon, after several discussions with them about needing a little space, I spent a few hours on the screened porch drawing and then reading.

Here are some photos.

Our new screened porch (which still isn't 100% bugproof, but it's getting there):
inside (looking into the shed)by candlelightWork in its various forms:

We trimmed the mock-orange bush so we could back the car in to unload the new washing machine. An example of work making work. My dad put fencing around his bean plants last night since someone seems to be eating them (very Blair Witch, I know.)
At the moment, in the early afternoon sun, my father is shingling the screen porch. I was helping him but seem to mostly get in the way, so now I've been instructed to make some lunch. ah, vacation!