Sherri Woodard Coffey

Both Donna and Jan have commented on using index cards for keeping themselves organized, which reminds me—have you bought index cards lately? These days they are so thin and flimsy compared to index cards of only a few years ago. I use index cards to plan menus for the week. Well, for those weeks that I actually plan ahead. That way I can shuffle things around if something comes up that changes the evening plans. And I may try index cards for my daily list of to-dos. At least I could put it in my pocket. I have to admit, though, that I absolutely love having the “smart” phone for keeping my calendar and addresses. When I am out, I don’t have to worry about making an appointment that conflicts with another one, because everything is right there on my phone. If I need to mail something spur of the moment, all of my addresses are there, along with phone numbers. I also have notes on all kinds of things. I started keeping a books list of books that I wanted to check out. That list has now expanded to Books 2009, Books 2010, and now Books 2011. There’s a list of restaurants that we’ve read about and want to try out. I set reminders for myself to take something out of the freezer or a website that I want to check out.

In the how-do-they-do-that department:

This is the design for the Broad Art Foundation in Los Angeles. You can read more here. Does this remind you of those honeycomb decorations? We used white honeycomb bells to make the little ghosts below.

In the reading—um, listening—department. I am currently listening to The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton. It alternates between three time periods: the 1900s, 1975, and 2005, so since I am working while listening, I sometimes forget where I am in the timeline, but overall find this to be an interesting story.

As I said here, I am practicing hatching, pretty randomly with no real structure to it. I have pulled out a couple of tapestry books to see what is said about hatching. I have the Nancy Harvey book shown below, and one by Kirsten Glasbrook. I like both of the books for different reasons. The Glasbrook book has such whimsical tapestries pictured and that is very appealing, but I think the one by Kathe Todd-Hooker is best for me because of the line drawings. If I really am going to explore this year, I will need to try a few new-to-me techniques. These books may get a little bit of a workout.

Do you ever wish you could have the time (and money) to see all kinds of art? I saw this picture, read that it’s woven, and was astonished. It’s so smooth it looks like pottery. I would love to know more about this and to see it in person. Alas, I guess I will have to enjoy vicariously via the internet.Hat woven by Isabella Edenshaw, painted by Charles Edenshaw, c. 1900. MOA A2382.

I have checked this book out of the library and checked on buying my own copy, but always stopped because of the price. I wasn’t sure if it would be actually very valuable to me doing the kind of weaving I do. This picture came from Amazon, by the way. I am in the process of going through all my bookshelves a few at a time and yesterday took two big boxes of unwanted books to the closest Half Price bookstore. While waiting for my “offer,” I browsed the shelves, starting with the weaving section. Well, imagine my surprise when I spied this book on the shelf—the only copy, hardback version—for $7.00. I snapped it up and used part of my used book money to pay for it.

I am still practicing my skill at hatching. I have done this process before, but not so much in one piece. As you can see in the picture above, there is hatching, but mostly in one small area. The piece on the loom has eight butterflies, which translates to eight color sections, each requiring hatching. I tried to develop a “system” of advancing and retreating the weft, but have gone back to random, whatever-seems-right-at-the-moment hatching. Both the good thing and the bad thing about what I’m doing now is that the colors are mostly very closely related. When I arrive at the orange and yellows section, my hatching may become more noticeable.  

I was wondering if there might be an illustration of hatching on THE WEB (!!!), and this is what turned up in a search. A workshop by Kathe Todd-Hooker at the 2011 Association of NW Weavers’ Guilds Conference. Go there and take a look at the picture used to illustrate the workshop. All I can say is WOW! James Koehler also has a workshop coming up at the Intermountain Weavers Conference, and as usual, his work is another WOW! When I did a Google search for “hachure weaving,” the illustrations below were available, but still not really what I wanted. I will also share some others, including the fashion statement at the end.

At any rate, I am getting much practice in hatching right now. And since I can see the warp ties on the warp beam, it’s anybody’s guess what the size of this current piece will end up being. Maybe I should take bets… Kind of fits in with my theme of “explore” though.

There’s something about a new year and a new calendar. My main calendar is in Outlook on my computer, synced to my phone. I won’t give up the computer calendar, especially with the phone, because I can always look up dates when making an appointment and check its availability. I also like that I can set reminders of little things, like turn off the water outside or a website that I wanted to look up. The reminder feature on my phone is set for a type of gong. The first time I heard that sound I was driving and kept wondering if my car was doing something strange! I’ve adjusted since. With all the wonderfulness of computer calendars and reminders, I still like a paper calendar. I like to make to-do lists, jot down things I want to get done at some point in the week or month. During the short time that I sewed for a living, I started using an appointment book that had every 30 minutes blocked out, in the hope that I could organize myself. That’s still my preferred method of organizing my day, which may seem redundant to those of use who were born organized. For 2011, I bought a new kind of calendar book. It is called At-A-Glance Quick Notes. So far, I am loving this calendar! Here’s the way the right side of the page looks. The yellow part is for notes, which, so far, seems to work with the way my brain works. I can jot things down and plug them into the appropriate day or time frame to get it done. I’ve even been jotting down things of interest to me as I read the morning paper. (We’ll see how that part goes when I want to find that again.) I also like that Sunday is a full day, not just a partial day. Of course, to get all of those columns, some writing space had to be given up in each column, but I think I can live with that. Now, I just have to actually LOOK at the calendar each day!

I love hearing how people organize themselves. Anybody want to share?

Source

I’ve read about and thought zentangle would be fun, but until I read Claudia’s ( of Mirrix loom fame) post about her efforts and how she made it her own, I’d just kind of given up on the idea. Maybe I’m just not “free” enough? I did make some notecards with colored pens that were zentangle-like, but not the “real” thing. There are actual study plans for grades 3-6 on the site. Is that what I need? I always think that a glimmer of a design might shine through the doodling.

On to weaving—I took out the two inches that I had woven on the current work and started all over. I wasn’t happy with the jumpiness of the supposed-to-be curves. In the middle of the night it occurred to me that I was going to have to change the weaving and use hatching to get the effect that I want. This, after commenting on Rebecca Mezoff’s blog about how I didn’t like to do hatching. Must’ve been fate after that! Now have several new inches woven and am much happier with the results. You can see that the colors on the right are so close together that I have to really watch the beginning and end of a color section. The problem on the horizon now is the warp, or perhaps, the lack of. So, I’m just going to weave until I can weave no more.

My studio has a high ceiling, and I have taken advantage of that by using the space above the closet doors to hang locker baskets to hold yarns. I also need a place to put finished pieces that are all rolled and wrapped up in their blankies.It occurred to me that the space above the windows might be a good location for a long shelf to hold work. Tuesday I have an appointment at the Container Store. Their annual Elfa sale is happening right now, so I’m going to see if it is feasible to put one shelf between the ceiling and the top of the shades (19 inches) centered on this wall. The shelf would end up being about 19 feet long if it goes all the way across. I may have to go to Plan B (????) if the sale is not big enough. I’ve thought of other possible solutions, but don’t want to clutter up the studio any more than it already is. We shall see…

I gave up New Year’s resolutions years ago. It was always the same anyway—get more exercise, eat healthier, and get more organized. Then I started hearing about choosing a word for the year. I thought that might be more feasible, but then there were just too many from which to choose. I don’t know where I first heard of this idea, but I read more here. It became a what to choose, what to choose exercise, so I did nothing. I just noticed a post on Facebook on the TAFA page from quilt artist Cindy Grisdela. She said that last year she chose the word “expand,” but this year she has chosen “explore.” I really like that word, although what I really want to choose is “prosperity” the word explore might be more in keeping with what I want to do. Oh, well, too many words again. Maybe I’ll just keep rocking along and completing a year without choosing a word again.

After wiping the frost off the windshield this morning, we got on the road to Austin. On the way, we made a few stops. First to Luckenbach, where the smoke was already pumping out the chimney for cooking barbeque later in the day. Interesting—the road to Luckenbach is called Town Loop Drive. Most loops bypass towns, but this one is literally a loop that takes you to the town, where maybe two families and lots of free-ranging roosters live. My camera lens kept fogging up from the cold outside as it was still freezing outside, plus it was still so early it was hard to find good light. After this brief detour, we headed to Austin. Below you can see the reason for adding an hour to the return by adding this city to our drive—Hill Country Weavers.Each room in this small house on Congress Ave is filled to the brim with yarns, although most are for knitting nowadays. On a warmer day, Congress Avenue is worth strolling along and poking into all its eclectic and funky shops. Gee, guess that means I may have to go back in the spring or summer! In this shot, the section of yarns below the hanging sweaters is filled with yarns from Habu. I wanted to get some more paper yarn, so I was glad to see this section. By the way, Habu is having a sale.

Pictures came from here.

As often as we have been to Fredericksburg, a town in what we Texans call The Hill Country, we have never been to the Nimitz Museum, pictured above. I have to admit that our hill country is beautiful and the home of lots of interesting places worth a visit. There’s the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, the Antique Rose Emporium, Wildseed Farms, and the famous Luckenbach, to name a few. However, a cold winter day is not ideal weather for visiting.