Finished the hem on the final piece yesterday. Today I will lash rods onto the two newest finished pieces, stick rods through the hems of two others, and take pictures–an experiment–rather than take them to the photographer. Then off to buy a couple of shelf units and some black sheets to go behind the grid so as to look kind of like a wall and divide my booth space from my neighbor’s.
I’m feeling a real need to do some design work, so may do that in front of the TV and relax tomorrow night.
I should never be allowed around anything to do with math. I drew my booth out on graph paper to plan where to hang pieces. Duh! I drew sides with 10 feet in length, when I only have 4 2-foot panels for each side. Today I decided to place pictures side by side on the computer for the plan, and I realized my mistake. I can fix one side by using a panel that is 8 feet high with the other 6 foot high panels. But the other side? Still under consideration.
Got the Yellow Mounds piece ready except for the actual stitching of the hem. The hanging rod will then just go through the hem. Picture later … have to go buy the last minute items needed.
It’s a beautiful day here today. Finally, no winds, and it has warmed up after a freeze last night. Uncovered the tomatoes. Haven’t checked on the cucumbers and squashes yet.
Today I went to Lowe’s and bought track lighting to use in my booth. Decisions, decisions! And expensive! I hope this is going to work. The plan is hang them from the beams of the canopy. Then there is the decision on bulbs. I went with full-spectrum halogen bulbs. It was a choice of that or what they call “daylight.” Also bought an extension cord, power strips, cable ties, and of course, the track for the lights.
I will finish the last few inches of the needle weaving before dinner. Tomorrow is the day for lashing the stainless steel rods onto the pieces, which means another Hitchcock movie. Not sure this next one will be good for watching while doing this task—I checked out Vertigo from the library. If it requires looking up too much, I’ll get the iPod out and listen to WeaveCast podcasts. I could listen to books as Jennifer suggests, but I’m not sure I have the attention span to actually finish one right now. Podcasts are just the right length for my current gnat-mind capabilities.
Here’s what I’m doing today. Very tedious. To relieve the boredom that I have for this job, I am watching an old Hitchcock movie, The Man Who Knew Too Much. I was keeping a notebook to jot down things that popped into my head, but not today. I was sitting there with my phone on the table beside me and realized that I could take this picture and send it to the computer with Bluetooth. Simple, huh?
After lunch I will be going to Lowe’s to pick up stuff that I will need when setting up my booth. More lights, good bulbs, cable ties, extension cord, power strip. It goes on and on…
Next Project
Here are the yarns that will become the next rug, after the fish gets off the loom.
I probably won’t get any “real” weaving done until after Main Street. The baby skeins in the picture are from my microwave dyeing experiments. The colors are not really true, but that’s an issue that will have to wait for another day.
I heard Wanda Jackson is a new inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and wanted to see if she was the same person I heard about on NPR a couple of weeks ago. She is. Seems that she was doing rockabilly way before some of the guys that are famous for that style were doing their acts, people like Jerry Lee Lewis and even Elvis. Here’s a YouTube video of Wanda Jackson.
I know, I should be doing other things, but I DID get the front yard mowed. Looking at the climbing roses blooming around the porch made it all worthwhile.
If you go to YouTube and look up Wanda Jackson, you’ll find many videos. She seems to have a fondness for dresses with fringe. Great for rock I would imagine.You could collect a whole bunch of these videos of Wanda and other folks from that era, and have an aerobic workout, you know…
Counting today, I have 11 days until load-in for Main Street. By the way, it’s pretty cool to go to the Main Street website and see my own work flashed among all the other artists’ work.
There’s a list a mile long of things that need to happen before then.
Then there’s the everyday stuff—housework, yard mowing, laundry, etc. I actually enjoy mowing the yard. Where else can you see what you’ve accomplished so easily? We may get another freeze this week, so that means protecting the tomatoes again. The poor cucumbers and squashes have sprouted but don’t seem to know what to do next, with this crazy weather. Don’t know why I’m in such a rush anyway. Back when I used to have a huge garden, I always planted my seeds in March, but didn’t put out tomatoes and peppers until April 15.
In the message that the Jay Downie (CEO? man-in-charge?) sent to participating artists, he mentioned that the Houston Bayou Festival did well in March. Kind of a pep talk think, I guess. I usually have the philosophy that I should try something new 3 times before giving it up. So, with that idea in mind, I plan to do at least 3 shows before giving this up for a bad idea. Historically, fiber art like mine have not done well at Main Street, but I will get that all-important booth shot that other venues require for jurying.
Today
Today will simply be getting the mowing and laundry done for the next week. Vacuuming? Dusting? Who needs it!
I am honored to be nominated by Shannon and Jennifer for this blog award. So, now, since I just posted a long list of what I think are interesting blogs, where do I go from here? I don’t know whether these have already been nominated or not, but I enjoy their blogs.
I’m going to add two more, but don’t even look if you aren’t interested in any opinions on political stuff. Or if you object to anything profane. Uppercase Woman and Margaret and Helen. These two are widely separated in age groups. The first is a mother with a toddler, and the other two are retired, but they both have an interesting take on all things social and political.
In case you haven’t already noticed, there are a lot of really good blogs out there.
TODAY
Today I am working on needle-weaving the ends back in on two finished pieces while watching an old Hitchcock movie. I find finishing work extremely boring. Then I have a smaller piece to hem. I have made the decision that on smaller pieces I will be doing hems; I think they hang better that way, and I’m sure these smaller pieces will never go on a floor.
TWO WEEKS! Yikes!
Yes, only two weeks as of yesterday before I have to load-in for Main Street. I’m scared to death, not having ever done anything like this before.
Arts City Austin
I looked on the Arts City Austin website to see which artists are participating. Unless I missed them, I only see 2 fiber artists participating. Both do beautiful work. One does weaving in furniture design, and the other does books. No traditional weavers that I see. What does this mean? Austin is a show that I considered entering, but I have no booth shot, a requirement. Now I’m wondering…
Somehow these pictures didn’t get included in the post.
They are of the altar at the entrance of
Mi Tierral
Speaking of the economy, I received a message from the American Craft Council that its shows in Charlotte and Sarasota have been cancelled. Here’s a quote from the message:
The Charlotte and Sarasota shows have provided great community outreach but unfortunately have experienced a decline in artist participation, public attendance and revenue. It no longer makes sense for the Council to subsidize these losses. This change will allow us to focus on our four shows located in diverse geographic areas: the flagship show in Baltimore and the shows in Atlanta, St. Paul, and San Francisco. Through these four shows, the Council will concentrate on presenting the best shows and best work for our artists, members and public audiences. We look forward to working with all artists who choose to present some of the nation’s finest craft at these venues.
Guess this means I don’t have to make the decision to spend the money to go to Charlotte. That really was going to be an expensive undertaking for me. But at least I can say that I was selected to participate, right?
I always feel inspired after even a short trip like the one this past weekend. I even figured how to sync my new phone with the computer this morning! Now if I could just get the Bluetooth devices to embrace each other!
Now I notice that none of the pictures are not clicking to the larger size today. What have I done now? “I’ll think about it tomorrow.”
Great Weekend
We left Friday morning for a little drive to San Antonio. That’s about 5 hours from the Fort Worth area. We used the GPS, but rejected I-35 for a more scenic route. Unknowingly, we had the parameters on the GPS set to avoid traffic, which means we went on backroads of Texas that weren’t even on our paper map. Because of the drought, our bluebonnets are not as plentiful this year as usual, but they are still thrilling to see. We Texans love our bluebonnets! Somehow when we see the bluebonnets in bloom, all’s right with the world. In good years, the flowers would cover the hills and everything would look blue during the peak season. This year the flowers are clustered in areas where more moisture would have collected.
CHT
The Contemporary Handweavers of Texas biannual conference was up and running when we got to SA. I tried out my new phone camera and used my regular camera to take a few pictures. 
The one on the bottom is of Lone Star Loom Room’s booth, taken with the camera. The one on top was taken with the phone, which I have trouble holding still, for some reason. That’s a snap of Heritage Art’s booth.
Linda Ligon, of Handwoven magazine fame, was the keynote speaker and the judge of members’ 
work.
I am happy to say that Sine Wave won second place in the Art Concept category.
Friday night we drove downtown (I was reminded again of why I don’t like big cities-freeways!) to the mercado area for dinner at Mi Tierra. Mi Tierra is a Mexican restaurant that has been in business for over 60 years. As you walk in, there is a huge altar of the kind that is usually only seen for El Día de los Muertos. The ceiling of the restaurant were decorated with metallic papeles picados and metallic piñatas.
Mi Tierra is also a bakery and has typical Mexican pastries. And there are pic
tures EVERYWHERE!
On the way home we stopped in a little town called Blanco. In 2000, the population was around 1500. It’s in a popular area of Texas, so I’m sure the population is larger now, but not by too much. So, imagine our surprise to see 20 or more Ferarris 
parked around the courthouse square. Each car has to be in the range of $250,000 to $500,000. What’s this about the economy?