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This morning you get a pop quiz. What is this a photo of? Or, if you prefer, how will it be used?
I’ve got to run to my job at Pfeiffer Nature Center or I’d tell you now. Instead I’ll keep you in suspense for the rest of the day. Do submit your creative ideas on this one! Every year I do my best to get accepted into a show at Chautauqua Institution. The grounds are spectacular, the shoppers pleasant and appreciative, the organizers marvelous. What more could you ask for? Well, what I DIDN’T ask for but and very grateful for is this more-than-quarter page piece in The Chautauquan Daily. I think everyone who stays at the Institution, whether for a week or for the entire summer, reads it.
The photo is from my pictures submitted for jurying this year, the text is from an interview they did with me last year. Or maybe it’s from my narrative for this year – I don’t really remember, to be honest. In either case, I think it’s spectacular! I definitely had people approach me and mention the newspaper. NO WAY I could have afforded to pay for this kind of PR, even in my little, local, weekly paper! Kelly, a weaver in Iowa, is considering starting to do shows in her area, so asked about my booth setup. I promised her I’d do my next post on that topic. I also told Kelly that this is an old shot – probably about 4 years – and indoors. My booth layout evolves and changes over time, and indoors looks different from outdoors, a corner space different from an interior space. I almost never bring my camera to a show. Too many things to think about and keep track of, I don’t need one more, so this is the most recent booth shot I have. I guess I’d better update it soon, since some shows ask for a booth shot. Anyway, here it is. Given all my qualifying statements, I’ll tell you here what remains important to my layout. One thing is this fabric-sided, bamboo-shelved hanging shelf. I roll my scarves and arrange them in the shelves roughly by color. Shoppers are free to look at things in the shelves as well as those draped around. Another constant is shower curtains rods. For most shows I use 6 of them. They are a nice diameter and expand from about 3′ to about 6′. This makes them very flexible to fill the space I need them in. Usually I have two shower curtains on one side of the booth, one hanging higher, one hanging lower. In this photo I only have 1 rod per side, with the other scarves draped over the top bar of my booth. Less than desirable. A third constant is what I call ‘the rod men.” I have two of these stick people, each of which can hold one shawl or two scarves beautifully. Here one is on each side of the booth, they’re now usually paired. Last, I almost always have my little rigid heddle loom in my booth. I try to get a corner space so that I can demo weaving the entire time. I think it makes a huge difference in the interest in and understanding of my work. Plus it gives me something to do. The wicker room divider you see here was the only time I ever used it. It doesn’t really work well with the rest of my setup, or with my weaving. If you’ve never done shows before, I suggest looking at a lot of other booths, both weavers and other crafters/artists. Wander around any art & craft show you can find. Look at how they’re set up, where the artist stands/sits, how they interact (or don’t) with shoppers, how they decorate (or don’t) their booth, how they cover their tables, what their signage is like, and more. There is no right or wrong. Everyone does it differently, so you have to find what works for you. Laura Fry, an incredibly talented weaver and weaving teacher, has put any number of photos of her booth setup on her blog. It’s very different from mine. Scroll through her blog to find them. Yesterday was a very bad day for things electronic at my house.
When I got up in the morning I saw that at some point overnight my electronic, programmable thermostat stopped working. A bit of research told me it might just be the batteries. Replacing them didn’t do the trick, but conversations with my local hardware store and a rep from the manufacturer told me that I can buy a new thermostat much like my old one for under $30. It will need to be wired in, but I believe I can do that myself. And in the interim I can take the top part off the one in my basement and snap it on the one upstairs. All I’ve done so far is spend about an hour fiddling around to get to this point and the fix will be cheap. I moved on to my printer. It stopped working a few days ago, and after some failed attempts at resetting it, it told me it needed a new ink cartridge. I didn’t really think that would solve the problem, but figured I had to try, so on Monday I spent $45 for a new cartridge. Needed to print something yesterday so started by installing that ink cartridge. Of course that didn’t solve the problem, as expected. Back online to get more ideas. I was on the floor unplugging the printer to bring it to a table to try those fixes. When I stood up I bumped my head on my computer stand. No big deal. Except that that bump made some of my coffee jump out of the cup and onto the laptop. Not my old onee that was already having issues, but the newer one my daughter passed on to me on Saturday. Run for towels and hairdrier and hope things dry out while I work on the printer. As it turns out, the printer’s really dead. Poop. I have this brand new color cartridge, a brand new black and an almost new black cartridge for it. I guess I’ll post them on Freecycle to see if anyone has a printer that can use them. Still it’s not all bad news on the printer front, either. Some months ago my son gave me his old printer/scanner/fax. I never hooked it up ‘cuz my printer was working fine. Now I just need to go upstairs and get it, see if it’ll install on my computer, and then buy some ink for it. Meanwhile, back to the coffee/laptop issue. Despite my best efforts, that keyboard isn’t working. First it was missing a few letters, but now it’s typing in Greek. Literally. Greek letters are coming out when I hit any keys. I’ve replaced a keyboard before and can do it again. It’s not too hard or too expensive. You’d think I’d just take the keyboard from my old laptop and put it in the new one, but I don’t think that’s what I’m going to do. My plan had been to donate the old laptop, along with an external monitor provided by my generous son-in-law, to Pfeiffer Nature Center. I think I’ll still follow through with that plan. The biggest downside to all this is time. Each of these problems took time to diagnose and attempt to resolve, and the needed resolutions will take more time. I have a big show this weekend, so time is truly my most valuable commodity. Like Scarlet, I’ll think about it all tomorrow. Or next week. I’ve been reading Meg’s weaving blog for some time. We are extremely different in temperament, weaving style, and locale, but none of that matters. We are both weavers. Meg typically organizes one online weaving exhibition per year, and this is the first time I’ve been able to participate. This year it’s a Small Piece Exhibition, with a maximum size of a standard letter envelope. “I can make time to weave something that size,” I thought. It all sounded so reasonable in early April when Meg posted the guidelines. Suddenly it’s late June and I have only about a week until the deadline when I finally manage to get past the thinking stage and down to serious planning, then warping, weaving, photographing, and posting. I decided to use a technique I’d learned at a workshop I took in Buffalo this spring – Easy Pick Up with Su Butler. Su is amazing, so even though the workshop was 2 hours away, I bit the bullet & did it. Is the process easy? Not exactly, but Su assured us it was much easier than many other pickup processes. And Su’s depth of knowledge, easy and supportive teaching style, and terrific documentation and directions in her handouts made it do-able. Plus the weaving she brought to show us was SO INCREDIBLE it made me think I really wanted to do it. Let me interject here that Su’s been using this technique for years in her weaving. She’s great at it; she’s got the process down pat. Still, her latest piece, a dreamy scarf in (if I recall correctly) 60/2 silk, took her 82 hours to complete. 82 hours for a woman skilled in this process! IMAGINE how gorgeous it is! No. DON’T imagine it, go to her website and look at it. It’s the “Deco” rate me scarf in her Gallery. Back to my work for this exhibit. I set up my loom with 240 ends of 12/2 cotton, sett at 30 EPI. I downloaded some simple graphic images from the web, printed them out, and set to work. First I did a piece I’m not happy with. Several process errors as well as design flaws. Try again with a new design, even simpler than the leaf I did first. Not perfect, but good enough that I’m not embarrassed to use it for this purpose. A simple kitty.
Using the threading I did, the reverse of the cloth gives you a negative image. Only after I cut it off did I see I’d missed a few threads with my shuttle. I assume this can be fixed with needle weaving, but didn’t have the time at this moment…maybe later, as that’d be a good learning experience. I should have been twisting fringe & wet finishing scarves for my show last weekend, but instead my cat was successful enough that I felt compelled to try a third design, a bit more complex. This time I used 2 different colors. I’m happy with the design and my execution of it, but don’t think I’d use 2 colors in one piece next time.
Here’s the other side. Will I try more pickup? Yes. Will I do it soon, when I’m getting ready for shows? Nope. Do I think I can do pickup something the length of a scarf? Nope. Maybe I’ll try it for a pillow or something. Maybe a bracelet. Maybe not. Don’t wait to see what I’m going to do, go to Meg’s site and check out the other work in the Small Piece Exhibition. |
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