The rooms were very nice. Mine was large enough for a sofa. And for once I had absolutely no trouble with noise. My first foray was to get ice for a glass of water. And when I returned to my room, my key would not work. Worked fine to let me into the vending area, just wouldn't open my door. So I left my ice bucket on the floor and went downstairs for new keys. Never had another problem the remainder of the weekend. I went downstairs to sign in. Got a zinger to attach my scissor to myself, a small tool tote, a beautiful thread winder, and my GCC of Luan Callery's "Summer Dreams." Prepare yourselves to hear my moan and whine about stumpwork later this year. Finished projects are due in late fall. We started by joining in friendship for pizza in what we soon found out was going to be a very crowded classroom later.
At 6 p.m. Friday night my first class met. Catherine Jordan teaching "Sailing Away." This is a keepsake box. We learned how to paint our linen before stitching on it. The top of the box has a three masted ship and a whale's tale. The interior of the box has a whale. We painted the sky, water, land, and sand. Top photo I took in class as I was going to take my first stitch over one. Next photo is a scan of both pieces with my hull and one mast stitched which is as far as I got in class. This would be the last actual stitching I accomplished in class all weekend. Catherine brought many of her beautiful creations for us to view. If you ever get a chance to take a class with her, go for it. Between dyeing and painting, I have no fear any more of altering my own linen.
While in Catherine's class we realized that something had changed in the hotel. A whole bunch of tweens had arrived with their traveling soccer teams for some tournament. No chance of going to the pool on Friday night after class.
I, like always, did not sleep so well. But gamely got up early to get breakfast and lots of coffee. And then it was off to Pam Darney's Quaker class, "Love and Live Happy." Pam has a magnetic personality and is always a joy. The first half of the class was about how to fit your name in the allotted space - many different ideas here, including a terrific tip for me as my last name begins "LaB..." I can fit in my last name by doing my "a" over one above the bottom of the capital "L." We all signed her ledger and have created a register for these pieces if someone in the future is looking for information about these samplers, there will be a paper trail. She demonstrated how she both hides and reveals information in her samplers. We talked about color and manipulation of overdyed threads. She works almost exclusively now with Glorianna silks and it's amazing seeing the 50 and 100 yards hanks of this together. Much easier to judge color this way, than from a tightly twisted skein. Second half of the class was all about color, why this and not that. What happens if you add this color to a palette and take out that color. A visual treat for those of us who love to play the color swapping game. We ended with a show and tell of her work. At this point she's got 26 samplers, including two exquisitely stitched ones that combine two different colors of linen - the joins on these pieces are impeccable. And one she calls her hall mirror sampler as the words are all stitched backwards so you can read them in a mirror.
Did I mention that the National Tapestry was on view? Thank you, Carol Dam, former EGA National President, for lugging these crates around and being the guardian of the Tapestry. I'll post more photos of this later.
I'm not quite finished with my weekend yet. There's some shopping. And one more class. Tomorrow!
1 comment:
You are going to love the stumpwork! I have done that piece and it is just exquisite when you finish!
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