What a Weekend!

 A week ago we had snow and life stopped for a moment or two. We thought we'd be fine this weekend but.....no, we had an ice storm. It could have been much worse but it sure was bad enough. We woke Friday to rain that turned to ice on anything it touched. Everything shut down, even the University of Tennessee.
A state trooper died after he slid off the road on the way to work. He  had a heart attack during the rescue. To make matters worse, the rescue squad that came to help also slid off but then flipped on its side, on the edge of his car.

When things like this happen, you just have to stay home, if possible. There are so many hills here that the chance of sliding off is just too big. They had coated the roads the day before so the interstate was ok and some of the major roads were sort of passable but the secondary roads, not so much, and the tertiary (where I live) not at all!

 The fear was that the ice would stick to the power lines and cause outages. There was some but not in my area!! This time we were fine and warm! Since we couldn't go out, I headed to the studio and wove on my towel warp. I think these towels are going to be fun to use. I've already promises one to my sister because she doesn't quite believe that the towel will work like I said!

 We'd looked forward to this weekend for months. Anita Mayer was coming to teach a 3 day class. The first day was to be on embroidery and the next 2 on clothing. You know what an inspiration she is! Well, the class was supposed to start on Friday.....She ended up having a nice day relaxing at her hostess's home. I'll bet that's rare in her teaching routine! We hated to miss the day but she ended up doing about 2 1/2 days worth of class in the 2 days that we had. We took short breaks for meals but kept working and ended up with a nice notebook of samples and ideas.

Anita always brings a suitcase of clothes, many of which we could try on. There was a rack of clothes, tho, that were her current show pieces, pieces she submits to exhibits, etc. These we could touch but not wear. That's fine! Just looking at these pieces was wonderful. She is well known for her detailed work. She does very little machine work. She'd rather make all the pieces by hand!! This coat is made up of many small pieces. Each piece is completely finished before it's assembled into the garment. Imagine the number of hours she spends working on each garment!!

 The pile on the table were the ones we could try one. In our class notes, we got patterns for most of them. The ones that weren't included, she had the paper patterns for us to copy.

 How cool is it to see a vest that we've seen in Handwoven and the small piece of embroidery that inspired it!!

 The second day we were busy embroidering, making little samples of the things she embroiders onto her pieces. Because of the ice, there were some that we couldn't do but we have the pages of directions included in our notes that allow us to try it on our own.

I took many classes from Anita, over 20 years ago. It's been a long time but those classes still have influenced my work. Having a refresher course like this just hit the spot! Her work has changed, she's added more ideas to what she does and we learnt several new ways to embellish garments that she didn't used to do.
As Anita's been evolving in her work, I think that we should keep striving to learn more and include what we learn in the things that we weave. That doesn't mean that we forget everything we've done and go in a new direction. It just means, take what you've learnt and see how you can tweak something just a bit to expand your repertoire. It doesn't even mean that we should embellish like she does. Her class can spark something entirely different in our work.  It's why I go to conferences. We never quit learning!

Hopefully we'll be able to get Anita to come back sometime when her route comes this way again. There were several of us Tuesday Weavers in the class and I know that we all were inspired to try new things. I know that we all came out of there with our heads swimming with ideas! Guess there'll be a few orders to Dharma in the next few days.....

For now it's back to my royal blue warp that needs to be woven off.
Oh yeah, Friday was icy and nasty. Tomorrow I think we're supposed to be 60 degrees. If you don't like the weather in East Tennessee, just wait a few minutes, it'll change!
Til next week, keep weaving!
Carol