Minnesota ... Brrrrrrr

As I write this, it is 0 degrees in the Twin Cities.  I am not there. Yet.  It is a balmy 18 degrees in Michigan where I still live.  Wind chill brings it closer to zero.  I am prepping for our move, helped along by a cold snap here.  I have found Handmade MN, a great blog by Minnesota etsy-ers.  I am almost finished with my first ever sweater, which will get worn daily I'm thinking once we move.  (It is creamy white wool, now knit into a short version of the Einstein coat for all you knitters.  Photo coming upon completion.)  The knitting is how I pass my time during those showings when I have to vamoose, or before my classes while I wait for students to show up so I can sign them in.  It also helped pass the time on our 14 hour drive to MN over the holidays ... and then back again.  All my wool roving and Woolynns paraphernalia has been boxed up, though the rest of the house awaits packing.  I have so many ideas, I am bursting to felt something.  That creativity will help on those first isolated days after we move.  At least I hope it will.  It has been a long time since I moved somewhere new and started over.  But why do we have to start over in February?

Change with a capital C

Last time I wrote, I was inspired to start creating seamless garments.  Since then, I have done two holiday shows, had a Black Monday sale on Etsy, learned more about pricing retail vs. wholesale, and generated a list of all my new projects that is a mile long (and so exciting to contemplate making).  And then the news we'd hoped for came.


My husband got a good job offer ... in Minnesota.  


If you don't know what living in Michigan is like right now, think grey and depressed.  We'd been in a recession long before the housing crisis.  I have watched so many friends lose jobs, or pick up the pieces when they survived a devastating layoff and had to take on their former colleagues' work for no additional pay.  Savings starts depleting and the credit card debts still increase.  Stress levels are high wherever you go.  Because of that stress, my yoga classes are still well-attended.  And somehow my scarves are still selling, but only to people for whom cutting back means not going skiing in Banff this year.  But M's job has been untenable, and my work is not enough to keep us here.  


In a little over eight weeks, our family will uproot some pretty deep roots (we've been here over 12 years), and set some new roots in very cold soil near the Twin Cities.  The children will be fine eventually.  My husband is better and we haven't even gotten there yet.  I am somewhere in between.  My yoga career flourished here and I found a new calling working with fiber.  I have a large community of support for both fields.  I know I can start over in MN and it will come together over time.  And best of all, we will finally be near a large contingent of family, both my husband's and mine.  (My MIL has already started mentioning art fairs to try and get into this Spring and Summer.)


Anticipation mixed with sadness.


Wanted:
a better job situation for M
economic improvement
new house
new schools
renewing old friendships
extended family nearby
meeting the yoga community
finding the local handmade community
great restaurants
bluer skies (literally as well as figuratively)


Missing:
Waldorf community
yoga community
all my mamas and babies I've been blessed to help through that transition 
friends
cousins
our shul and Rabbi 
Leon & Lulu
Namaste yoga
my teacher in Honor, MI


When someone states a truth about you so obvious that you balk at its correctness, you know you need to work with your resistance.  Long ago, my yoga teacher told me I don't like change.  I thought about my life in theatre with several jobs a year.  I thought about moving cross country more times than I can count on one hand.  I though about my willingness to change colleges, change careers.  I knew he was wrong, and I argued in my head with him for weeks after he said it.  Then I realized he was right; I don't like change.   But having done it all my life, I am good at it.  I look at my deadline for packing this house  up after M leaves to start work and I know I can do this.  I look at starting over at 45 and I know I can do this.  I look at my children and see how much help they will need leaving the only place they've ever known, and I know I can do this.


And after I'm done, I can pull that list of Woolynns projects out and start on that.

Seamless

The first felting workshop I took was creating a seamless purse.  I remember Margarida explaining how we would use a resist and layer the wool roving around it. I also remember my mind balking at the explanation that there was "a front and a back to the inside and a front and a back to outside."  Working three-dimensionally stumped me for a few moments and then, looking at a sample of a finished purse, suddenly it clicked.  When I chose to make a second purse a month later, I told Margarida I wanted to put a pocket on the inside.  She looked skeptical until I explained how I would do it. Once she saw that I grasped the process for construction, she let me do my thing.  (I've been carrying this purse for almost three years now.)

Purse on left is second effort;  purse on right is first.

Since then, I have made a few more seamless purses, but have been content to mostly work with silk scarves and wraps.  I have found that what interests me most in making a scarf is how it lays. Can I get the silk to become a shawl collar?  If I lay the wool this direction, will it cinch in at the waist?  Inceasingly, this has led me to look into making seamless clothing.  The fiber artists I'm drawn to are doing long coats, little bolero jackets, dresses, vests, even theatrical costumes.  I've been sketching out a dress and a skirt I want to make and I know I have the mechanics down generally.  So it was time.  As much as I want to make that skirt, I knew I had to start smaller.  I decided on a vest.

I took a sleeveless top from my closet and measured it.  These projects shrink about 40 - 50% from the inital size of the design.  So I added 40% to the length and width and to the armhole openings.  I was so focused on the construction that once I placed the silk around the resist (a big piece of bubble wrap cut to size), I realized I had no design in mind.  I rummaged through my wool and finally decided on a pattern of purples framed in black sort of like stained glass.

Laying out the wool for the back side came first.  I added yarns and wisps of silk hankie to offset the solid sections of wool colors.  I have long learned that, once felted, mulitple colors can still look flat.  Then I did a little wetting down and brief felting, so I could flip it and lay out the front of the vest.  At this point I didn't know if it would remain whole and become a top, or if I would cut it and make it a vest.

Back

Front

I rolled it all up and rolled and rolled and rolled (periodically re-wetting it down and rolling from the other direction).  Several hours later, I removed the resist and began fulling it.  The rolling allows the wool fibers to migrate into each other forming a solid piece of fabric.  The fulling is how it shrinks and becomes felt.  I rubbed the entire vest by hand against a textured board (think washboard) until it no longer stretched anywhere.  It quickly became clear that I should have used a 50% increase in size, but I was still hopeful it might fit a small adult.  Fulling took a long time, rubbing in different directions to control the shape.  But finally it was done.  I hung it up to dry last night and took some entertaining self-portraits so I could display the finished product.  Yes, it fits me, but barely. My nine-year-old wants it.

Skyburst

Figured out how to felt it.  Several ideas of how to wear it.  One option shown here.

Inspiration

I spend a morning shopping with a friend.  I need a dress for my son's bar mitzvah and, in search of something interesting to wear, we explore several little stores in downtown Rochester Hills.  While out and about, I spot a large wrap: a rectangle split up the center, length-wise, on one half.  The two thinner pieces hang in front of the body and the uncut side hangs down the back.  It could be tacked together on the sides to make a vest-like tunic, or it could be left as is so the thinner pieces can wrap like a scarf.

At home later, I sort through my silk yardage.  Light grey silk chiffon with a bluish hue to it calls to me.  I put another long table alongside my usual work surface to accommodate the extra width of this project.  I have never worked this large before.  Carefully, I cut the silk right up the middle and fold the edges over.  Now the wool.  Merino wool roving in a dark teal blue that I find I use frequently in my work.  Another ball of roving in variegated shades of grey, black and white.  More wool in a steely blue grey.  Thick layers of all three colors along what will be the bottom edges when worn.  I'm hoping for a wonderful ruffle of soft wool.  Then I take wool and run it along the outside edges of this large work.  The exposed silk edging should gather and mirror the wool ruffles along the bottom.  I work similarly near the edges of the center cut.  This will cover the cut edge as well as continue the ruffle idea.

But here is this opening that will sit on the neck and shoulders.  It has a raw edge that needs wool so it won't unravel.  I haven't cut it in such a way as to create a collar (maybe next time).  As I start to lay wool, I use the combination of colors I used for the bottom ruffles.  I have no precise idea as I begin, but slowly it becomes a small skyburst as I gently place whisps of teal against the grey.

It looks too flat.  I fumble through my bin of wool yarns, pleased to find a silvery grey similar to, but not quite the same as, the solid grey roving.  Always drawn to swirling shapes, I unwind the yarn in small loops along the sides and the bottom edges.  I continue the skyburst feeling with streaks of silver yarn radiating outward from the neck.

Still something is missing.  I can't find my embroidery floss.  Did my daughter sneak off with it to make friendship bracelets?  I really want to finish this.  Oh, yes.  I forgot about the silk throwster's waste I bought this summer.  Pieces of teal that work brilliantly in scatterings all over the wool.

It looks amazing.

Now, how on earth do I felt a piece this large?

to be continued ....

My stash by Lynn S.

yards of cut silk chiffon

iridescent silk scarves in cellophane wrappers
three giant zip-loc bags of wool roving:
         reds/oranges/yellows/purples, blues/greens, black/browns/greys/white

second-hand scarves from resale shops

a rainbow of hand-dyed cotton scrim from Australia

embroidery floss spooled on cards and stacked neatly in a storage box

a bin of wool yarn with skeins standing on end 

a dresser full of cotton and acrylic blend yarns

two shopping bags of novelty yarn

several bars of Kiss My Face olive oil soap

A coming of age ... of sorts

The heathen Jew was raised by Jewish parents who sort of observed.
She went to services on some holidays.  Celebrated at home.
The smells of roasted chicken, matzoh ball soup, latkes, sponge cake, shmaltz are her Jewish identity.

Grown up, barely, she purchases a menorah and lights the candles when she remembers.
On tour with Jesus Christ Superstar, she holds a makeshift seder in her hotel room for fellow cast members.  She finally gets to do Fiddler, and is the only Jewish person in the cast.  (Similar experience with Yiddle with a Fiddle.)

She marries a lapsed Catholic; they have two children.
Knowing that the children will learn all about Christianity just by growing up in this country, she begins celebrating at least some of the Jewish holidays in her home.  Seders, latke dinners, the occasional baking of challah with very young hands helping.

The children are not confused as the heathen Jew feared.  They know that they get Chanukah gifts from one set of grandparents, and Christmas gifts from another.  Santa comes, too.  They know about Jesus and atheism because various aunts and uncles have differing beliefs.  The heathen Jew teaches them that no one knows anything for sure, so any of it is just that: a belief.  The children have their own relationship with religion and spirituality.  It includes God.

As the oldest child grows, he takes on his Jewish identity more strongly.  He asks to go to Hebrew school.  The heathen Jew is carried along.  The family joins a synagogue.  The lapsed Catholic father attends as much as the heathen Jew.  The children begin religious education.  It is a welcoming congregation, and one in which the heathen Jew and the lapsed Catholic feel comfortable together.  Holiday services become regular events.  They even go to Shabbat services on occasion.  The music is glorious. The heathen Jew had not realized how many prayers and melodies were still with her from her childhood.  The lapsed Catholic starts humming along.  The heathen Jew starts taking off work on the High Holidays.

A "wedding" occurs.  A Torah is commissioned and a celebration more moving than words can describe weds this Torah to this Synagogue.  Each family member has written a letter in this Torah.  A cantor from Berlin accepts the very old one being replaced.  She speaks with such passion for learning and gratitude for her Judaism.  The cantor returns several months later and leads a service.  Her interpretation of the text moves the heathen Jew unlike any sermon she's ever heard.  The heathen Jew has found her teacher.

The rabbi discovers the heathen Jew's past singing career and asks her to join him leading a music service.  The heathen Jew agrees and takes home a CD and a prayer book to memorize the less familiar melodies and words.

High Holidays, present tense.  Five weeks from her son's bar mitzvah, the heathen Jew is at the synagogue celebrating the new year.  The cantor from Berlin is singing.  The rabbi is singing.  Their voices mix as though they have always sung together.  In the rabbi's sermon, a quote that hits home: "I would rather choose to believe in God and be wrong, than not believe in God and be right." Two days later, the bar mitzvah of a converted adult.  One who chooses to not only be Jewish, but to add study of Torah to his life.  A conversation after with the cantor, who is still visiting.  A statement from the rabbi that my work with wool and silk would make beautiful prayer shawls.

It may be time to drop the word heathen.