06.10.09
Posted in Classes at 7:00 am by deRomilly
I miss needlework shows. I miss CATS (and having it local so I didn’t have to fork out the cash for a hotel room). I haven’t been able to afford EGA Seminars. I miss them.
I was reading Havi Brooks blog archives the other day (it’s taking me a LONG time to get through them because there’s so much wonderful information that I have to stop and digest as I work through it…) And she said this about what happens at conferences:
Connections. Friendships. Torrid love affairs of the mind. This is sometimes also called “networking”.
~Havi Brooks (& Selma)
Yup. That’s it exactly. I MISS sitting around the table talking to Eileen Bennett about the 5 different ways we know to do a chain stitch and what’s the easiest to use when… I miss being able to go book shopping with Linn Skinner (of course part of that is the fact that we no longer live in the same town, but still…).
I met one of my best face to face friends on usenet – rec.crafts.textiles.needlework way back when and when I moved to NC, there she was. 
But for me, working on a computer 8 hours a day means I don’t necessarily want to see one when I get home, so the online community suffers a bit for me. I have what appears to be odd taste in needlework (I like a little bit of everything, from crewel to cross stitch, to stumpwork and everything in between), so I miss the big needlework shows and conferences.
All of which adds up to: I need to start attending art workshops and the few needlework shows that are still out there… we need to support them or they’re going to disappear in this economy. And dance workshops. And any workshop or conference that is part of something you are passionate about. There’s just SOMETHING cool about being in a room full of people who “get it” and don’t look at you like you’re insane when you start babbling about how mad youare that they discontinued DMC Medici wool — or that you just HAVE to have another jingly hipscarf, even though you’ve got thirty hanging in your closet… You may start out alone, but by the end of the first hour you’ve got more people to hang out with than you’d think. (Oh, and the “celebrities”? They’re just people who love what you love, too…
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06.08.09
Posted in Artwork at 7:00 am by deRomilly
At my day job I spend my day staring at a computer in a private office in an office space consisting of mostly male programmers. The office is nice. A cubicle for a writer is difficult, to say the least. And I love the fact that I can work directly with the developers if I need to. But it’s isolating: it’s the nature of the job. You can’t write with people talking to you all the time.
So what do I do at home? Well, I teach bellydance and am a member of a wonderful troupe, a decidedly NOT private endeavor. This is good. I get to be social three times a week at least – no, I HAVE to be social, which is good for this natural hermit. And I make art. I design needlework patterns (by the way, the business license went through last month… we’re getting there!) And I draw and paint.
I love to take the stitching and the blogging and the design-work to the coffee shop by myself. The fact that there are people around me is inspiring. But what I really enjoy is that for the most part, they ignore me. I can feel like I’m a social being and a hermit all at the the same time. And sometimes, just sometimes, someone will catch sight of what I’m drawing and ask me what gallery I’m in. OK, it’s only happened once, but it made me feel very good – like maybe this art thing COULD become more of my life.
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06.03.09
Posted in Blogroll at 7:00 am by deRomilly
I mentioned a few posts ago that if she were still alive, I thought my mother would be out here shimmying along with me, probably leading the dance troupe, actually.
She and my Dad are very much alike in their love of life, if not of dancing (he just doesn’t get it, though he attended every one of my ballet performances for over 20 years just to support me.) I think he appreciates the bellydance more, especially when we throw in the comedy!
However, he is, unlike most 75 year olds (which is his age as of March), extremely technologically savvy. He was a technical writer, writing manuals for heavy equipment for Weyrhauser and then for animatronic machinery for Delta Tau. He understands more electronics than I could ever hope to – and has a general amateur radio license, which he’s had for over 50 years. OK, so he didn’t have the general license until they changed the rules 10 years or so ago. But he’s avid. He introduced me to computers and programming when I was 11, and to what became the internet soon thereafter with Compuserv.
And now he’s discovered the rest of the web. True to form, he’s jumped in with both feet. If you’re at all interested in how one lives well with both diabetes and kidney failure, go read his blog. If I know him, he’ll cover everything – from muzzle loading guns to medical procedures, to metalsmithing. And I know he’s starting a new blog devoted to muzzle loading. Leave him a comment. He may claim to be an introvert, but he gets a kick out of people reading his work. Most true writers do!
Dad’s Blogs…Yup. He’s now got multiples!
Life with Dialysis
Muzzleloading!
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06.01.09
Posted in Design Theory at 7:00 am by deRomilly
Stumpwork detail
If you’ve been following me you know I took Sharon Boggin’s Encrusted Crazy Quilting class. I’m loving it to death. Every time I take another class from this lady I find another layer of myself and how to work it into my work.
In this case, I’m trying to find more depth in my work. A friend of mine, one to whom I’ve taught stumpwork techniques, laughed heartily when I told her this. I think she missed my point. Stumpwork is dimensional, yes, and very pretty – I’ll keep teaching it and doing it. But texturally, it’s not particularly layered or deep. I can find cool thing after cool thing in historic stumpwork designs, but in general they are beside one another. The thing about what Sharon does is the sheer baroque depth of it all –
First Encrusted CQ Block
So anyway, class completed, my block now looks like this (click the photos for details):
And I’ve finished a second one:
Second CQ block
And working on a third and fourth (they’re lighter). These four will turn into a small wall hanging, taking lessons from the Sumptuous Stitches class, and the Studio Journal class, I have built to a theme of Madame Pompadour: something I came to as I realized that my blocks all reflected the colors in paintings of her in my print collection. It’s evocative, there won’t be anything specifically figurative, but I’ll know. Although I am toying with the idea of using her quotes in the sashing when I put it together. I rather like “Intelligence has no gender.”
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