Finishing Projects

Holes drilled in house for blowing in insulation

Insulation blown into this hole

September is here and school has started for the children in this area. That means many adults have returned to work too. The evening air is cool (down in the 30's and 40's), pleasant for sleeping, and the day has that distinct smell of summer into fall. I even saw a tree down the street in full red/orange/gold fall colors. Seemed a bit early to me, but this is only my second season in Vermont so what do I know? It definitely feels like the time to finish projects, and shift to a more internal, indoor life. Our house is being weatherized through the Energy Smart of Vermont program, and I had to find something to do while people were drilling holes and blowing in insulation.

It seemed time to finally get that slide show of the summer class at School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) online. It took all day to get the images resized, in order, and labelled. I was very erratic in my taking of pictures, so I apologize to the students if I have left out work, or the quality is poor. I haven't edited things--just put them all in a slideshow. If you click here you can see the work. It was an amazing class and months later I am still in awe of all the work these students produced in just three weeks. While I was working on the images this morning, I received an email inviting me to teach at SAIC again during summer 2010. It is almost as if the energy I was putting into the previous class evoked a response from the universe for the future! (Don't you like how superstitious and willing I am to believe in miracles?) I won't even think about repeating the wonderful experience from summer 2009--I will just imagine a different wonderful experience for 2010.

Ashley Townsend presenting her work this summer at SAIC

Report on Party

Our party was a big success. I kept leaving conversations mid-sentence to go greet new arrivals. I hope no one thought I was rude. The day was blue sky beautiful and the house came alive with all the good energy from our guests. Above you see the wonderful platters we used for serving the food. Holly Walker, who is also new in Randolph, lent them to us. Holly moved here from the Penland community and a mutual friend put us in touch. Her friendship has been one of the signs that the move to Randolph was meant to be. Setting the table with her ceramics was a joy.

You can see some of the food and my friend Marianne McCann enjoying herself. Marianne always enjoys herself, it is one of her gifts. We went to graduate school together at Cranbrook Academy of Art. She lives nearby in Tunbridge. Moving to a new town and having old friends who have known us for years has made the move incredibly easy. Then making new friends was icing on the cake. You can see Marianne's work on her Etsy site.

The other family that drew us to Vermont are the Sacca-Billings, who also live in Tunbridge. Elizabeth Billings was at Cranbrook with Marianne and I, and her husband Michael Sacca, and my husband Mark Goodwin, were part of the spouses team then. Now they have three children, Isaac, Susanna and Mario who keep us laughing and on our toes with practical jokes. The table was full of bright little bottles--and when you opened them you could blow bubbles. Now why did it take me so long to figure out who they came from? Somehow they always get me--no matter how many pranks they pull, I am never prepared. If I could give party favors out through this blog, I would hand you each a small bottle of bubbles.

I did find my two small weavings--Recipes 1 and Recipes 2. Each one is only 7-1/2 inches high by 6-3/4 inches wide. These are the weavings I mentioned in my last post.

Pictures of House and Studio

This is the house! Of course right now the ground and roof are covered with snow. But spring is right around the corner and we hope to add herbs to the beautiful perennials already there. 

Last Spring, before we moved here, I did a series of weavings of the house on my TC-1 loom. They all used a 20/2 tencel warp set at 60 epi. This weaving was done in weft-backed structures of satin and twill bases using three wefts. I imposed a road map of the Randolph area on top of the image of the house, then converted the roads to phrases.

Three views of the studio. There are five looms up there--three Macomber shaft looms, one 24-shaft Louet Magic Dobby, and my TC-1--queen of them all.

By the way, Carol Westfall and Trish Fowler wrote a very nice article on my work in the summer issue of Shuttle, Spindle & Dyepot. Also The Herald, the local Randolph newspaper, ran an article on Mark and I moving to town. If you click on The Herald in previous line you can read the whole article. The author, Stephen Morris, who is editor of The Green Living Journal, was the publisher of the straw bale book we referenced when we built our house in New Mexico. Randolph is full of "small world" connections.