Feb.13,Intense Pattern. The second day started on an upward note. We certainly did more laughing today. People were more at ease and consequently they were more able to absorb. Everyone caught on the the concepts, if not the first time through, then on the second time. We studies the last of the basic nets--the ogees and shells (or fish scale). Then we went on to Patterning Transitions. These are the concepts by which we can vary the basic manipulations and nets. People picked these up as if they really knew about them all the time. And they did know about them. They had just never been formally told about them or had seen them explained in black and white.
The first transition was voids, and then we went on to counterchange, overlapping/overlays, and then value changes. We went on with units & superunits and diaper patterns. Of course we ran into the controversy of what exactly a diaper pattern is. The dictionary definition seems at variance with the EGA definition. But we muddled through.
The crowning glory of the day, as far as I was concerned and none of the students were, was the ekphratic trope. That was like extra credit or a bonus question. Still, everyone weathered that.
Lunch was good. Bert brought her famous chicken salad and Jane prepared some tuna salad. The mini-muffins were still there, along with two types of quick breads. So we were all content.
This day went a lot smoother than the first. There were more jokes and more rested people. I found it almost as hard as the first day. But I am here blogging right after I got home instead of lying down, so maybe it was easier.
Tomorrow we do the last of the transitions and then in the afternoon we really go after our own pattern designing. Wish us all luck.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Friday, February 12, 2010
Day One--the Blackwork Extravaganza
Intense Pattern, Friday the 12th. Mary and I arrived at Jane's house at 8:15 for the 9:00 class. I had to set up everything, so it took most of the forty-five minutes. I brought enough baggage that it looked as if I were moving in for a couple of months. Within minutes of our arrival other members of the class starting arriving too. Everyone was very punctual which is a Good Thing.
We started right at nine o'clock and after a few minutes of my explaining about the obligations of a piloter in a pilot class, we got started. I was one set of photos short, but luckily I had tucked another set in with my teaching materials so everyone had a full set. After going through the kit and explaining what we were doing--giving them a choice of either a sampler or a notebook--we dove into the patterning. First were the basic manipulations: translation, rotation, reflection, and glide reflection. Some people got off to a rocky start. Three or four of the eleven students were convinced that they were in way over their heads and that they could never do this. As I could see frustrations levels rising, I did some one-on-one with the troubled ones. Slowly they caught the gist of graphing the patterns. We were into the glide reflection when we all caught on. Glide reflection is the hardest of all the concepts in the whole class. It took me several days, when I was teaching myself, to become comfortable with it. I hope I helped these women over that hump. There was a little stitching in the morning--we needed the rest from the brain work!
Then all of a sudden it was time for lunch. We sailed through a morning break. By 11:30 we were tired. I ate my Braunsweiger and Swiss on rye sandwich, munched on my carrots, and desserted on two mini-muffins that Jane had brought in for the occasion. After a short rest, we were at it again.
In the afternoon we started on the basic networks: block, brick, half-drop, and diamond. These are easier in some ways than the others, but none are completely trivial. After I explained these, we stitched the rest of the class time until 3:30. At that time we had show-and-tell for people who brought in some of their past blackwork. It was an exhausting, but pleasurable day.
I need to explain the graphing a little more for the July class. I had made the assumption that everyone knew how to graph and I was wrong. About one-third of the class had no idea what I was talking about. The pace was about right. We did the concepts slowly, but thoroughly. Things will go a bit faster tomorrow.
One student who was busy scribbling and scribbling said that she was finished with the graph of the concept, but she had so many ideas that she was hurrying to get them all down. Another student said she could imagine the patterns she could make from the basic tools she learned. She also could see blackwork with her own patterns. Everyone completed all the graphing--and I hope they understood it. We went over several things that were harder and I had more individual time again in the afternoon. I believe that everyone is up to speed. I am amazed at how much everyone seems to like the class.
I personally could drop from tiredness, but I will not go to bed until after nine. Discipline!
We started right at nine o'clock and after a few minutes of my explaining about the obligations of a piloter in a pilot class, we got started. I was one set of photos short, but luckily I had tucked another set in with my teaching materials so everyone had a full set. After going through the kit and explaining what we were doing--giving them a choice of either a sampler or a notebook--we dove into the patterning. First were the basic manipulations: translation, rotation, reflection, and glide reflection. Some people got off to a rocky start. Three or four of the eleven students were convinced that they were in way over their heads and that they could never do this. As I could see frustrations levels rising, I did some one-on-one with the troubled ones. Slowly they caught the gist of graphing the patterns. We were into the glide reflection when we all caught on. Glide reflection is the hardest of all the concepts in the whole class. It took me several days, when I was teaching myself, to become comfortable with it. I hope I helped these women over that hump. There was a little stitching in the morning--we needed the rest from the brain work!
Then all of a sudden it was time for lunch. We sailed through a morning break. By 11:30 we were tired. I ate my Braunsweiger and Swiss on rye sandwich, munched on my carrots, and desserted on two mini-muffins that Jane had brought in for the occasion. After a short rest, we were at it again.
In the afternoon we started on the basic networks: block, brick, half-drop, and diamond. These are easier in some ways than the others, but none are completely trivial. After I explained these, we stitched the rest of the class time until 3:30. At that time we had show-and-tell for people who brought in some of their past blackwork. It was an exhausting, but pleasurable day.
I need to explain the graphing a little more for the July class. I had made the assumption that everyone knew how to graph and I was wrong. About one-third of the class had no idea what I was talking about. The pace was about right. We did the concepts slowly, but thoroughly. Things will go a bit faster tomorrow.
One student who was busy scribbling and scribbling said that she was finished with the graph of the concept, but she had so many ideas that she was hurrying to get them all down. Another student said she could imagine the patterns she could make from the basic tools she learned. She also could see blackwork with her own patterns. Everyone completed all the graphing--and I hope they understood it. We went over several things that were harder and I had more individual time again in the afternoon. I believe that everyone is up to speed. I am amazed at how much everyone seems to like the class.
I personally could drop from tiredness, but I will not go to bed until after nine. Discipline!
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Intense Pattern--The Opus
Today is a red letter day and that red letter is D. D as in Done. Yes, today I am finished finally with Intense Pattern and I am getting ready to teach it tomorrow for the first time in pilot. This class has been a year and a half in the writing, but a half a lifetime in the making. I have studied and done blackwork from the late 70s. I researched it in museums (notably the Victoria and Albert in London), from books, from pictures from museums, from articles, and from other people’s work. I have about twenty major, framed pieces, about half a dozen blackwork samplers, a 4” binder filled with samples, minor works, and experiments I have done over the years, and I have another 4” binder filled with papers, research, articles, and blackwork miscellany. I have the texts of all the classes I have taught on blackwork (maybe ten?). And, above all, I have this powerful urge to pass on my learning to others.
Marie Campbell who in 2008 was head of ESP classes asked me to write a class for her. She mentioned blackwork. ESP stands for Extended Study Program and is sponsored by the EGA. An ESP delves deeply into a subject, more deeply than even a national class might. ESPs can be held anywhere and anyone, even non EGA members, can take them. I knew I had a rip-roaring class on blackwork in me ready to escape. So I wrote up a proposal a couple of weeks later and sent in to Marie. Intense Pattern was born with national board approval.
Voids, tessellation and bats. All original patterns from my work called Japanese Ribbons. The patterns in this were all adapted from printed kimono patterns.
So with the first step done, the second was to decide how the class would run--what exactly would I teach. Patterning theory, a little-known aspect of design theory, has always fascinated me, so I started there. I have had one class on patterning theory that I took in Denver at its 1995 national seminar by Tom Lundberg called Pattern Design for Teachers. From that class I started keeping a notebook on design theory. An invaluable resource and one of the most important tools I own for artistic compositions and classes.
It was in the Tom Lundberg class that I learned the basic networks of patterning. A little later, through researching books on the subject, I found the basic manipulations of patterning. For Intense Pattern, I squashed the two together and that was the basis for the class. Well, the networks and the basic manipulations were just the skeletons. To that I added other concepts that a blackwork patterner would need to know, things like counterchange, voids, diaper patterns, and tessellation. That was the second step.
The third step was stitching the sampler for the class--before a word was actually written and with just a rough outline. Ah, that sampler. People got very tired of seeing that sampler. I carried it everywhere and worked on it all the time. When I finally finished it, it was a sight to behold, bold, crazed, and packed with information. I was done with it, but I wasn’t quite satisfied. I needed another to demonstrate color in blackwork. So I started work on a second, smaller sampler that has some splashes of color and a few other concepts I had been toying with. They were like Thing One and Thing Two in my life. All I could do was think about them and wrestle with them.
The fourth step was actually writing the class. An easier step than you might think--I already had it all stitched out there in black and white (and red and purple on the semi-colored sampler.) This step was completed a year and three months after I sent in the proposal. I finished the samplers last year in the late summer and early autumn.
Color in blackwork, the simplest mode--just exchanging the black threads for violet ones.
And then the fifth step--the hardest step of all--was getting the kits together and writing the lecture notes. Yesterday I finally finished the lecture notes and printed them out. Today I put the linen in the kits and they are ready to go. It has been a long voyage and path of discovery. But I think this is my personal-best class ever.
Thanks to Jane, Ellie, Marie, Mary, Patricia, Bert, Nancy, Ann, Peggy, Jo, and Neenah for being my pilot class and for being the ones to suffer through the tweakings and false starts. You guys are the best.
Intense Pattern, the first sampler.
Marie Campbell who in 2008 was head of ESP classes asked me to write a class for her. She mentioned blackwork. ESP stands for Extended Study Program and is sponsored by the EGA. An ESP delves deeply into a subject, more deeply than even a national class might. ESPs can be held anywhere and anyone, even non EGA members, can take them. I knew I had a rip-roaring class on blackwork in me ready to escape. So I wrote up a proposal a couple of weeks later and sent in to Marie. Intense Pattern was born with national board approval.
A non-original blackwork pattern, octogon and square. This pattern is widely used both in Western embroidery and Eastern embroidery. This is a detail from one of my Mastercraftsman Color works, which were mostly done in modern, colored blackwork.
I like to do original work. More than that, I insist on doing original work. My blackwork compositions are all original and I like my most of my blackwork patterns also to be original, even though there are dozens of books out there that are filled with blackwork patterns. A blackwork pattern is the counted pattern that is used to fill and shade blackwork compositions. There are an infinity of blackwork patterns that can be developed--or if not an infinity, at least a number larger than I could ever count.
Voids, tessellation and bats. All original patterns from my work called Japanese Ribbons. The patterns in this were all adapted from printed kimono patterns.So with the first step done, the second was to decide how the class would run--what exactly would I teach. Patterning theory, a little-known aspect of design theory, has always fascinated me, so I started there. I have had one class on patterning theory that I took in Denver at its 1995 national seminar by Tom Lundberg called Pattern Design for Teachers. From that class I started keeping a notebook on design theory. An invaluable resource and one of the most important tools I own for artistic compositions and classes.
It was in the Tom Lundberg class that I learned the basic networks of patterning. A little later, through researching books on the subject, I found the basic manipulations of patterning. For Intense Pattern, I squashed the two together and that was the basis for the class. Well, the networks and the basic manipulations were just the skeletons. To that I added other concepts that a blackwork patterner would need to know, things like counterchange, voids, diaper patterns, and tessellation. That was the second step.
Basic manipulations and other concepts from the first
Intense Pattern sampler.
The third step was stitching the sampler for the class--before a word was actually written and with just a rough outline. Ah, that sampler. People got very tired of seeing that sampler. I carried it everywhere and worked on it all the time. When I finally finished it, it was a sight to behold, bold, crazed, and packed with information. I was done with it, but I wasn’t quite satisfied. I needed another to demonstrate color in blackwork. So I started work on a second, smaller sampler that has some splashes of color and a few other concepts I had been toying with. They were like Thing One and Thing Two in my life. All I could do was think about them and wrestle with them.
The fourth step was actually writing the class. An easier step than you might think--I already had it all stitched out there in black and white (and red and purple on the semi-colored sampler.) This step was completed a year and three months after I sent in the proposal. I finished the samplers last year in the late summer and early autumn.
Color in blackwork, the simplest mode--just exchanging the black threads for violet ones.This motif demonstrates voiding and also emotion in patterns.
Who wants bugs crawling all over their leaves?
And then the fifth step--the hardest step of all--was getting the kits together and writing the lecture notes. Yesterday I finally finished the lecture notes and printed them out. Today I put the linen in the kits and they are ready to go. It has been a long voyage and path of discovery. But I think this is my personal-best class ever.
Thanks to Jane, Ellie, Marie, Mary, Patricia, Bert, Nancy, Ann, Peggy, Jo, and Neenah for being my pilot class and for being the ones to suffer through the tweakings and false starts. You guys are the best.
Intense Pattern, the first sampler.The vine of leaves at the bottom right section of the sampler gives it
a lively look and gives it a place the eye loves to go.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
The stitchery for optical color mixing from Mastercraftsman Color.Notice how the three ribbons seem to be
made up of at least three colors. This is an illusion.
There are only two colors in each ribbon.
The tartan partially finished. There are only six colors in this,but optically from a little distance, it looks like more.
This is cross-stitch over every other interesection horizontally,
alternating the colors in the code of my birthdate.
Then using the same six colors in the same
order, the empty spaces are filled in vertically.
I taught today. It felt good. Today was the monthly general meeting of Sandia Mountains Chapter. This was the second meeting that I was secretary--a post I have never held before in my life. I guess I take good enough notes--no one has complained. Today I took notes in the general meeting, then I taught the meeting, and then I took notes in the nine-minute board meeting that was held afterwards. Yes, I was tired. But that didn’t stop me from going out to lunch (Rita was buying and Mary Geyer was driving) at Jason’s Deli. Also with us were Bert Kroening (who admits to being born in 1893), Jane Moses (who is recovering nicely from a broken hip and consequent surgery), and Patricia Toulouse (who was just regular--thank goodness someone was). Well, also Rita and Mary. It was delicious and in the best of company!
So I taught a class called Design Your Own Tartan that is really a class on optical color mixing. The class was fun. Everyone except a new member knew how to do the cross-stitch. (Bert did hers in tent stitch on canvas.) We used our birthdates and our own choice of thread color to give us each our unique tartan. If you would like a copy of the instructions, please leave me a message on this blog with your email address and I will electronically blitz you a copy of the instructions.
Optical color mixing is a color illusion in which two colors applied side-by-side look like a third color. The most famous artist for this was Georges-Pierre Seurat and the most famous of his works was A Sunday on the Island of La Grande Jatte. Seurat called the technique he used divisionism, also known as pointillism. A tartan that is either woven or stitched gives a good idea of pointillism.
When I was doing Mastercraftsman Color, one of the assignments was to stitch a piece that demonstrated optical mixing. I chose to do it in a modern form of blackwork. You can see that piece above.
Bert did a good job presiding over the business meeting. She kept it to just half an hour. I already mentioned the short board meeting afterwards. She’s doing a good job. Everybody else kept it short and sweet--it was run like a good meeting should be run. Even though I am bone-tired tonight, I know I had a good day.
So I taught a class called Design Your Own Tartan that is really a class on optical color mixing. The class was fun. Everyone except a new member knew how to do the cross-stitch. (Bert did hers in tent stitch on canvas.) We used our birthdates and our own choice of thread color to give us each our unique tartan. If you would like a copy of the instructions, please leave me a message on this blog with your email address and I will electronically blitz you a copy of the instructions.
Optical color mixing is a color illusion in which two colors applied side-by-side look like a third color. The most famous artist for this was Georges-Pierre Seurat and the most famous of his works was A Sunday on the Island of La Grande Jatte. Seurat called the technique he used divisionism, also known as pointillism. A tartan that is either woven or stitched gives a good idea of pointillism.
When I was doing Mastercraftsman Color, one of the assignments was to stitch a piece that demonstrated optical mixing. I chose to do it in a modern form of blackwork. You can see that piece above.
Bert did a good job presiding over the business meeting. She kept it to just half an hour. I already mentioned the short board meeting afterwards. She’s doing a good job. Everybody else kept it short and sweet--it was run like a good meeting should be run. Even though I am bone-tired tonight, I know I had a good day.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Tjhe Agony and Ecstasy of Proposing
"Laeta Acus"A book simlar to Sampler in a Wee Book that was sent to Memphis, Tennessee.
Laeta Acus is now traveling the US in the EGA 19th National Exhibit and won both the Rocky Mountain Region Award and the Judge's Choice Award.
" The Bee Book"This is a star book (when fully opened it with the back cover touching the front cover
it is star-shaped) with fourteen pocket pages.
In each of those pocket pages is a sample of a stitch on perforated paper.
There is a bee stitched onto each page too.
With great relief I sent two sets of proposals out today. One set was sent to Memphis, TN for the 2011 Tennessee Valley Region Seminar. The other set was sent to Shalimar, FL for the 2011 EGA National Seminar. Now don’t get excited. The chances of my being chosen to teach at either of these places are slim. The selection committees go through hundreds of individual folders send in by many teachers. And let’s face it, my stuff is not the most popular stuff at these learning seminars. My classes seem to be too advanced, or too original, or too thoughtful. Okay, I can be too catty, too.
The national seminar packet had four proposals in it--a four-day and three two-day classes. The region seminar had three proposals--all two-days. Region seminars are almost always just two-day affairs with region meeting taking up a couple more days, while the national seminar can have up to seven or even nine teaching days. Normally I do not send the finished project if I can take a good picture of it to send instead, or if the project is small and I can just tuck it into the proposal folder. This time for the national seminar, I only sent one finished piece--the actual book of the Book of Bees. In the Tennessee Valley proposal packet, I sent two small books also--the book from Sampler in a Wee Book, and The Little Stitchery Book. I think it is an advantage sending the finished piece, but cost and danger of its getting things dirty or creased sometimes make it not worth it.
I have taught several other people how to do proposals. Jette Finlay from England is my most famous student so far. Jette teaches Danish whitework and does a fabulous job of it. She has been to the US many times to teach at national seminars and she has been to Canada to teach also. Her husband Roy who is a magician and all-around-fun guy told me that I changed his life. I think he meant that in a good way! Jette and I lived fairly close to one another in England. I was about a thirty- minute drive from her house through the glorious countryside of western England. I met her at an Embroiderers’ Guild meeting in Newbury, Berkshire. We took to each other instantly.
Most recently I urged Annette Gutierrez-Turk to offer her colcha to national seminars. She is proposing for the 2011, so that she will have experience for proposing for the 2012 right here in our front yard--Buffalo Thunder Resort north of Santa Fe. I hope she gets both positions!
I am not sure why proposals are so agonizing for me, other than I put my heart, skill, and future on the line for theses classes, only to have all those dashed to bits with a rejection notice. When I first started out as a national teacher, I was getting about a 33% return on the proposals for several years. Then I went through a long dry spell with no classes picked up for about ten years. And now I have hope again with one region seminar in California under my belt and two more national classes that I am looking forward to teaching. So wish me luck. And hope that EGA has finally caught up with me and with what I love to teach.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Hecklers, Gabbers, and Rebels
An example of my ribbon art.This really has nothing to do with the words below.
I was having coffee at Border’s the other morning with Laura Sandison, a wonderful and inventive lacer and embroiderer. Laura has been a member of Sandia Mountains Chapter of EGA for some time, is a teacher of lace and other art-oriented things, and is also a member of the local lace guild.
We were talking about several interesting topics, including the differences between teaching children and teaching adults and the place originality plays in the art and craft of embroidery. I like to teach adults very much. They come voluntarily. They have actually paid to take the class. They are (mostly) eager to learn. And they are very grateful when you teach them some little bit. Children, on the other hand, are sometimes forced into class. They may be developmentally unable as of yet to do the small tasks of learning. Hormones rage at certain ages. And they have better things to do. Of course, Laura, who loves to teach children does not see me eye-to-eye on this subject. And I have to say that she has developed several clever strategies for keeping the monsters busy, happy, and (mostly) on track. The book I wrote with Eloise Carlston, Experimenting With Art, was written as I was teaching art in a little private grade school in Sandy, Utah. I have taught children quite a bit through my life, so I am not totally ignorant of the little rug rats. But adults--I am much better with adults, though I have had my own problems with certain adults.
Some adults come to the class with an agenda in mind that has nothing to do with learning the topic. They almost seem to be hecklers with myriad questions. It seems that they ask questions just to be asking and disrupting rather than with anything else on their minds. When I was giving a talk to the Sampler Guild up in Denver many years ago, I had one of those. She sat right up in front and wouldn’t let her topic of choice lapse after a discussion of it. I was talking about how Americans have an ethnicity to their work too. How it can be recognized around the world as purely American. And this woman wanted to talk about signing and dating works of embroidery. She came back to it five or six times until I had to ask her to talk to me further after class about the topic. But no, she wouldn’t let it drop. I was embarrassed--I didn’t know how to get out of this predicament. So I started agreeing with everything she said, wild or not, believing in it or not, I agreed. It worked. It calmed her down. What I wonder is why no one else in the audience stepped in to put her own two cents in. Maybe they knew her and knew she was damned hard to stop. Her thesis? Every piece of needlework should be signed and dated on the front of it for future generations. Well, no, I still disagree. Some needlework is not worthy of signing and dating on the front. Some needlework will be spoiled with a signature and a date on the front.
I had one woman who tried to take over the class and who literally stepped in and tried to lead the discussion. We were learning color theory in that class. The woman was the program chairman of the sponsoring guild chapter. I guess she thought she could be better at it than I was. Well, maybe she could be, but it was my class, my paycheck, and, above all, my reputation. It was a frustrating thing, but I managed to uphold my position as teacher. I did learn that sometimes teachers cannot be “nice,” but must be bold enough to step in and step on toes. I learned that some women, like the woman in the previous paragraph, cannot be reasoned with. They are not looking for reason, but for affirmation. I have learned that some people who ask endless questions are not seeking knowledge, but have some other thing in mind and don’t mind disrupting a whole class of people to get their point across.
I do have to say that now when I teach, things like this rarely happen. Are classes getting more polite? I don’t think so. I think that I finally have enough experience that people know not to try that sort of stuff. Maybe I automatically see those problems and put an end to them early. Not that everything is smooth sailing. I still get gabbers who would rather talk to their neighbors than listen to the class discussion. Though I have to say, this happens more frequently with people I know and have been associated with. Things are less formal with friends of many years.
Still, I love teaching adults way more than teaching children. Even with the hecklers, gabbers, and rebels.
We were talking about several interesting topics, including the differences between teaching children and teaching adults and the place originality plays in the art and craft of embroidery. I like to teach adults very much. They come voluntarily. They have actually paid to take the class. They are (mostly) eager to learn. And they are very grateful when you teach them some little bit. Children, on the other hand, are sometimes forced into class. They may be developmentally unable as of yet to do the small tasks of learning. Hormones rage at certain ages. And they have better things to do. Of course, Laura, who loves to teach children does not see me eye-to-eye on this subject. And I have to say that she has developed several clever strategies for keeping the monsters busy, happy, and (mostly) on track. The book I wrote with Eloise Carlston, Experimenting With Art, was written as I was teaching art in a little private grade school in Sandy, Utah. I have taught children quite a bit through my life, so I am not totally ignorant of the little rug rats. But adults--I am much better with adults, though I have had my own problems with certain adults.
Some adults come to the class with an agenda in mind that has nothing to do with learning the topic. They almost seem to be hecklers with myriad questions. It seems that they ask questions just to be asking and disrupting rather than with anything else on their minds. When I was giving a talk to the Sampler Guild up in Denver many years ago, I had one of those. She sat right up in front and wouldn’t let her topic of choice lapse after a discussion of it. I was talking about how Americans have an ethnicity to their work too. How it can be recognized around the world as purely American. And this woman wanted to talk about signing and dating works of embroidery. She came back to it five or six times until I had to ask her to talk to me further after class about the topic. But no, she wouldn’t let it drop. I was embarrassed--I didn’t know how to get out of this predicament. So I started agreeing with everything she said, wild or not, believing in it or not, I agreed. It worked. It calmed her down. What I wonder is why no one else in the audience stepped in to put her own two cents in. Maybe they knew her and knew she was damned hard to stop. Her thesis? Every piece of needlework should be signed and dated on the front of it for future generations. Well, no, I still disagree. Some needlework is not worthy of signing and dating on the front. Some needlework will be spoiled with a signature and a date on the front.
I had one woman who tried to take over the class and who literally stepped in and tried to lead the discussion. We were learning color theory in that class. The woman was the program chairman of the sponsoring guild chapter. I guess she thought she could be better at it than I was. Well, maybe she could be, but it was my class, my paycheck, and, above all, my reputation. It was a frustrating thing, but I managed to uphold my position as teacher. I did learn that sometimes teachers cannot be “nice,” but must be bold enough to step in and step on toes. I learned that some women, like the woman in the previous paragraph, cannot be reasoned with. They are not looking for reason, but for affirmation. I have learned that some people who ask endless questions are not seeking knowledge, but have some other thing in mind and don’t mind disrupting a whole class of people to get their point across.
I do have to say that now when I teach, things like this rarely happen. Are classes getting more polite? I don’t think so. I think that I finally have enough experience that people know not to try that sort of stuff. Maybe I automatically see those problems and put an end to them early. Not that everything is smooth sailing. I still get gabbers who would rather talk to their neighbors than listen to the class discussion. Though I have to say, this happens more frequently with people I know and have been associated with. Things are less formal with friends of many years.
Still, I love teaching adults way more than teaching children. Even with the hecklers, gabbers, and rebels.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
The New Year in Wholesale Color
Color-Aid PaperThese examples are arranged in an adjacent or analogous color scheme. The C-A Paper is strictly controlled so that these hues are the correct ones for a color wheel.
Color-Aid PaperIt comes in about 250 colors with the hues, their tints and shades, other colors such as cyan and magenta, and a whole list of white, many grays, and black.
This color scheme is analogous with one complement.
The orange second from the bottom is not Color-Aid.
Lavender CollageNo two people can actually agree on which of the above colors is lavender. This is the reason for the strictly controlled C-A Papers and for the short list of color or hue words. The eleven hue words? red, green, blue, yellow, orange, violet, brown, pink, black, white, and gray.
At the beginning of this new year, I am starting something new. I have opened two wholesale accounts with embroidery supply companies. I worried and worried about it for several months before I was ready to dip my toe. But the reality is much easier than the long-drawn-out agitation of anticipation. But most of it turned out to be instantaneous. Easy-peasy. But let me hasten to add that I have opened small accounts for small orders. I do not have a resale license, but I do have a NM VAT number for artists. That was enough to convince both Wichelt Fabrics and Rainbow Galleries to let me make minimum orders for my classes. So now I can order fabric and silk thread for Intense Pattern, my new blackwork class.
My next area of endeavor is to get Color-Aid Papers to sell to me wholesale in small quantities. Hopefully they will accept my VAT number. That is Value Added Tax that allows artists to charge and collect taxes on their finished products. I know, I know--I didn’t want to know that much about the underside of the embroidery business either. I hope to be able to order the papers for my new color class, Pirate’s Gold, for the EGA National Seminar in San Francisco this September. Carole Rinard and I can also use it to buy paper for our ICC Rainbows Bend when this current order (by Carole who paid retail) runs out (if it runs out--depending on how many people want to take the ICC).
Today was one of the regular stitch-ins for Sandia Mountains Chapter. As usual we transact and talk about guild business for at least half of the conversation. It is a good way to put people in the know, to sound out opinions, to get advice. All of us at the meeting are officers or had been good volunteers in the past. We also talked about the origin of the two phrases: jury-rigged and jerry-rigged. Our conversations do wander far and wide. Ask Cindy Brueck for the etymology and definitions of the two. She knows!
When I told everyone at the meeting that I had finally gotten wholesale orders in for the blackwork class, only the people who were taking the class were impressed. All that worrying and wheezing about getting big companies to sell small amounts wholesale went unannounced, unacknowledged, and deeply ignored. That will teach me!
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