Remembering What I Forgot

When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college - that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared back at me, incredulous, and said, 'You mean they forgot?'--Howard Ikemoto

I ran into an acquaintance a few months ago. She is the person who sold me my spinning wheel a while back and she is a member of the local spinners and weavers guild. I asked her if the guild would be running any workshops this year and she shook her head no, but that there was another event happening later on that I may be interested in. She sent me a link to the Gathering Threads Conference happening here on Vancouver Island in June, and from there I found the link to a workshop that looked interesting.

I dithered for a while, as I was about to set off to the UK for our trip, but after a couple of days of stress trying to figure out how to pack for the trip, I threw up my hands, pulled out my wallet, and registered online for the workshop. I needed something to look forward to.

Fast forward to last weekend when, for once, I was getting prepared ahead of time for the workshop. I needed to bring along a couple of 20 x 20-inch squares of tightly woven, prewashed fabric. I am so glad I looked ahead to remember that they needed to be pre-washed because I am terrible for remembering to do that step with fabric:

I even had the foresight to pre-finish the edges before washing them, as I've had a few nightmares with fabric threads tangling up in the wash. I'm really glad I did that because it gave me a chance to sort out some tension issues on my sewing machine without having to waste a bunch of fabric. Go me.

That class was called Textile Illustration. I was immediately attracted to it because I am really enjoying playing around with drawing and with paints, and the chance to combine that with textiles was really interesting to me. We started out by trying out drawing with ink on our fabric using small dots and lines. I was immediately totally absorbed. I never believed myself to be much of a drawer until I became an adult, and I'm enjoying immersing myself in it:

And after a while, I had a leaf. I can't stop looking at it. I have a few other motifs I intend to draw onto the fabric and then I might make it into a mini quilt or something, we'll see:

We also spent some time playing with paints and brushes on fabric. I found that a bit harder because I'm not that experienced with painting but I managed to create something pretty nice. I think I preferred the ink drawing, but we'll see if that changes in the future.

Meanwhile, I am very nearly finished my Heads or Tails Zebra Bag. I was hoping to be finished this weekend, but a couple of crazy weeks at work coupled with my need for afternoon naps made that out of the question.

I realized that I never explained why it's called Heads or Tails. Here, of course, is the head:

And the other side is the tail:

It's turning out to be quite a large bag, and while I am not that experienced with lining bags, I think I will need to with this one in order to provide some stability to the structure. Give me any excuse to visit a fabric store...

As I mentioned, it's been a couple of crazy weeks at work. We've been short-staffed for a while. I finally was able to begin training a new staff member for the past couple of weeks, which is a relief, but training is always very draining for me. Poor Seymour sure felt it:

 I'm off to get some dinner together for the weary troops. Here's hoping that things will settle down soon.