Too busy to blog?

It's been months, faithful followers, and we apologize. Did I say "we"? Yes!

I (Chris) now have a RETIRED husband and he has jumped in to help with the studio. I'm thrilled. He's also agreed (since he was a newspaper editor in his pre-retirement life) to help with this blog so you'll be hearing from the Homesteadweavers more often.

We're almost ready for the 13th annual Brown County Studio and Garden tour, which we'll be a part of for the 11th straight year.

The forecast is calling for cool afternoons and only a small chance of rain (YEAH!) for the tour which goes from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. this Friday and Saturday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday.

We'll have a full selection of rugs, placemats, clothing and all things woven, including the Mobius shawl, named after the famous Mobius curve, which is a two-dimensional plane with a twist in it, meaning it has no beginning, no end, no inside and no outside. The shawls are finely woven pieces made of carefully selected cotton, rayon, bamboo, silk, and polyester yarns. Stealing a line from The Who, this year we're encouraging people to "touch them, feel them" and enjoy them.

We'll have two guest artists again this year: Painter Doug Runyan from the Fort Wayne area, who will be demonstrating his plein aire style during the tour, and weaver Marla Dawson from Ellettsville, who specializes in clothing items, including hats, scarves and gloves. Doug, who recently had work accepted into the prestigious IHA show, has an impressive assortment of his paintings on display, while Marla will have a full contingent of her work available.

We'll be demonstrating weaving for anyone who's interested, and we're making peace flags, our own version of Tibetan prayer flags, as a special feature this year. These are weavings with messages. All who are interested can write their thoughts on a strip of cloth and weave it into the flag. We hope this is a meaningful work of positive energy to wave in the peaceful breezes of Brown County.As usual, we'll have the "community rug" set up on a loom where all who are interested can take a shot or two at weaving. When completed, the rug will be donated to a charitable cause and auctioned off, with all proceeds going to the charity. In the past, the rugs have been given to auctions for Habitat for Humanity, UMC missions, and the annual soup bowl benefit, which funds Brown County's "Mother's Cupboard" soup kitchen for those who otherwise would not have nutritious meals on a daily basis. Most years we end up with two or three rugs to donate.

As usual, our gardens are in bloom, with red, orange and gold day lilies, multicolored zinnias and hostas, and a few surprises thrown in. Look for a new shade of zinnia in the front yard, and some new additions to our plate garden, with the border collected from garage sales and thrift stores.

A whole wall of hollyhocks is attracting the bees and butterflies ...

Free goodies include chocolate chip cookies, healthy turkey and ham wraps around lunchtime, iced tea, chips, trail mix, and as always, freeze pops for the young and young at heart. If the weatherman is wrong and it turns hot, we'll have the misting fan going to cool you off. And we're offering a 10 percent discount for cash purchases, plus a free mug rug for each $50 spent on rugs.

We're one of 12 studios on the tour this year with 27 artists to meet. It's a free, self-guided tour and the drive is gorgeous this time of year through the gently rolling hills.

We hope to see you out here sometime this weekend. Visit the website for the tour and print off a map or pick up a brochure at one of the map pickup sites listed on the website. Don't be intimidated by our steep driveway. It seems to be a little easier to navigate this year than in some other years (less gravel on it!), so just put your car in low gear and come on up.

See ya here!

Ahhhh, summer

After all my preparations, complaining, weaving, gardening, and brow beating, the Studio and Garden Tour is OVER! A big sigh of relief and on to summer.
We had about 280 visitors over three days of miserable heat. What troopers they were.I had a guest artist, Norene Mara, that paints and makes jewelry:
I also had a guest artist, Rose Poe, that makes beautifully colored baskets and also weaves.
The gardens could have used more work, but at 90+ degrees, not that many people were taking time to look at them ... out of their cars and into the air-conditioned studio!
The "weaver's garden" had a new umbrella for shade and some cute purse pots (an idea I stole from a friend) hanging on the shepherd's crooks. The purses got a LOT of comments.

The loom room was a demonstration and display area:The plate garden needed washing ... too bad. Pike was watching for cars ...Too hot to sell clothing ...

The positive comments make all the preparation work worthwhile. But I'm ready for pool time and to get back to weaving for the fall shows.

Three new rug weavers~

Three women came to the studio today for a "day weaving" class to make a rug. None of them had ever woven before but they all caught on very quickly.
Above is Emiko and Miho. Miho will start college in the fall and she and her roommate are doing their dorm room in pinks so she wanted her own special rug.
I was very pleased with their rugs and they were thrilled ... here's a picture of the finished projects:
Konomi, left, is Miho's mom.

Snowed in, making lists and mentoring

The beginning of the snow ... how beautiful.

No rag rug weaving today.
So we had snow overnight here in the Heartland ... not a lot, by Wisconsin/Minnesota/New York standards, but enough to cause cancellations and travel problems. My hard-working husband drove the 20 miles to his job and I had the whole day to finish some projects. I made a list. Only about 7 or 8 items. I have a pad of paper from decades ago when I was a Mary Kay consultant. It says, "The Six Most Important Things I Must Do" ... so my list was simple, housework things ... copy tax forms, get mail ready, unload dishwasher, do laundry ... etc. Now it's almost dinner time and the list is only half finished. Do I expect too much? Or am I just easily distracted? Or both?
One of the items on the list was to update my blog. My last entry was in April. How embarrassing. Of course, it was about Obama ... and now that he's president, it looks pretty good in retrospect.
But I digress ...
My weaving friend, Hilary, paid me a compliment in her blog this week. We have been buddies for years, talking through emails, IMs and on the phone. But we've never met face-to-face. Someday we will, I'm sure of it.
Our relationship began when she bought a rug from me. She's a late-blooming weaver, but catching up quickly. She occasionally would call with questions about weaving ... which usually were preceded by, "Have you ever ...?" And I almost always had, so I offered suggestions to solve her dilemma. Among other things, she has the coolest studio name, "Crazy as a Loom" and she has more energy than people 20 years younger.
As she notes, we're technically competitors. But I've never felt that way. Hilary likes to weave fabric rugs and I prefer shaggy selvedge rugs. Besides, there are plenty of people needing rugs (especially now, when you want to put your money into things that are beautiful and will last). Sometimes we compare our customers and find that the same person has contacted (and even bought from) both of us.
We've shared other things through the years, but that's business. We've even talked about mounting a joint-venture rug weaving website, but that's still a ways off.
When she had knee replacement surgery last year and was having trouble getting back to the looms, I was there to kick her b**t and tell her she could do it.
We've joked that we're siblings raised separately because we're close in age and very close in the way we view things. I just know that I'm proud of her and what she's achieved in her short weaving experience.
I know she's shoveling through snowbanks to be at her studio, stoking her pellet stove, and I wish I could just sit there with her and dream up even more bizarre things to weave. You go, girl!