Van Gogh and the weavers

I was reading about Van Gogh last night from the DK Eyewitness Book series. It's a kid's book series. I love the Eyewitness books. Anyway, the book talked about Van Gogh in Nuenen and his interest in the weavers there. The town of Nuenen is in an area of the Netherlands called Brabant, ... "an area in which weaving had always been important, and Vincent felt compelled to illustrate these 'Brabant artisans' ". He painted many pictures of the weavers of Nuenen and sent them to his brother Theo to be sold. He told Theo to keep the drawings and paintings if they did not sell; writing, "It would rather disappoint me if you sent these little weavers back to me."

I had never heard of these drawings and paintings before. I love Van Gogh even more now!

This one is my favorite. See the baby in the high chair to the right?

And speaking of weaving...this is the finished band from my first card weaving endeavor. I really like the way the pattern came out. I just kind of flowed with it and let it go whatever way it was going to go.

I've been a bad bad weaver

Bad because I haven't been weaving. That's because the waves have been good. It has been so flat here for weeks. Lake Atlantic. But this past week finally a little push. So I've been neglecting my looms. But I've been exercising at least. Yeah, that's it... exercise. We all need that, right? There, now I don't feel so guilty. (Can't help it...Irish Catholic...."Guilt" is my confirmation name).

I have been getting some card weaving in though. I've been watching the Candace Crockett video and bought the book. The video is really helpful. She's an art professor at that commie school out in San Francisco....I'm just kidding. No but she really is a prof and she explains things very well. I chose some of the yarns I've had sitting around for a while for my first band; white, gray and brown. I know...there's some bright sunny colors for ya! I just have to start using some of this stash I've got, so I have a good excuse to buy more.

So I've threaded 20 cards and will follow the pattern in the video. I'm not sure how it's going to come out yet. But that's sort of half the fun. I'm looking forward to being able to design my own patterns with this method. You can do some really cool designs, that according to the book, you can only achieve with card weaving.

Get outta town!

Gerry and I decided to take a little trip for our anniversary. We went up to Deland and stayed at a Bed and Breakfast. That was interesting. It almost always is.

We tooled around Deland. We're always in search of the perfect retirement location. While there, we went to Blue Springs and saw these lovely manatees...

We also went to the Museum of Florida Art. That was very impressive. We saw some really incredible pieces there.

This piece, by Ummarid “Tony” Eitharong, was called, Winds of Change: Totem for Sadako which features a suspended mushroom cloud made from 1000 white peace cranes in honor of the Hiroshima survivors that initiated the “peace crane” project worldwide. This was really cool to see in person. It moved with every little draft and was just so fluid.

This exhibit was neat too. It was a collection of woodcut prints by Mollie Doctrow.

I think my favorite part of the trip though was the Pioneer Settlement for the Creative Arts in Barberville. They're a non-profit organization for the preservation of history and crafts such as blacksmithing, pottery, weaving and spinning.

This is the loom room. Most of the looms were 2 shaft with one 4 shaft. 

Here's me trying to figure out how I can shove this loom into my purse.

And here we are at the old train station. That's a paper conductor hat on my head. I gave myself a paper cut trying to fit it on my fat head.

Here's Gerry at a Mensa mtg. Actually it's the old school house. Yeah, we have a thing for putting hats on and acting like jerks. It's just what we do.

Anyway, it was a blast. Ger bought me a really pretty clay bowl from the Pioneer Settlement for our anniversary. The restaurants were good in Deland, so we ate a lot! And they had a Sonic Burger so I was good to go. It's also the home of Stetson University, which is a really pretty, old Florida liberal arts college. We really liked it there and the surrounding area.

Here's some more pictures. I hope this works....