A few Last Words and Pictures from Atlanta

We decided to stop for lunch on our way into Atlanta on Thursday. Judi the Navigator and intrepid Smart-Phone User started down a list of cuisines.  We stopped her on Chinese because if there is a really good Chinese restaurant in our area, none of us knows about it.  What we also didn't know was that Duluth, where we found ourselves, is a known foodie-haven. Lucky for us!

Judi's searches led her to a recommendation for Golden House and she got us there easily. The entry way was promising....

...but we were not prepared for the beautiful dining area. The chairs seem to be decked out for a party, and look at that ceiling!  Golden House serves dim sum on weekdays so that's what we had.

Susie, Judi, Cindy

We seemed to be the only anglo-customers, but the staff was really helpful and pleasant, steering us away from the chicken feet and to the dishes we would like. We thoroughly enjoyed a plate of snow pea greens, something none of us had ever tried. I took this photo of one of our servers - notice the stage in the background.

Golden House in Duluth is most definitely on the list for a visit on a return trip.

On Friday after our visit to re:loom, we thought it would be appropriate for a group of knitters to visit a yarn shop. Judi again had a list - we picked the one in Decatur for two reasons.

The first reason was who wouldn't love the name Sheepish for a yarn shop?

 

The store was no longer at the location on the list we'd seen, but was only about two blocks away. The owners are working with the local animal shelter and had cute little foster kittens and their mom, as well as a shop cat, so that was fun to talk about.

The other reason for visiting Sheepish was that its Decature location coincided with this shop - 

 

Hard to read the name in my photo, but it's Wild Oats and Billy Goats, a folk art gallery that carries the re:loom rugs - among other treasures. Decorating the sidewalk are a great example - those are yard sculptures - pigs and totem poles - made from propane tanks.

Altogether our trip was a big success  - we'd all do it again!

 

re:loom - an environmentally friendly fiber-based industry with a heart

Friday morning we headed to the retail space of re:loom. The building was tucked back from the road under other businesses

but well worth finding.  On the beautiful postcard, it says "re:loom employs and empowers homeless and low-income individuals through weaving beautiful, one-of-a-kind products out of upcycled materials. re:loom is a program of the Initiative for Affordable Housing in Atlanta, GA." You can read more about them on their website, http://reloom.org/ but I took a lot of pictures for you to enjoy right here.

The retail space was a good sized room packed with the products the weavers of re:loom make - you can see stacks of rugs here

and more rugs, placemats, and bags of all shapes and sizes here.

 

 I dug through the blues and greens and pulled out this medium sized one, modeled back home by Lilly.

Lilly shooed Lu off the rug so she could enjoy it. The color of the wide stripe seems a little bluer in real life than in these photos.  It is already doing its job in my studio with Moki so Lilly can't hug it any more.

We all spent some money in the store, then headed to the Weavehouse, a short drive away.

The raw materials other than the warps for the re:loom rugs and other products are donated. These include fabrics, as you see in the next photo taken in the cutting room, as well as plastic - bags from retailers and those one-use light plastic banquet table covers. The plastic rugs are just as colorful as the rag ones, and suitable for outdoor use.

This is the other side of the cutting room.

All the cutting is done by volunteers. They use fabric, but also clothing, after removing seams, but little is wasted. Smaller strips from garment sleeves make it into smaller items, like checkbook covers and clutches. 

Tucked in one corner of the cutting room was one of the weavers working on a smaller loom. Except for a table in the laundry area for a break area, every bit of space is given to production.

 

After cutting, the fabric is rolled up into balls, sorted by color and fiber, and stacked up in bins on shelves in the center of the Weavehouse.

 

Then we came to the main weaving space.

Fred is working at the largest loom on the floor. They have 80 yards of warp on the loom.

The weavers were pleased to show us what they were working on. The looms were all donated, and are named for the donors.

Notice the blue jeans pockets sewn on the rugs on the walls behind where the weavers work. They have all the tools they need handy.

Fred wanted to make sure I got a good photo of him - he probably wove my rug.

One of these two men certainly wove it. Because it is such a wide warp, they make all the larger rugs. Fred was happy to tell you he knew nothing about color and design when he started his job at re:loom about two years ago but he's clearly delighted with it now.

re:loom mostly employs people with no prior knowledge of weaving, pays them a living wage and provides health insurance. The products cost more than the imports we buy at big box stores, but the workers make fabric that will last, and they are extremely conscientious about getting beautiful straight edges!

The bright orange fabric was donated by Delta Airlines and comes from expired life jackets. Delta donated the fabric and bought back items to give to their employees.

I like this color wheel prominently posted in the area with the bins of prepared fabric.

 

More finished items were stacked up everywhere.

Do you see a rug that would fit in your house?

Maybe a sturdy pillow?

 

The soft blue and black wool scarf used to be a plaid skirt.

 

Our guide was the manager of the Weavehouse.  She was explaining the fabric on the table beside her to the weavers in our group is an experiment with finer fabric, possibly for baby wraps.

Here's our happy group in the middle of the Weavehouse floor.

Cheryl, Susie, Cindy, Judi

An evening in a magical garden

After meeting Karen and seeing her work, we headed to the nearby Atlanta Botanical Garden to see the Garden Lights. This event resembles the holiday lights shows we have seen other places, but because of the artful way the lights are incorporated into the gardens, it was a magical experience.

We got there at dusk and followed the tour as recommended, with our first stop at the Ice Goddess.

She almost looks photoshopped, but I think you get that impression from the way all those lights are clustered. We all agreed we had not seen such an intense display of blue lights before.  We asked a fellow visitor to take a photo of the four of us.

Cindy, Susie, Cheryl and Judi

The designers at this show did not stay with the traditional themes of nutcrackers, elves, and toy trains - there were two of these giant green and red cobras.

And (out of sequence) there was an "edible garden" - this part had row upon row of lighted corn stalks.

This next photo shows the Orchestral Orbs on the Great Lawn. The dark boxes are speakers. The orbs changed colors in time with the music, in a symphonic sequence. The music alternated from classical to rock and jazz seasonal tunes.

Behind the orbs is the Conservatory. It was a cold night, so going into the tropical rain forest environment inside was a very nice way to warm our fingers and toes, but it was also a simply incredible visual delight. The photo below is quite possibly from a different display, but it conveys the way the fiber optics worked in the first area we walked through, where we became part of the display as little points of green light shone down on us.

By the time we got halfway through the garden, Susie was the only one with enough battery power left on her phone to take photos, but I decided not to post all of them  - you'll just have to plan a visit to Atlanta at Christmas to see this event for yourself. This year, the display will be up until January 4th.

A visit with a Quilt Artist

On Thursday, three knitting friends and I headed to Atlanta for an overnight trip. The timing in December was to see the work of Karen Reese Tunnell at the South East Fiber Arts Alliance office and exhibit space.

Karen's work was nothing less than mind blowing.  I had visited her website (karentunnell.com) and seen photos in her gallery, but I was not prepared for the impact of the pieces when seen in real life. The subtle dimension of quilted texture and the vividness of her marbled backgrounds just don't come across in a photo, and I really couldn't understand the "applique" element she described when talking about her work on her website.

I forgot my camera but my friends shared photos with me so I could write my blog post. Some of these pieces may be on her website, but I wanted to have my own closeups so I can share some of the details here.

Karen has a series of tree trunks in these shades of blue and green on similarly colored marbled backgrounds.

This is just a small section of a very long (over 7 feet) narrow (1.5 feet) framed piece.

 

I cropped a bit here so you can see in closeup that the trees, enhanced with paint, are appliqued on her background. Embroidery adds another layer. The entire piece is machine quilted on a sturdy layer of felt and it floats above the linen ground of the frame.

Karen explained that she does not want us to actually be able to see a difference between the original marbled piece and what was appliqued to it.  With the trees, up close you can tell, but in many examples, she has invisibly hand appliqued marbled texture on marbled texture, and the lines just blend together.

This quilt show a different style. Karen was a painter before she was a fiber artist.

This closeup shows some of the detail of the painted bird. 

 

Karen's painted babies were beautiful.  (These next three photos came to me in a small size so there is no close up view.)

Here's a photo of me with Karen in front of one of her many strikingly beautiful works. Doesn't that look like the fabric is tucked or pleated?  It's not.

 

After listening to Karen talk about her work and her processes, and the classes she teaches (she's coming back to Asheville next fall) she invited us to her Mid-Town condo where we enjoyed the view from the roof of the building.

Cheryl, Karen Tunnel, Cindy and Susie. Judi is the photographer.

 It was cold up there, but we had a great time and left inspired.

I'll have more photos from the Atlanta trip in a couple of future posts.

Civil War Block of the Month December 1863 - Turning Yankee

In December, 1863, diarist Sarah Morgan and her mother took the oath of allegiance to the Union in order to move in with Sarah's brother and not starve as refugees.

The block is an interesting one in my six inch size.  This is the last block of the Dixie Diary series, but there will be another Block of the Month next year.  Next year's blocks are designed to be 12 inches.

I don't have any correspondence from Shep in December and I have already quoted from Billy's letter of the 2nd because it recounted his experience taking part in the charge up Missionary Ridge.  Probably a day or two before the 14th, in a letter missing its first sheet, Billy writes to his sister Joanna that he does not think he will be among the boys coming home for Christmas, "... because there is no such thing as person getting a furlough here. And for my part I would rather not come than to come in some way that would be a disgrace to me and my folks. And there is another thing I don't care much about coming home until all the boys can come home and stay. Our Company is out on picket. The weather is quite warm, looks very little like rain, we have had but little cold weather here."  Billy adds on the 14th that he has just washed and put on some clean clothes "... I made some toast which was excellent, it tasted like home." He complains he has not been getting as many letters as he writes and he wants Joanna to tell him the dates of the letters he sends, as well as how long they are in transit.

Fellow Company B member Allen W. Brown's letters to his wife in December speak to homesickness and loneliness because, he says, there is no news to write. He has never seen as still a time since he came in the service and there is no talk of moving this winter. He asks for two pair of boots and complains though there are plenty of socks, "they are not much count and they are so coarse that they scrach my legs and make me think that grey backs are on me."  On the 11th, he reports that the regiment is going to work on the bridge across the Tennessee River and it will take at least two months to complete the job. Unlike Billy, he thinks the chances he'll get a furlough in about a month are pretty good.

On the 23rd, Brown says that the health of the Company has never been better, "and the confidence of the Army in its leaders never has been better. Grant and Thomas and I have no doubt that if they lead this Army in its next campaign, that they will lead it to victory. But, they cannot lead a victorious Army without loss of life and property."  Unlike earlier in the month, it's been cold for four or five days. The men were preparing for a fine chicken dinner for Christmas Eve the next day.

Fun in the Studio

Today the women I knit with met at Judi's shortly after her movers started to work bringing the boxes of books, supplies, equipment and tools she'd had stored in her garage while the basement of her new house was being finished. Much of the tools of Judi's trade had been in bins and boxes since she moved to this area more than 4 years ago.  I got there early, when the studio space was still largely empty and waiting for the fluff and stuff.

Judi is a professional grade fiber artist - spinning, weaving, dyeing, knitting, paper-making - you name it, it seems like Judi has at least dabbled in it -- mostly she's seriously talented and very knowledgeable. Here are two of her larger looms - the one on the right obviously needs assembly, but I thought my friend Diane might like to see it.

This photo was probably taken less than an hour later - but there was a lot more to come.  Judi had several of the white bookcases we mostly filled later in the morning. She has as area she calls "the Kitchen" around to the left in front of the mover, and a large storage area where she had a lot more tools and equipment for her art. The Kitchen has a sink and refrigerator, and cabinets where she'll keep her equipment for dying.

Knitter/spinner Cindy's husband Larry went to work assembling the open shelves you can see in the back corner of the room behind where I was standing for the last photo. 

After lunch, we filled the metal shelves with some of the stuff in the boxes. It's like being a kid in a candy store, looking at all the color and texture! I put the display of rug yarns on the shelving together while Susie and Cindy opened the boxes of coned yarns and organized them by color.

That's Judi on the step stool, looking at some specialty fibers stacked on a set of shelves like those against the wall on the left.  She has a lot of work to do, organizing the knitting yarns on the metal shelves far left, and fabrics we piled on the two shelves lower right right after I took this photo. We got most of the books out of boxes and on bookshelves, and helped pile boxes here and there in some semblance of organization. Judi has lots of "unprocessed fiber" in bags in the storage area, along with office supplies and more books.

Judi and her husband made us lunch for our labors, and I'm going to be pleased if Judi lets me come and play in her studio as a guinea pig for classes or just experiments and challenges.