New Classes in Planning Stages

I have been fielding a few worried email from folks who are interested in some of the upcoming

One of the yummy things to be investigated in the course

classes and thought that they may have missed the sign up time.  You haven't yet!  Time frames have slipped a bit between lots of different things - getting stuff manufactured, availability of the graphic artist, and just life stuff.

But there is rapid progress on many fronts - just not all visible to everyone.  I expect the whitework course to be available for sign ups around January 1st (here's crossing our fingers!).  The sweet bag course wasn't planned until late 2019-2020 so it is in various stages of planning and material 'getting'.

Getting ready for a course has many angles.  Since mine are more history/workshop based and not a single project, there is quite a bit of background info that needs to be put together and other people's schedules impact it greatly.  I have decided to use Pintrest to provide the extra images of historic pieces that are weblinks to try to solve the problem of museums changing their sites and thus links going inactive.  That has been hard to keep up with.  Pintrest at least keeps a permanent copy of the picture so if the link goes dead, you can at least see what was discussed.

I have now three large boards built for the Whitework course - on 'secret settings' at the moment.  And I have been to a few museums in the last few months to see specific pieces to answer some questions.  Of course then there were a few samplers that came on sale and I got them - changing some of my plans.  And then there are the diagrams and the 'math' and the few course projects.  And very important - working on the material supply.  When you need 200-300 spools of a particular thread (multiplied by X threads), you fast find out that a few of them don't have enough on the cone.  So there are piles of thread spooled all over the place and the ones that are not complete are competing with slots in the dyeing schedule.  This is the most often need for delay with six months being the most often next spot open in the pots.

In Lyon at a Passamentary Factory discussing
how some things are made

All of September was spent honing down the list of threads needed for the Sweet Bag and Flemish Casket courses and getting really specific and making prototypes as I was headed to Europe to visit factories.  That was well worth it and I can't fully go into the mind explosion that trip was - so much was accomplished.  I visited four companies and samples and prototypes and schedules and technical problems to solve all are on the deck.  Nothing is as fast as you and I would want, but it is always worth waiting for something really yummy!  And on top of it, I had the chance to visit many of the sweet bags I wanted to be inspired from and take notes and pictures of issues I had identified.  As one colleague says:  "chance happens for a prepared mind"  This certainly was the case as capabilities that wouldn't have been noted at some facilities were noted on this round as I was in the midst of trying to solve certain 'I want that material' problems.  And you can see many historic pieces, but when you are really active in making - you need to go back and see them again to figure out how they handled certain issues, your mind wasn't prepared the first time!

Then a big time sink I didn't know about was the talks I would be giving in Sept/Oct and the time they would take up.  Giving a talk at a conference, depending on its length, can take about a week full time preparing.  I had four since Sept 1 - all new and on different subjects.  The exciting thing is that I will be able to share the one for tomorrow on NING with those who have been in my classes - look for it in about a week.  It concerns how reproduction materials are made and I think will be of great interest to everyone as - in a not planned moment - the week before I needed to build the talk, I was in Europe and could film exactly what I needed.

Meanwhile, I finished the tent stitch casket (need to film putting it together) and am getting close to the end of the Harmony casket.  But that takes precedence to the samples for the Whitework course.  Going to Europe, being out of the country much of the summer and having my son go to England for college - well that took about eight weeks out of my schedule when I was planning on when the Whitework course would be ready to take students.  That part is life....