Usually I would write about ten blog posts for a huge story like this, but I decided to do a video that I would be able to post in a few places.
The bottles for embroidered caskets are ready and are now on sale for those who have been making an embroidered cabinet. It has been a very long process and I hope as interesting as the inkwells were too! There is history mixed in as well - especially for those of you who aren't as familiar with 17th century caskets.
If you are interested in making one (and getting a bottle or two in it), my two project courses are still registering right now with the last of the caskets. Each come with the bottle(s) it needs in the kit.
I put together a video showing close ups of several antique whitework samplers to discuss the current online university 17th century whitework sampler course.
I have currently 14 kits in hand for those who want to join the course - especially those who have run through a few of their older projects while in this period of social distancing. There will be 50 more spots later when supplies reach me again.
In general, supplies are seriously, seriously difficult to get at the moment. I think through the end of the year I will only be able to offer those projects where I already have the items today. Those include:
That is pretty small inventory and three of those courses will be the last of them! So if you are thinking about your Fall/Winter stitching, you might want to get what you are interested in.
I am working on getting some of my lectures ready to post as well, but that means I have to negotiate image rights with every museum represented and it is taking a few weeks for each because they aren't in the office, are usually the only person that was brought back in the department from furlow and I was told that their work load is up because all professors are writing papers during this period. :-) So it will take awhile.
There are many 'snips' of culture being put out right now to keep our cultural arts relevant for everyone when we can't visit our museums, etc. One that I got today was a short spot about an embroidered crazy quilt recently acquired and on display at the American Folk Art Museum. It is a nice little 'context' video about the object. I am going to post a few here and there
For some of you, you have gotten the new short run Frostings 5 box. For those who missed out on the opportunity, I may have some more during the next ordering period for the shop site - but it won't be the level I normally can do.
We are trying to see how much of the threads we can get. Honestly with the level of unemployment and stock market collapse, I didn't think I could sell 80 much less the 300 I usually try to make. I am glad many of you are not having a tough time during this pandemic - so many are having trouble as evidenced by the off-the-charts increase in food bank lines. (Bless you who are still whole and I hope you remember those who aren't with help)
But one of the threads in the box needs a bit of explanation on what other cool things you can do with it. I will be trying, as raw materials allow, to get more of this in the shop as well as the Frostings 5 bundles that I will make available for those who want as much of what was in the collection as possible.
So in the box was something called Small Silk Laid Down Trim. It was in five green colors and the 235/2916 pink color. It is fantastic as a little trim to couch down along things - but even better when you stretch it to make it into a Small Silk Scallop Trim! In that case, you can use it as the wire outline for needlelace shapes!! It then gives you this really amazing scallop edge to your pieces. This video that I made shows how to do it.
The video is also something I have been working towards as soon as the pandemic hit. I thought I would have all kinds of time to do great video snips to post to my different sites. Instead I have been in email hell/building out a new teaching site that was forced by internet protocol changes. I am hoping that some of the changes I have been making will free up some time for these cool things instead.
I bought a new iPad Pro that just came out. Shockingly its camera is as good as my special macro camera I use for needlework photographs. But the added bonus is I can draw on pictures and screen record at the same time. So it is like me standing in front of a big picture in a class room and using my finger to point to things and talking about what we are seeing. It has been killing me to have it sitting out on the table for weeks with my whitework samplers sitting next to it ready for 'Camera -Action!" and instead walking by it daily to answer emails. Fingers crossed I have more time for the fun stuff soon. This is my first video trial - it was all done on the iPad. Sorry for any choppy voice stuff, I was learning to edit on the iPad at the same time. But it was quick which was good.
I got an email from someone who took the lack of blog as maybe an indication that we had caught the virus and was very concerned. Thank you for the concern! But actually every business that serves a hobby that someone could pick up during this time or return to some really old (I mean really old - like my computers don't have the data on it anymore) have seen business and customer service requests go through the roof several hundred percent. I hear just puzzle sales are up 300%. :-) I have spoken to the distributors and heard from other store owners - no one is able to keep up at all. We are all drowning. And the labor I usually hire to help me out when I am crushed can't come into the home (they need some supervision. I can't give it to most as they have cats or dogs and can't risk the hard fought product to animal damage). So blog and cool plans for videos went to the back of the line.
One of the things that attracted me to embroidered caskets was that they were full of other artisan produced items and I love knowing how everything and anything is made.
It has been so fun to learn about marbled paper and look at the designs that were made in the 17th century as well as search out papers and artisans. I spent time in a studio in Florence and one in Venice in the last few years. My new marbler is out of Nice and I was planning on visiting this year but now that won't happen. He let me know yesterday that the studio is part of his home so he is still producing and healthy (Phew!!).
Here is a wonderful video about how different patterns are made for marbled papers, you can get lost in watching the zen like patterns.
I have been having a private conversation with people who are in my classes on an online forum of late. I will not bore you with all the details, but in my former profession, I worked on haz-mat gear for soldiers for bio-terrorism among other things. So people I knew in my former life have been contacting me from areas of high need for personal protective gear to ask me opinions about substitutions, making PPE at home, jury-rigging stuff, etc.
The landscape is bleak. I have dug out many resources but there are several short term things that we can do this minute that would drastically change the course of what is going on at hospitals with little effort on our parts. Right now we are facing imminent exhaustion of PPE resources and a lag until more commercial operations increases in production can reach hospitals. In fact, there are some horrific issues in the supply chain that will cause lapses coming soon. Read this Boston Globe article about how 75% of the worlds gloves are made in one country and they are going to 50% production because of cornavirus loose in their population.
Don't give the cotton masks you are making to the hospital workers who are 100% going to be in the presence of huge viral loads. It is these over-exposure levels that is getting them sick and not somewhat sick - they are becoming critically ill fast because instead of fighting off 2 viruses they got 2000 into their nose. Give them the best stuff you have and save the cotton masks you make for yourself. Give the cotton masks to the UPS driver, the postal worker, the UberEats person, the grocery worker, etc. Hand them out willy nilly. Give them $10 for delivering your food and a stack of home made masks.
You will need something in front of your face in the very unlikely case you walk into a recent cough cloud. Through my reading the most protective use of a mask in the general public is actually to keep you from rubbing your mouth or nose with your fingers that have been contaminated from a surface. It is just a light barrier need. So in that case, the cotton home-sewn mask does its job keeping the virus from transferring to the mucus membranes of your face. The same if you have a member of the family get sick. The purpose is to have the cough aerosol prevented from being sprayed into the room. Having a stack of a dozen of the ones you made is great - one at all times on the sick person and you wear one when going into their room. Wash them frequently. Even if all it does is reduce the number of viruses you catch to get you sick - you will likely have a lower grade infection that is survivable. But the nurse who has to stand there with the sickest patient needs the disposable high filtration mask to not only stay well to care for people but also to survive.
If we all give up even half of the box of surgical masks bought out of care for our families - think of the supply for hospitals that would materialize overnight.
I read a well done article yesterday from an infectious disease specialist. They said that South Korea and Singapore have done a good job of flattening the curve because of a few things that their societies do because of hard lessons learned in the last several epidemics.
1) In these times EVERYONE wears a mask - it is the socially responsible things to do. And as their cultures are predicated on communal behavior instead of individualism - it works. It is a cliche here that people of asian decent wear masks and we all look at them for being weird. They are being smart and thinking about everyone around them - they aren't sick - they are willing to be ostracized in America for the greater good because culturally caring for the greater good is the highest form of humanity. They know that there are walking spreaders and that people unknowingly are the spreader or come in contact with them. If everyone wears a cotton mask - then so will the sick people. Transmission goes way down. Honestly - this practice is the only way we will be getting back to work and out of our houses until we have a vaccine that has been used on most of the population.
2) The sick don't stay in their homes, they are moved to 'dorm' clinic settings to be isolated and monitored by nurses. If someone in the home gets it - the whole family gets it. That is the majority of cases in all countries right now. In Boston they are already identifying which dormitories from colleges have the right ventilation systems, plumbing, etc to do this.
A N95 mask - usually from 3M used for dust protection
Most needleworkers know other people who make things - the most likely candidate is your home woodworker. Go into their stash and start looking. I know all this stuff and we were looking for some wood pen blanks Sunday that we knew we bought some 10 years ago (bought a lathe to keep kid busy during this). I found 12 - a DOZEN - 3M N95 masks that are gold at the moment. I didn't even know I had them as they are forgettable. Dust masks for woodworking are what they are using - that is the most protective mask there is.
The reason there are some more N95 masks on the way to NYC right now is because of FDA rule changes. Previously if you were makingthese masks, they would only be accepted into a hospital if they were made on a FDA certified manufacturing line. If you wanted your product that was the same to be cheeper, you didn't have the line FDA certified with extra controls to make sure they were 100% sterile. Same product. So now, hospitals are allowed to use the ones that are coming off the line for contractors, woodworkers, etc. So FIND the 2-5 you have in your house and give them up!! Talk to anyone you know who might have some and get them to drop them off. You are saving lives.
And I found an unopened box of 100 nitrile gloves he had for wood finishing. Then I started thinking about where else I might have dust masks squirreled away and came up with a few more. My robot mom on the front lines at Children's hospital almost cried when I called her. I rushed them over to her house and dropped them in the garage. Hairdresses, construction workers, dentists, bio labs, woodworkers - all these professionals and more HAVE THESE THINGS laying on the shelves. Stop making cotton masks that are 28% effective (yes, better than nothing) and shake this stuff that is 100% what they need out of the trees first and then go back to making masks. In Boston we have started doing that and they are showing up in boxloads. I told that to the ER nurse who is a robot mom and trying to figure out how to make masks on Friday night. She posted to the town mom's discussion group how desperate they are. On Sunday she called me crying as her lawn was full of personal protective gear that came from nowhere. Yesterday a truckload of gathered PPE was delivered to Mass General from the bio-labs in the area. Honestly there shouldn't be a dentist office anywhere with anything in stock except a few items kept back for emergency procedures - it should all be trucked to the local hospital. Same with orthodontists, etc. My UPS guy told me two weeks ago (the last time I would open the door) that he was mad that people were hoarding. He delivered 19,000 rubber gloves to just one dentist that week. That dentist had better drive them all over to the hospital.
If you find boxes that are open and are concerned that they are a bit dusty. Think if you were a doctor or your son or daughter was a nurse? Would you care? If you think they would - give the box to your local supermarket, those cashers need them. If people working jobs in food distribution don't feel safe enough, they won't show up and our distribution system will grind to a halt. Give them a sewn mask while you are at it as well so they don't scratch their nose with the gloved hand.
The 3D printed headband for face shields - a temporary solution in the 1-2 weeks between exhaustion of supply and commercial supply ramping up. The ties, foam piece and clear shield needs to be added
We all want to do something helpful - be smart about it. Everyone with a 3D printer and a sewing machine is trying something - but usually without the basic knowledge of thescience behind masks. (That link was the National Academy of Sciences report on the shortage of PPE in the SARS epidemic). Many of the good will efforts are going in the wrong direction. Of the PPE gear for a hospital, it is the disposable face shield that has the most potential to be made using 3D printing. We have been working with a local emergency room nurse who is also another robot coach and got the rest fo the materials donated to fabricate them. We are printing non stop here and are up to 30 shields now since Sunday and local hospitals are accepting them. We know they will only be needed until companies like Bauer get their ramp up done and are delivering.
So please focus on calling that woodworker, contractor, dentist, hairdresser, etc you know and get them to pull out dust masks and gloves. And start wearing your mask, make it a fashion statement. I might embroider the edges of mine.
There is an embroidered casket for sale this weekend on auction. It has certainly seen much better days but it amazingly has its bottles, inkwells and even a good print in the inside.
It is lot 945 at Hutchion Scott Limited in Skipton, UK. The auction is on March 27th. I can't quite tell which story is on this casket and the back is in somewhat better condition than the front. There are more pictures of the casket online if you look.
Again - if you get it - you owe me some great pictures!!
protection
a temporary solution in the 1-2 weeks between
exhaustion of supply and commercial
supply ramping up. The ties, foam piece
and clear shield needs to be added