I know it is sometimes to believe everything you hear- but believe me when I say, I have something for you to do this weekend and/or next weekend if you are in or around the Orlando area.
You have 3 options:
1. THIS SUNDAY, December 6th at 9am.
2. THIS SUNDAY, December 6th at 11am.
3. NEXT FRIDAY, December 11th, at 8pm.
So, once you’ve picked your day, let me continue in telling you what you’re coming to.
My wonderful church, Northwest Community Church, is not your typical church. We have had a dance company at the church for a few years now, and we also have other great artists from around Orlando that are all helping and collaborating, and it ends up that we have freaking awesome productions that aren’t worth missing. This is free entertainment people.
I’m not going to lie to you, it is our goal that it will become something that speaks to you, rather than just entertainment, but you can rest assured you will at the very least have stimulated ears and eyes after it’s done.
This particular production has not only dance, but video and even La Nouba like things (silks and hoop things!) and it is done with excellence.
So please come out on one of the 3 days and see it for yourself. You won’t be missing out on anything, and I assure you, if you come on Friday, you will be wishing you had come on Sunday so you could go back on Friday night. It’s that good.
And if you are my friend on Facebook, I think you’ll be able to see this link, but you MAY have to be friends with Rory who originally posted the video.
But if you don’t trust me about this being totally and completely awesome and legit, look at this link:
So yesterday morning, I was reading a devotional by one of my all time favorite authors, Charles Spurgeon.
Oh I just love him.
But this year (and last year and I will do it next year too) I have been reading his daily devotional “Morning & Evening”. As I was reading yesterday morning, Saturday, November 28th, I got excited when I read this:
“In us truth must be a living force, an active energy, an indwelling reality, a part of the woof and warp of our being… a Christian can die, but he cannot deny the truth… it is said that the food of certain worms colours the cocoons of silk which they spin: and just so the nutriment upon which a man’s inward nature lives gives a tinge to every word and deed proceeding from him.”
My dear friend Amaris was over at the time, and when she walked in my room I said, “Amaris, Spurgeon was very fibery this morning.” It is amazing how a few simple words spark my interest even more than it was sparked before: woof, weft, color, silk, spin.
Then I went on to think (and said this to Amaris as well) about one of my very favorite passages in the scripture that I often read, think about, and use as an example for how to work and be.
(I actually did a whole series on this in a girls Bible study I have back in Savannah, because even though we aren’t married now, we can’t magically become this amazing woman overnight.)
Proverbs 31: 10-31
A wife of noble character:
10 Who can find a virtuous and capable wife?
She is more precious than rubies. 11 Her husband can trust her,
and she will greatly enrich his life. 12 She brings him good, not harm,
all the days of her life.
13 She finds wool and flax
and busily spins it. 14 She is like a merchant’s ship,
bringing her food from afar. 15 She gets up before dawn to prepare breakfast for her household
and plan the day’s work for her servant girls.
16 She goes to inspect a field and buys it;
with her earnings she plants a vineyard. 17 She is energetic and strong,
a hard worker. 18 She makes sure her dealings are profitable;
her lamp burns late into the night.
19 Her hands are busy spinning thread,
her fingers twisting fiber. 20 She extends a helping hand to the poor
and opens her arms to the needy. 21 She has no fear of winter for her household,
for everyone has warm clothes.
22 She makes her own bedspreads.
She dresses in fine linen and purple gowns. 23 Her husband is well known at the city gates,
where he sits with the other civic leaders. 24 She makes belted linen garments
and sashes to sell to the merchants.
25 She is clothed with strength and dignity,
and she laughs without fear of the future. 26 When she speaks, her words are wise,
and she gives instructions with kindness. 27 She carefully watches everything in her household
and suffers nothing from laziness.
28 Her children stand and bless her.
Her husband praises her: 29 “There are many virtuous and capable women in the world,
but you surpass them all!”
30 Charm is deceptive, and beauty does not last;
but a woman who fears the Lord will be greatly praised. 31 Reward her for all she has done.
Let her deeds publicly declare her praise.
I absolutely love this passage. Many women do. But I think the reason I love it so much is not just because this woman is incredible and has amazing character and is a trustworthy wife, speaks with wisdom, and is praised by her husband and children, but because she is a hard worker, working on the same things I work on!
She is a spinner, a good cook, a business woman, spends and invests her money wisely, works hard on profitable things, serves her community, provides clothes for her family, is a quilter!, is fashionable!, makes linen clothes!, laughs!, is kind, is never lazy, is wise, and is married to a man with a god reputation.
She is great. I love reading that passage because it inspires me to do better than what I am doing, and to not be satisfied with the things I’ve already done. I also love relating fibers and the Bible. I love that she can not only be a spiritual example to me, but a physical example to me.
Alright alright. You are reading my last post from my France trip.
I figured I needed to stop dragging my feet about it, and to just post it, before things here start picking up and I start making other cool things I want to post photos of.
But Vernissage, our final exhibit, was amazing. It took a lot of work getting it all ready, but everyone was running busily around the village, and was much fun.
I don’t know what I was thinking that weekend, but I only took photos of the fibers studio, and nothing else.
I will explain a bit what Vernissage consisted of, because talking to my mom, she didn’t really understand, and I think that was my lack in explaining what it was.
Basically, “Vernissage” is the French word for “opening” and used in reference to art openings. So that’s all that means, is we put together our own show (which you’d probably figured out anyways). But since there were a few different majors represented at SCAD Lacoste this past quarter (as there always is) and many talented students, we had a lot of things to find places for, and took over Rue du Four. We were in little galleries up and down the street, in back rooms and in our various studio spaces we’d been in all quarter. There was a lot of stuff, and everything (really, everything!) looked GREAT. I really am going to one day be looking through a magazine, see a commercial or billboard, or be reading a design blog, and will see something someone did and be able to truthfully say, “Oh! I lived in France with them for 8 weeks when I was a senior at SCAD.”
I know talented people, for real.
So here is a little bit of what the Fibers room looked like at Vernissage. Please look at Lissa Nancy’s blog, because I know she is the only one that took before and after photos and while they’re not on her blog yet, I’m sure she’ll put the up when she’s back in the states. (She gets home today, so she can finally feast on our long awaited guacamole!!!!!!!!!!!)
Kara and my kitchen display.
Me with the things I made (and a few of Kara’s!)
Megan and Caitlin making a sale of my napkins!
Cute Kara with her wonderful tea towels.
Kara Wentz- tea towels.
My napkins- 6 sets, 4 napkins in each. 3 designs.
Elise Fornell.
Allison White- off loom weavings.
Erica Parker- beautiful aprons and hats.
Whitney Sharpe- exquisite embroidered portraits.
Caitlin Betsy Bell- quilts.
Megan Kiehna- wonderful linen and French things.
Lexi Paladin0- the best Christmas ornaments I have ever seen.
Caitlin Betsy Bell.
Paige Striebig- Incredible handmade lace, dress. She’s insane. And amazing.
And here are some detail photos of my napkins done with my favorite thing: free motion embroidery:
It was a wonderful wonderful show, and we had a lot of fun.
I wish I had photos of the rest of the things that happened, but browse around the blogs on the right, and see what you can find. I have a lot of people from Lacoste on there, so I’m sure you’ll find something.
Thanks so much if you’ve been reading these blogs faithfully while I’ve been in France. I truly did miss home so much while I was away am I am so glad to be back, but I already feel a little bit like it was a dream! It really was such a wonderful quarter and I wouldn’t ever trade it for anything else, despite how much I missed home sometimes. It was such an incredible time, and I did tons of things. I have only touched the surface of my travels on this blog, but I did the best I could without saying too much. (Although I’m sure I did sometimes.)
I will be in Florida for the next month or so, before going back to Savannah, but I plan on making lots of cute things over the break, and continuing to do fun things and take photos, and continue to update this blog, so it’s not ending here, although it won’t be as dependable, that’s for sure.
But that is all for now. Happy Thanksgiving (tomorrow) and welcome home to my fellow France loving friends.
After 81 days, 5 flights, 4 train rides, 5 countries, 1345 photos, 39 youtube video uploads, 28 blog posts, 4 times of crying out of sadness, 2 times of crying tears of joy, and an uncountable number of tears while laughing; 15,000 dance parties, 5 birthdays, 21 embroideries, 30+ field trips, 4 times of eating sushi, 80 songs purchased on itunes, 2 internships set up (Melissa & me), 2 failed attempts at guacamole, 3,000 rants with Lexi, more sweet & meaningful conversations with Kara, a few days of homesickness and despair, but more days of utter joy and amazement, seeing fall change for the first time, 40 sent postcards, dozens of markets and countless vendors, tons of cute dogs, mastery of the Thriller dance, 1 night of karaoke, 1 stolen spoon, lots of coffee & chocolate, an uncountable number of emails, 24 napkins, 6 sales, tons of new and amazing friendships, and I’m finally home.
I have yet to sit and look over my pictures, journal, and blog and to absorb what in the world I just did. It was fun and exciting and I loved it. I am so happy to be home though, although it has been a weird past few days adjusting again to being here.
It is odd that the French culture is so slow paced, but I feel like my life sped up over the time I was there, and now that I’m back in America, where things are supposed to be faster and crazier, I have no idea what to do with myself!
It’s over. We worked and worked. We didn’t sleep. We sewed our fingers to death.We did our art history presentations. We sold stuff. We celebrated.
It is a surreal feeling that it’s all over! But I will tell more about Vernissage and post photos when I get back to the states on TUESDAY!
But for now, enjoy Lexi and my last dance video from Friday night, after one successful night at Vernissage, and we finally had the feeling of being finished. We had finished our art history presentations, and were completely finished, besides de-installing our installations.
Melissa and I have decided that we feel like we don’t feel like we are in France any more. (Weird sentence. Sorry.)
But it’s like, the “wow” factor of living here is beginning to wear off and everything we are seeing, although still completely beautiful and amazing, is becoming the norm for us. So with that said, I miss home!!!
I get in Tuesday, November 17th, in the evening… 6.30 or something.
Here’s what I’m looking forward to:
Good coffee
Guacamole & Hummus! (Duh)
Text messaging
Yandala (my car)
Singing really loud when I’m driving
Seeing wonderful family and friends
G12
Calling my sister
Updating my iPhone to 3.0 (yeah, still haven’t done that)
Downloading Phil Wickham’s new album (which is released the day I get back or I would just do it now.)
BIKE RIDES!!!!!!!!!
Florida!
Baby Bella
Being able to understand what people say to me
Sleeping in my comfortable bed
My sack of nothingness (my pillow. It is pretty much a piece of fabric. I’ve been sleeping on a real pillow.)
Wearing different clothes and shoes!
Straightening my hair and figuring out how long it really is!!! (It’s so long. I know it.)
Catching up on the office.
Going to H&M in Florida… I’m just curious.
Sharing a house with Katie Shaw, my new sister.
Talking like a “gangster” with Bianca without being called crazy.
Northwest.
Feeling clean after I get out of the shower.
Flat land.
There are a lot of things I’m excited for. That’s a few.
There will certainly be things that I miss here, for sure. Such as:
Eleanor! She is great!
The beautiful valley.
Fall- it’s like I’ve never seen fall before here.
The cool air.
Mountains.
TREES. (I will miss all of the trees and the rows of trees the most.)
Maison Renard.
Using an iMac all the time.
Hearing French.
Learning about different cultures.
Hoping for mail.
Deadlines for projects.
Field trips to really cool places.
Leclerc.
The markets.
Fresh lavender.
Interesting ice cream flavors.
Chocolate.
Dance parties with Lexi and Kara every day.
Singing “Party in the USA” and having it mean something (hahah).
And I’m sure there’s more things I will miss once I’m out of here and absorb everything.
I still have to upload photos from our day in Lyon at Prelle’s weaving factory. It was awesome. But there’s a huge chance that I won’t upload anything until I’m home, although that’s not certain.
Vernissage (our exhibition) is next weekend and we are all frantically making things to sell and show, and still have to put the entire thing together. It should be great, and I’m sure I’ll continue to learn a lot in the process.
Hard to believe it’s already been a week since we got back from Paris. It has gone by so quickly and much has happened. Here are a few of the highlights:
Wednesday, October 28th, we had pumpkin carving in the cafeteria with cute little french kids and I carved my first pumpkin!
Then Thursday night, Pam had a surprise for us fibers girls.
We had no idea what to expect.
Here are some hypothesis’s:
But here’s the unveiling of what the actual surprise was, and it’s something we could have never imagined!
If you can’t figure it out from the video, we were given tons of Brun textile remnants. A lot of them are really big pieces. Pam divided them into piles and then we all picked a number for each pile, and then picked in the order. It was fun, and we were all so happy.
So now I own cashmere and alpaca. At no cost. How amazing!
Here’s what I got. (All of this fabric is worth hundreds of Euros, FYI.)
The next day, Friday, October 30th, was my wonderful Lexi’s 21st birthday!
We first went on a field trip to the Abbey, and I saw a monk.
Then later in the day I went to the grocery store (Leclerc- aka: the walmart of France) and bought Lexi a cake and after dinner we surprised her.
and following that was our favorite thing- a dance party!!!!! It was a great night.
Saturday, October 31st, Halloween, was a busy day.
I woke up with all of these bites on my arms and thought that a bug had bitten me when I was asleep because we had the window open for our dance party the night before. But the day was too busy to think too much about it.
SCAD Lacoste always does a big thing for the people in the village for Halloween. We put together a haunted house for the kids in the printmaking studio, and people were also passing out candy and things like that. So I had volunteered to help in the haunted house only because the help I was providing was to do “Thriller” for the whole night in the front room. (Which was not very scary.)
So because of this, I had to actually dress up scary.
And Kara wasn’t doing the dance, but she dressed up scary with me… just because she didn’t have anything else to be her costume.
Gross.
So I probably did “Thriller” about a million times.
Here were the 2 others I was dancing with.
pretty scary.
We were exhausted by the end of it. We probably did it like, 20 times, and 2 days later, I am still sore. Haha! But man, am I glad I know the legit Thriller dance. That’s for sure going to come in handy one day.
Then yesterday I woke up with new red bites all over my legs.
It turned out that a few others had these mysterious red bites show up the same day mine first did.
So by the end of the day, with the research we had done, we decided this was from our sweet wonderful 2 star hotel Home Latin in Paris… had bed bugs.
We were all up in arms about it, freaking out that they were in our mattresses here, our clothes, sheets, towels, fabric, etc. and we were all freaking out. Maison Renard (my house) was ranting and I ended up crying! Haha!
Catlin and Megan were infected as well, so we all washed our sheets and were just freaking out, took benedryl and I still slept poorly, because I was thinking about the bugs attacking me in the middle of the night.
(But let me tell you, I am VERY well red on bed bugs.)
Today I went to the doctor, and he seems to think we just got bit while we were in Paris, and didn’t bring any home. The bites don’t show up for probably a week after you get them, and some people are allergic to them, and some people aren’t. So, FYI, if you aren’t one of those people that are allergic to the biting, then you’ll never even know if you have bed bugs.
They are nearly impossible to get rid of, that’s what the problem was.
But we’re all just hoping and praying that they bit us in Paris, and then didn’t bite us again. I guess only time will tell!
So that’s been the events of the day.
Poor Cali got hit in the head with an iron today (it fell off a shelf onto her head) and we think she has a mini concussion. I’m sure she’ll be fine, but dang a lot of crazy things have been happening.
Our Vernissage is in a week and a half, and we have to have all of our stuff done for it by next Wednesday. I have much to do! And I can’t work at all this Wednesday because we are going on a Fibers field trip to Lyon! We are going to see the Prelle fabric actually being produced.
Ohhh no! I just realized something sad and awful. I have been back in Lacoste from Paris for 6 days now and it had taken me FOREVER to upload my photos and I thought I had them all, but they were still on my camera because I wanted to make sure.
Well today was Halloween, and I deleted A BUNCH of photos off one of my memory cards that I THOUGHT I had uploaded already. Wrong. So I lost most all of my photos from Paris Day 5, which is all that was on that memory card. Sad. But good thing is, they are mostly photos of artwork in the Louvre, which are boring anyways. There are better images of what I took on google images. Oh well.
So anyways…
Our final day in Paris was Sunday, day 5, and the Fibers girls got up early to go to a flea market with Pam. I didn’t take any photos there because everyone was really weird about taking photos of their antiques and trash that they were trying to sell. I still can’t figure out why they were so weird about taking photos. But whatever. So I didn’t delete any photos of that!
After the flea market, Kara and I went and walked towards the Louvre, stopped at a Starbucks, and continued on.
We then toured the painting section of the Louvre and did a bit of the sculpture. We were there for quite some time, and afterward, we went BACK to the Decorative Arts Museum because we had missed a major exhibit, which was the main reason Pam wanted us to go there. It was an AMAZING exhibit, and you weren’t allowed to take photos in there, so I only lost the photos that I took before I knew no photos were allowed. But the exhibit was of a fashion designer, Madeleine Vionnet and she made INCREDIBLE dresses. So beautiful. Kara and I were freaking out. There is a book of hers that I plan on ordering off Amazon when I get back home.
We saw stuff like this:
After we stood drooling on the glass in front of the dresses, we eventually left, and just moseyed around Paris until it was time to leave.
We also stopped at the Notre Dame. I freaking love that cathedral. Thankfully, my photos of it are still in existence!
No better way to instill fear in your congregation than putting sculptures of people being tortured in Hell for you to look at as you’re walking through the door:
Man, I don’t even like architecture that much, but that building is amazing.
The rest of the day consisted of us being frustrated that every store is closed in Paris because it was a Sunday, and then catching the train home and being exhausted!
My favorite part though, wasn’t the palace, but was something you may not have done if you’ve ever taken a trip to Versailles. AFter we walked around the palace, we walked down a beautiful road, with our colorful umbrellas-
to Marie-Antoinette’s “domain”. We were all so taken back by the beautiful fall, sheep and rosw of trees, it took us ages to even get there, but we finally arrived.
It would be impossible for me to talk about all of it, but it was really quite precious. And it was cool to see the textiles (in the palace as well) that we had already seen at Prelle 2 days before, and to know that we were looking at Marie Antoinette’s stuff.
She had this whole weird little village thing to herself. The picture above was the house she sort of hung out in I guess, but behind it was tons of land, full of all of these little cottage like places that people lived in, because she wanted to feel like she was a peasant. The area behind it is called (I believe) Marie-Antoinette’s Hamlet.
While we were walking through, I honestly felt like I was in a weird part of Epcot or on a movie set.
But my favorite part HAD to be all of the animals! AND I completed a goal of mine while in Europe:
I also pet a donkey. They were flocking to me. They absolutely loved me.
we also saw some other freaking cute animals and this little hay head was my favorite:
After Versailles, we went back to Paris, to the Louvre’s Decorative ARts Museum. My favorite (that day because Kara and I ended up going back on Day 5) were the old toys and the little music machines.
They were a little hard to photograph, because everything was in glass, so… sorry.
Kara, Caitlin, Lexi and I then ran nextdoor to the actual Louvre, but we only had maybe 30 minutes there, which we spent lost inside of the sculpture room before the museum closed.
We were all so exhausted that nothing too interesting happened that evening, besides day light savings time (yes, we got 1 extra hour in Paris).
It was a good day, and I got a good nights sleep that night.
Day 3 was October, 23, which also happens to be Kara’s birthday!
She turned 22 in Paris!
For one of our Fibers Paris assignments, we had been put into groups to different vintage stores that we picked out of these lovely lovely books about handmade things in Paris. I was in a group with Erica, Cali, and Whitney. We all picked 1 place out of the book to go, but we only needed to go to 3. (But we were going to do all 4 anyways, because they were all going to be awesome stores anyway.)
So we first walked to Cali’s, but it was closed. We were bummed.
Then we went to Erica’s store, which was open.
after this we went to this cool weaving store next door which subbed for Cali’s closed store because it was also in the book. I snuck some photos and was also SO CLOSE to buying a 30 euro hand woven scarf, but I didn’t because I didn’t like the edges. Oh well, I’ll just weave my own scarf sometime.
Then, we walked to Whitney’s store, which happened to be my #2 choice, so I was very excited to go.
It is called Images et Portraits, and I would suggest anyone going to Paris to go here. It was amazing.
I bought 2 photos. One is for me. It will hang on my wall in my home one day when I have my very own home. I know exactly what it will be like.
After this, we got something to eat, and then realized that my store was closed. I was really bummed, but oh well…. I guess I’ll just have to go back to Paris someday. Shoot! (ha.)
So we then went to FIAC, which stands for “Foire d’art contemporain” aka: modern/contemporary art… awesome. (I’m being slightly sarcastic in my tone because while modern art is cool… a lot of it makes me really dislike art.)
But it was a really amazing opportunity for us to be able to do this, so I was trying to make the most of it. And while in line to enter, I ran into Melissa and Kara! They were happy to be at FIAC.
And we saw a lot of modern art.
Some was cool:
and some really annoyed me:
Wow. That’s all I’ll say.
After looking through the Louvre’s FIAC (there were 2 places FIAC was being held in Paris, one was at the Louvre, and the other was at the Grand Palais), Melissa, Kara and I walked down Champs-Elysees to see the fancy shops and the Arc de Triomphe (and we also stopped in the Grand Palais to the other part of FIAC on the way).
We saw some fall…
The Grand Palais…
Champs-Elysees
and saw the Arc!
By this time, we were all ridiculously sore and aching from all the walking that day. I had basically sat down only when I went to lunch that afternoon.
So we took the metro to Home Latin, rested for a minute and I gave Kara her birthday card and made her cry:
Then we met the rest of the girls and went to dinner!
Because Kara and I missed it so much (who are we?) we got sushi! (We had decided when we were in London so long ago, that we would have sushi for Kara’s birthday while in Paris.) It was delicious.
Mmmmm.
I also, naturally, bought my mustaches all the way to Europe from home (but purchased for me by Madeleine Glascock in D.C.) so after dinner we were outside just being silly with our staches on before we headed to The Long Hop, and Irish pub, for cider. (I believe in the states it’s called “hard cider”? But I don’t know.)
It was really fun and we were exhausted from our day, so we went back after that to the hotel and got a bit of rest before our next day began!
