Davidson College Archives - Tinking Turtle

Talking with Marian Schembari

September 30, 2015 by Jennifer Raymond

This morning I spent some time talking to Marian Schembari, a Davidson College classmate of mine. Marian’s been a person I’ve enjoyed following since we graduated: from her facebook ad that got her a job in publishing, to her dynamic transition from a Couchsurfer user to employee, and finally to the freelance career she has today – she’s always doing something smart and interesting. Oftentimes I’ve drawn parallels between the tracks of our careers – as we’ve both struggled to figure out what to do when the career we thought we wanted to do didn’t quite work. While I realized that I wasn’t suited to academia and an office job, Marian realized that publishing wasn’t quite a good fit for her. In the years since 2005 (when we were across the other in our freshman dorms), I’ve went from being a little in awe of Marian (she had a great roommate and a great sense of style and an amazing writing voice) to being respectful of her as a businesswoman – one who has managed to make several right-turns in her career and still remain passionate and articulate and true-to-herself.

So I was curious as I sat down to chat with Marian over Skype this morning. She had put out a call on Facebook, wanting to talk to women who ran small businesses, and I figured it would be a fun way to say hello and reconnect. It’s funny – despite never being good friends in college (probably due to me often just feeling/being awkward), we managed to chat for just under an hour about so many different things we had in common.

One of my goals each month this year was to call up and talk to someone I thought was neat or cool and just chat. I’ve mentioned this before (especially on twitter). The goal was a simple one: the job I have now, on an everyday basis, is a largely solitary one, and I wanted to reach out to people who I thought were neat and just connect. Also, because I tend to have a fear of calling up people I don’t know, this was a way to work on that problem! Think of it as establishing my own water-cooler. I kept the rules loose – the chat could be in person or on the phone, and it didn’t have to really be for any reason other than I thought the person was nifty. This mission has led to me establishing connections I didn’t think was possible, and even some young friendships.

Talking with Marian brought home why I started this project. We were able to chat about how our Alma Mater has both been a boon (in friendships) and a frustration (our work-ethic is perhaps permanently warped). Marian gave me some great ideas about how to talk and present myself online, and I told her a bit about my business and the fiber arts industry. At one moment Marian shared her love of adult coloring books, and I reached just out of the frame to hold up my mug of colored pencils. Laughing, Marian reached out of the video frame on her end, to show me a bunch of colored pencils – also in a coffee mug.

It also brought home several things I shouldn’t forget: that I need to remember to keep doing the things I love, in between the things that keeps a business running.

When was the last time you reached out to an old acquaintance? How did it go?

My First Local Yarn Store: The Needlecraft Center

June 9, 2015 by Jennifer Raymond

This last weekend Mr. Turtle and I drove the long five hours to Davidson College, our alma mater. It was his class reunion (last year was mine, but since the weekend was the same one as TNNA… I chose to forgo it). Davidson College is a small liberal arts college just outside of Charlotte, North Carolina. You might have heard of Davidson College in a few different contexts: our free laundry services, when we went to the Elite 8 in 2008, because we’re Stephen Curry’s Alma Mater, or (if your’e in the stitching world) the fact that we’re the alma mater of Ann Shane of ’85 – also known as one half of Mason-Dixon Knitting.

Mr. Turtle and I have been back to Davidson a few times since we moved away five years ago – the most notable instance being at Mr. Turtle’s brother’s graduation. So the changes to the campus weren’t quite such a shock to us as they were to others. Still, it’s interesting to see how the campus has grown and changed.

There are few places that have been as formative to my life as Davidson. There’s Camp, of course, and my family. But Davidson is where I learned a lot of life skills in a very short amount of time: how to write well, create an ordered argument, set-up an excel sheet like a pro, weld and hammer. It’s where I met Mr. Turtle. It’s also where I met my first LYS: The Needlecraft Center.

The Needlecraft Center, Davidson NC

So while Mr. Turtle spent his time socializing with old friends, I took a quick hour to stop by the store, say hello to the staff, and just revisit a place that got me through many college crisis. And then, on Sunday before we left, I took some time to spend with the owner, Elaine McArn, who has run the store for 43 years – since 1971.

It was lovely to visit with Elaine. When I was in college I was a little intimidated by her: she was so very knowledgeable and experienced. She was the one who caught that I was knitting twisted stitches, who gave a word to the knitting style I preferred. She was the one who educated me on why it was worth it to save your pennies and use good yarn. She started me on my first terrible socks. I didn’t always welcome her advice: after all, I was young and didn’t always appreciate being told what I was doing was wrong, or not the best way to go about things. But I respected her – especially when I realized she was almost always right.

The year after I graduated my perception of her changed. I was working for the college, living in a house, and beginning to figure out the “adult thing.” I began to really respect the fact that Elaine had a long-time respected business, especially in the crafting world. I got to know her better through knitting nights at the store, and by hanging out more as she talked about the difficulties of owning a store: dealing with “missing merchandise,” how to market yarns and tools, and making tough choices about where her business was going to go. We bonded over gardening: growing peas and tomatoes, zucchini and squash.

young hatchlings in a nest cozied in a potted fern

Young Hatchlings in Elaine’s Fern

We’ve kept in touch on and off since then. Elaine was one of the first people I contacted when I knew I was going to TNNA. We met over breakfast the morning before the show floor opened, and she gave me advice about how to conduct myself. It made me relax when I was SO nervous!

So on Sunday it was more than nice to visit with Elaine, to talk about families and business, gardening and textiles. To talk about having to make tough decisions when you run a business: are you going to buy a new printer, or do workarounds so you can have the cash in reserve? Which yarns do you carry, what things are fads and which are not? We bonded over the young birds hatching in one of her ferns, and the way rosemary smells just after it rains. As we were talking I had a moment where my younger self looked through my eyes – not quite believing we were discussing tatting and crochet in heirloom textiles.

Have you had people in your life whose relationship has changed and grown? I’d love to hear about some of them!

A weekend in Pictures: Davidson Reunion

June 8, 2015 by Jennifer Raymond

Mr. Turtle and I got back from our Davidson College Reunion later last evening. It was just enough time to unpack, read through emails, feed the cats, and start a load of laundry. I swear, this traveling every weekend thing has to stop.

Tomorrow I’ll talk more about the reunion, as my thoughts settle. Today, a few quick pictures of what I’m working on:

Swatching for my current design!

I’m working with some lovely yarn called chocolate. I’m trying not to get hungry every time I use it.

Working on the sleeve of the piece. Knitting bag in Davidson colors!

Davidson College has a lake campus, where Mr. Turtle spent many an afternoon as Commodore of the sailing team. We went to revisit the lake campus, and I plopped myself by a tree near the water, and worked on the sleeve to this project.

All the revisiting members of 2010. I’m not there as I’m class of 2009.

Intellectual Risk, Davidson College, and Running a Business

October 8, 2013 by Jennifer Raymond

I was going to write a post today on drawing inspiration from nature in design (don’t worry, it’ll show up tomorrow), but I want to talk about something that I’ve been thinking about since last

by The Fayj

night.

Last night Michael and I went to a reception for Davidson College, where we did our undergraduate work. It was a reception for highschool students who live in the Metro DC area and are contemplating applying to Davidson. As part of the reception, the alumni there (7 of us), spoke a little bit about our experiences at Davidson and how it has helped us since we’ve moved onto the real world. Now, for both Michael and I, who love Davidson, have an abiding loyalty, and benefited greatly from going there, so it was hard to choose a simple topic to talk about. But one thing that kept coming up from different alumni was the idea of intellectual risk.

Risk is a hard thing for me to do. I’m not naturally a person that likes to leave my safe zone. Or should I say, I don’t like to take risks without an appropriate level of preparation. I’m not the type that likes to look before I leap – at least when it comes to important decisions in my life. But I love to pit myself against a challenge, and I love to dive into something without knowing what the results will be. Franklin Habit captured it beautifully yesterday when he was talking about his yarn and his hat – I, like him, don’t mind “setting sail without a destination.”

by avyfain

Which is, I suppose, a sort of intellectual risk. Believing that you, yourself, have the skills to navigate whatever comes of of the risk – be it success, mistakes or abject failure, is hard.

One of the students at the reception asked if we could elaborate a little on intellectual risk, and how Davidson fosters this quality. I told him about my 300-level class my senior year, Professor Campbell‘s Memoir class. Every three weeks or so we were working on a piece of short nonfiction in a different area of memoir. Towards the end of the second essay, I started to notice a pattern emerging in the stories I was choosing to tell, and I wanted to investigate the theme.

So I went to Dr. Campbell and explained my problem to her: I wanted to write these stories, but I wasn’t sure they would meet the future requirements of the other assignments. I told her I could use the assignments as inspiration, but I wasn’t sure that by the end of them the piece I had written would match the project requirements. I asked her if that was okay, because I didn’t want my grade to suffer. (I was not one to let my grade suffer for my art, thankyouverymuch.)

We agreed that my stories would be evaluated based on their own merit as a collection, and not necessarily on the project requirements. This was terrifying for me. I no longer would have concrete goals I had to meet. Instead, these stories had to stand up based on their own artistic merit. That, to me, was a much harder goal to meet.

Intellectual risk. Putting your ideas and your self out there for the sake of meeting some higher goal. At another school the professors might not have been so flexible, might have preferred grading according to the rubric that had been set. Certainly it created more work from Dr. Campbell.

In the real world – the world outside of the college bubble – risk of certain sorts is inevitable. Certainly every time I develop a new class, or send out a design proposal or publish a pattern I’m taking a risk – that my time, my money, my thoughts might be wasted or rejected. And that rejection? Happens a lot.

But it’s the only way to succeed.

Do you take intellectual risk? When have you put yourself out there and succeeded… or failed? I’d like to know. Leave a comment, reply via twitter or facebook.

Inspirations and Influences: Isis Wings

October 1, 2013 by Jennifer Raymond

Isis Wings, published by Three Irish Girls, is now out. Boy, this pattern has been a long time in coming!

Isis Wings was created four years ago, and was one of the very first patterns I designed. It was created before I had even considered the idea that I could have a business based off of selling my knitting and crochet designs. Isis Wings was conceived on the porch of the house my now-husband, Michael, I and two other friends rented. The three of them were in their last year of undergraduate studies; I was working for the college Theatre Department at Davidson College. During those hot summer days as I began my first full time job, I discovered that I suddenly had a profusion of free time: I was suddenly released from most of my extracurricular activities as well as my academic studies.

I had actual time to knit and crochet. I no longer had to snatch precious moments from my studies and socializing time to work on my hobby. I had whole evenings where I could have a hobby. And I also, for the first time, had more pocket money than I really knew what to do with.

So I bought yarn.

I commenced knitting. I think I finished them in just over a week – which was pretty impressive
for me. I know the first one was finished in a weekend. You’ll note below that the original pair was worked entirely in twisted stitches – I’d just switched to continental knitting, and didn’t realize that I was twisting all of my stitches. That realization would come two projects later.

Twisted Stitch Detail Shot

And then I let them sit. You see, at the time I didn’t know how to write a pattern. But I wore those socks a whole bunch. I got a lot of compliments on them, and it’s about that time that I began to just think that I might be able to make some pocket money off of this hobby.

Later, I would answer Three Irish Girl’s design call, and my new roommate in Washington, DC, would help me name them Isis Wings. I’d work to reconstruct what I did the first time – and only realize a year and a half later as I’m studying them, that I did an extra repeat on one of them (so they are not the same height).

See? Different Heights.

Carrying Davidson With Me

May 16, 2013 by Jennifer Raymond

I’ve been talking a bit the last few days about Davidson College (my alma mater), which has been on my mind since Michael and I are currently driving our way from Washington, DC to Davidson, NC. As previously mentioned, we’re going for Michael’s brother’s graduation.

I’ve been talking about how Davidson College played heavily into the designing I do today. From resources like The Needlecraft Center to the art program at Davidson, this town and college started the transformation from a casual stitcher to fiber-arts professional. There is, however, one other major thing I’ve taken with me away from Davidson that has been instrumental in leading me where I am today.

My husband. Michael.

Back then, of course, he was my boyfriend, whom I had been dating for three years. As a freshly minted graduate, I had an English Degree in hand, a job working for my alma mater (which I was very happy about, as the job market had just plummeted), and a plan to live with Michael and two other friends in a house off campus. Michael and my friends were all seniors, and a year younger than I.

Early design project that has been revised,
and will be published later in the year.

I found myself with a profusion of free time. Having no course load and a job that lasted from 9-5, I had evenings free for the first time in my life. It was amazing. I was doing more spinning than I had ever been able to do, and was knitting and crocheting up a storm. I quickly tired of other people’s patterns, and began to work patterns of my own.

There was one such time, working on a pair of socks, that I began to write things down, so I could remember what I did for the second sock. And it was about that time that Michael began to say, “You could make money from that.”

At first, I scoffed at the idea. There aren’t many entrepreneurs in my immediate family, nor did I run into many people where I lived who ran their own business. In contrast, Michael’s father has run a successful small business most of Michael’s life. What seemed inconceivable to me seemed obvious to him.

Michael kept at it, though, asking thoughtful questions and encouraging me to learn enough about the industry to make an informed decision. It was there
where I began to seriously think about what it would take to be a designer. I wasn’t ready yet to take the leap, and I had a lot of learning to do, but it was at Davidson that the seeds were planted.

Reminiscing about Davidson

May 15, 2013 by Jennifer Raymond

As I mentioned yesterday, I’m heading to Davidson College (my alma mater) over the weekend for my husband’s graduation. It’s got me thinking about how my experiences at Davidson have lead me to where I am now, designing knit and crochet.

Yesterday I told you about the Neelecraft Center, my very first LYS. Today I want to tell you about the second of three things that heavily influenced where I am now. The first was the Neelecraft Center, and the second would be Davidson’s Arts program. You see I was an english major and my senior year I had fulfilled most of my general requirements. That meant I was taking classes mostly toward my major. As things happened, my first semester Senior year I found myself taking three reading-heavy English classes. There were weeks where I was reading nearly three books a week, plus associated articles with the text we were studying.

It was right about that time that Lauren Cunningham, one of my close friends and an art major, told me I should take a sculpture class. (She said this, actually, as we were sharpening pencils for one of her really cool sculptures.) I was dubious, but a few weeks later we were working on another one of her sculptures and it was so much fun I decided ‘what the heck?’

Sculpture was amazing. I’ve always liked to create things with my hands, and here I was being given the tools to be able to do that. I learned how to work with wood, weld with metal, and cast in lost wax. I got to play with plaster, and best of all, I was constantly incorporating crochet and knitting into my work.

Some of my sculptures were pretty weird. I made a hand that’s dressed up like a clown – it was made in a rush on an impulse, inspired my the “hand anteaters” my father used to make when I was a child.

I also made a piece titled “Rebellion against the Sampler.” The piece was inspired partly by the then incipient Crochet Coral Reef Project, partly by scrumbling, and partly by a desire to see just how far I could push crochet. It inspired some rather visceral reactions from my peer reviewers, including one student who claimed it looked like something out of “Dr. Seuss trying to eat my foot.” At my professor’s encouragement I entered it into the student art exhibition, and won second place – beating people who were art majors! It was the first time it occurred to me that I might actually be good at the sculpture and art thing, instead of just enjoying the heck out if it.

Tomorrow, I’ll tell you about the third things at Davidson that brought me to where I am now. Stay tuned!

Going back to where it all started…

May 15, 2013 by Jennifer Raymond

Davidson Mascot, the Wildcat

This weekend Michael and I are returning Davidson, NC, the home of our alma mater, Davidson College. Michael’s brother is graduating, ending an eight-year run of family members attending the school. (His poor parents) Davidson is a small school that nobody really knows about. If you’ve heard of Davidson you’ve probably heard of either Stephen Curry or free laundry. In the fiberarts world Davidson is the alma mater of Ann Shayne ’85, better known as one of the co-author’s of Mason-Dixon Knitting, and the blog by the same name. While I don’t know her personally – she graduated far before I went to Davidson – I’d like to think that some of her coolness rubs off onto me.

I’ve got mixed feelings about going back. I’ve been told things have changed quite a bit since I was there last (in July 2010) – and I’m nervous to see what has changed, and what has remained as I remember it. I’m excited though, because Davidson was a major influence on where I am now.

Davidson introduced me to my very first LYS (local yarn store), in the form of The Needlecraft Center, right across the street from the campus. God bless them. I was a poor college student who could barely afford the yarn out of their “Discount Drawer.” Still, the staff took me under their wing, listening to me cry about classes or homesickness, teaching me to push myself to become a better stitcher, and occasionally helping me fix my mistakes.

Elaine McArn is the owner of the Needlecraft Center. She’s one of the first people who taught me there are different ways of knitting. She’s also the woman who pointed out I was knitting with entirely twisted stitches – and that just might be the reason that my sweater had a mind of it’s own.

Then there were the knit-nights at The Needlecraft Center. Happening every other week, I loved to hang out with the group of women there. I made some really good friends, like Garret Freymann-Weyr, who later helped me get my nanny job working with Sweetness and Light. I liked seeing what the women in the store were making, what was happening with jobs and relationships and family.

There’s more to the story about the Needlecraft Center, and how it intersected with Davidson, but I’ll have to share that tomorrow, in another post. Stay tuned for part 2!

Sign me up!

Thank you for visiting!

Tinking Turtle

Latest Posts

Social Feed

Email Signup

Don’t miss a stitch!