As part of this supposed amazing 24-hours, Saturday morning dawned awfully early. It was near midnight when I finally got to sleep on Friday night. I always hated eight o’clock lectures and only abided nine o’clock ones by degree. Saturday morning, found us electro-gliding, via Prius, towards the History Museum, in Forest Park. We were late, but we got a parking place and caught most of the introductory lecture by Marci McDade, editor of the magazine, Fiber Arts. There was an exhibit at the museum, of which, “Spirit Cradles” by Tracy Deniszczuk is just a sample. There was also a bus tour of a dozen different locales about town, all of which are part of innovations, A Biennial Textile Event, 2011. We caught five of today’s dozen events. Today’s was a city tour, in October there is a county and outer environs tour. Anne plans on taking the bus for this one. Although I enjoyed the art today, I won’t.

“Doll Sense” by Lia Cook was the most striking exhibit of the day. We almost beat the ladies on the bus to this site, but alas, we had to actually park and the bus did not feel this compunction. It just pulled up in front of the gallery and discharged its load, on to the street. Ms. Cook’s exhibit features about twenty woven pieces, all portraits of doll’s faces. Although, in her commentary, she described using human faces and also her own as influences. She uses a super high-tech Norwegian loom to produce her works of art, the Thread Controller, TC-1, by Digital Weaving Norway. As she described her work, it included a lot of computer programming to create the woven design. This was not the only link between computers and textiles in our tour.

“Guerra de la Paz: Follow the Leader”, is a large single piece exhibit at Craft Alliance in Grand Center. It is a collaboration of two artists, Senor Guerra and Senor Paz. They work out of Miami’s “Little Haiti” district, which is dominated by warehouses. Some of these warehouses are devoted to collecting remnant clothing for shipment to Haiti. The artists have been able to avail themselves of some of these clothes for this exhibit. It appears as a conga line, with the leader having just fallen down.

We may, or may not just have avoided a parking ticket, after exiting the Sheldon, our fifth and final stop. The bus load of ladies, some of them visiting artists, some of them men, and some of them people who Anne knew, left for another seven stops. I got back to the car and there was a meter-maid writing tickets. I knew that I was vulnerable, because I had used up all my meter change at the last stop. There was no ticket on the windshield, as I bade the meter-maid farewell, “I’m leaving.” “OK”, she replied, but she could have just as easily have meant, the bill is in the mail. Only time will tell.