2025 Wrap Up

This has been another strange year. My day job is going well, I still love selling doors and windows (and have a minor obsession with them). We're physically healthy and daily working on the mental health aspect... my general feeling waking up every day to news articles of, what the f*** now has been taking a toll. I've never been very openly political, but the only way I can seem to process what's going on is through my artwork, hence my statement bangles of this year: Resilience, Resist and Feminist. 

I haven't gotten a ton of artwork done this year. The big project was going back and forth with homeowners insurance to get our property put back together. We had a huge storm in May (a tornado in a neighboring town but ours was just high winds) which resulted in needing a tree going through our dining room window, one coming down on our cars, a unch demolishing our shed, most of the privacy fence (yes, my door fence) gone, and a bunch of repair for our balcony and siding. Shockingly, and with some luck with timing and knowing the right people we got most of this done by October. We still have some yard cleanup that I was picking at all summer and need to tear down the shed...but a lot less project for next summer. We had another night of high winds last week and I had a hard time sleeping, after this experience I just think about what kind of damage I'm going to find in the morning (there wasn't any). As much as going back and forth with insurance sucked, I'm glad we have it and I feel taken care of.

My big project for next summer is already upon me, I am teaching one seminar at the Complex Weaver's Conference in Denver and I have a seminar plus a 1 day beadweaving sampler class at Handweavers Guild of America's Convergence Conference. I'm trying to get better at promoting these, but being on social media and staying updated has become such a slog for me. I try not to even go on it too much. So yeah, go sign up for my classes!

Looking back on this past year, we've definitely had our trials. My husband was laid off, lots of people are getting laid off, I feel fortunate that my job is pretty stable and we're good at reigning in our spending. We were still able to go to Riot Fest in September, which was amazing. I never thought I'd even be able to afford to see Blink-182, Weezer and Green Day live and they were the headliners. I was so inspired in fact, that I decided I might want to learn Electric Bass Guitar. Which I have started in on and am really enjoying. My fiber work is just feeling so...worky. This outlet is just for me. My husband has started getting back to playing guitar and he's so geeked that I'm liking it that be bought me a sweet Bass Amp for Xmas. I didn't realize the low sound I love could be even deeper. I love it (and him)!

Then his car was not repairable...so since we had to get him a new car anyway and there are limited options for what he'll comfortably fit in, the utilitarian car he was looking at was about the same price as the car he's always wanted. So I encouraged him to get the fun car since he's doing a lot of driving to make money right now, he might as well. All of the bad stuff that's happened this year has turned around to be a life improvement. Even the job loss, he was miserable and now we have a lot more flexibility to go to more concerts rather than figuring out how to utilize his vacation time since he had a set schedule. Something I felt early on in our relationship is that whatever life throws at us, we'll be ok. I can only explain it as a feeling that I had never fully felt before. We've got each other and we'll figure out what's getting thrown at us next and we're only stronger for it.

I'm letting go of some things too. I don't have the energy to deal with shopping for a server for my website, so I just moved JennySchu.com to my blog. I will probably creating a landing page for it that's simple, but my website does not make me money, so why am I putting so much effort into it when I don't enjoy doing it at all? So much of trying to be an artist on the back end of promoting and trying to sell and hours of work on proposals that may or may not happen is just not doing it for me. So I'm going to get back to what I love and not pressure myself as much to appease the internet. 

So who knows what 2026 will hold. I had breakfast with a friend this morning and talking with her helped remind me that the new year can be a nice day of calm, relaxing reflection. Her excitement for her upcoming year reminded me that I have cool stuff coming up too, I've just been looking at it wrong..feeling a bit overwhelmed with it all. Which reminds me that I need to purge that with basic cardio and I'm going to get back to my elliptical-and-Dr-Mario in the mornings, even if it's for 15 minutes. Last year I decided to try to get an average of 10,000 steps in per day. Some days off I only hit around 2,000 and last year my average was only 8,707 left to my own devices without having any goals. My average on the year is 11,136 as of this writing and only one month I didn't hit the 10,000 average. there's hasn't been a lot of high endurance stuff though which I think is why my anxiety and overwhelm is running rampant. Lots of numbers, but as I've gotten older I seem to like tracking numbers and spreadsheets more. It often helps me look at things as a whole.

Photo by Jena

2024 Wrap Up

Mad Caddies show at the Sanctuary

This year seemed to start off rocky for us, so I felt prepared for anything the second half of the year which went pretty smooth from my recollection. Sometimes I can't even remember yesterday so, the whole year has been...a lot.

Trip to Seattle for Madness and enjoying the city

First, the good stuff, concerts concerts concerts. I'm counting at least 14 shows, with over 50 bands, not including the amazing 3 days of Riot Fest. Three of the shows were bucket-list bands for me: Madness, Save Ferris and Fall Out Boy. I wasn't sure we'd ever see Madness as they rarely leave England these days, so we took an impromptu trip to Seattle to see them when I saw they had a few dates in the States. Save Ferris is touring again, yay! I have always wanted to see Monique Powell perform live and she didn't disappoint. Lastly, I'd just not gotten around to seeing Fall Out Boy in the early days so having them as a headliner for Riot Fest made me feel like my heart was going to burst out of my chest. I also took a bonus solo trip in October for an I Voted for Kodos reunion show in Madison and LOTS of catching up and reconnecting in person with they guys. It's so good to see them playing again.

"Yes, And" installation

I started and finished my first ever commission for one of my word-based weavings for the First Baptist Church of Ann Arbor. I used part of the money from being paid for "Yes, And" to purchase a Baby Macomber loom whom I've named Monique. I now officially have all the looms I need at this point in my life. Monique will be great for sampling, workshops and smaller pieces. 

Color change detail of the current weaving on Beatrice

As far as projects, I'm working on a new larger word piece, I finished another small weaving earlier this year, helped Sherri (my fibers professor and mentor) figure out a sample for an ancient Peruvian double cloth, knit 5 pairs of taller socks, 2 hats and 2 tops. Of course there was plenty of beading in there, "Golden Boundary" won a second place at the Michigan League of Handweavers Biennial Exhibit and had been my mantra for much of the year.  

WeaverBee was the best roomie for Convergence!

I taught enough hours at Convergence Conference this year to get some of my hotel room paid for. I also had a great roomie and made sure to introduce myself to weavers that I admire, in the past I've been a bit too shy, I'm thankful to start getting over that anxiety. 

Door install done, it was a long day and I'm happier here than I look 

(Also the door is painted avocado green now)

I installed my first exterior door (an reinstalled the storm door) and it went much better than I expected it to. I talk about it every day at work, it was nice to put what I've learned into action. That was my only largish house project. I wasn't really outside much, I was inspired to be in the studio more this year. The gardens and weeds will all be there next year. I do need to get back to my door fence soon though, my door collection is taking up far too much of the garage.

Spinning coffee filters into yarn

Side house projects remind me to learn and play. I started spinning coffee filters and stitching over knit stash yarn using some different techniques and materials.

Sewing leaves with a darning foot

Morgan, Clark, myself in my studio

Well, you've made it reading this far, to the rough stuff...we had the emotional roller-coaster of finding out we were pregnant and then coping with a miscarriage. It's the first time anything like this has happened to me/us and I'm so lucky to have Bryan with me to navigate these sorts of life situations. There was this extreme joy and excitement and then the drop into intense loss. We're doing ok. I have a great support system and even signed on for some therapy sessions to address it when I (finally) realized it hit me harder than I thought. 

We miss you Morgan

We lost Morgan, Bryan's cat of 21 years and me being his stepmom for almost 8 of those years. I've never had to be part of making the tough decision of putting an animal down, we didn't want to, and held off for maybe too long. Our vet was compassionate, sincere, and repeatedly assured us that Morgan had lived a very good, very long life for a cat. 

Bruce (thinks the elliptical is a cat tree)

The Universal Cat Distribution System seemed to know we would be down to 2 cats and moved Bruce in under out front porch 2 months before we lost Morgan. We think Bruce had been someone's kitten who had gotten kicked out, he came to us with his paws all ripped up, skinny, awkward, but super friendly. Once we had the vet check him out that he was ok to be around the other cats we moved him in.  He's been a joy and a pain in the butt since he's still a kitten and getting into everything. We're glad to have him and so is Clark, who is his play-buddy. Lois hates him, we hope that levels out eventually. 

Clark is my snuggle buddy

Lois (is always cold this time of year)

All in all, we've had a really good year despite losses, which are part of life. Bryan and I have been together 8 years, married for 2 and it's flown by so fast it hardly seems like we've been together for very long. On my drive into my AA meeting this morning a Harry Chapin song came up on my iPod called "Let Time Go Lightly" and life with Bryan has been a lot lighter and way more fun. 

Riot Fest Day 2

2022 Review: short and sweet because last year was crazy-good

I usually try to do a review of the previous year for my first blog post but SO MUCH HAPPENED and I've become very content on living in the moment instead of needing to keep track of everything on my Blog and Social Media. 

Leaf Me Alone by Jenny Schu

The main points of my 2022 were:

1) We got engaged and got married, our wedding and honeymoon was awesome, 

2) I finished Leaf Me Alone (the large version), 

3) I taught a seminar at Convergence with HGA, had my work in a number of exhibits and had a great trip! I made new weaver friends, one in particular is WeaverBee. I had been following her on Instagram then surprised her by trying not to fan-girl in the hotel gym my first morning there. Elizabeth and I clicked and it's already a vibrant friendship.

4) Bryan and I took our first trip based on a large concert; Rammstein's US Stadium Tour in Minneapolis. I have always wanted to take trips based around going to see a show.  I was excited Bryan was game when we booked it in 2021! I started a blog post about it...maybe I'll finish and post it eventually.

5) We've amped up our concert-going significantly. Our honeymoon was Riot Fest in Chicago, which I might get around to finishing that blog post too...

6) I turned 40 and later in the year celebrated 4 years of sobriety. 

7) Got a ton of work done on the garage and door fence in preparation for our backyard wedding. Roof is done and dry, I'm striping out the garage, doors were touched up...

wedding photo by Jena Hovey

A quick scroll through my photos shows lots of cat photos, gardening, painting, concerts, art museums (we saw Nick Cave's Exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art while we were in Chicago!!), doors (I still LOVE my job as a millwork specialist), walks around the city we love and fell in love in, Lansing. 

Life is happy and better than I ever could have guessed it would be at this point in my life.

2020 and 2021 in Review

2021 Top Nine (I finally figured out how to do that...)

Sometimes I do a yearly review, sometimes I don't have much to say.  The last review I did was in 2019, and to be honest, 2021 still felt like 2020. So I might as well merge the two.

That start of the pandemic and general shut-down of society was...strange.  I don't follow the news much (I learned early that it's too stressful and I need to focus on what I'm doing, not what everyone else is) so when I came in to work and was told we are "shutting down for 2 weeks" and we need to prepare the store for that (all cash drawers and iPads in the safe, we unplugged the mini fridge and moved it into the bathroom with the drain to defrost etc), I went home and tried not to panic.  2 weeks sounded so vague and I didn't like it. So I applied to Home Depot that night.  Some retail establishments were going to be considered "essential" and stay open with limited capacity. I applied to everything that was available. I figured that the application and interview process would take about 2 weeks, that's normal.  That was Tuesday, March 17th.  I had an interview on Friday and started my orientation on Saturday. So much for thinking I'd have some extra time to get projects worked on. 

I hired in to Millwork. I had no idea what Millwork was when I interviewed. My Assistant Manager who was interviewing me told me I'd be fine. I'm a slow learner, I don't memorize well and sometimes numbers are really hard for me until I can relate them, but since we had only 50 people in the store at a time it was slower than usual and my coworker Russ who likes to know everything about everything had plenty of time to train me.  Understanding the swings of doors, lingo, what measurements mean, designing doors to fit spaces and eventually understanding how it would look trimmed out to explain to the customer came with practice. As much as I miss some of my co-workers and customers at Talbots, Millwork turns out to be a really great fit for me. I never knew I'd love doors so much!

I wasn't that inspired to work on my big projects.  At first at home I busied myself with making masks. I wasn't going to do it at all, but the writing was on the wall that I would have to eventually wear them, so I wanted to make custom to fit comfortably. Of course requests started coming in and I figured out how much time and energy and cost would make it worth what price point.  I had fun buying fabric, supporting Seams (what a year to open a fabric store!) and I really sunk into my knitting in the evenings. When the heat of the summer turned we started dismantelling the rotting roof of the garage Labor Day weekend 2020. I have so much support and people to talk things through at work that I finally felt confident reroofing my garage. It was a lot more involved than it looked like, but I usually expect house projects to go that direction anyway. Fall 2021 the garage is 98% dry, we ordered custom windows and I installed them with everything I learned talking about installation in my department.  Next year I have one more edge to wrap with roll roofing dismantling and all the trim work to do.  The back North corner of the garage is really rotted and that the last big patch I have to work on while I trim it out.  We purchased all of the boards I need this year so they can dry out and I'll paint them before putting them on. 

I worked on my door fence in 2020 but not so much in 2021.  I've picked up a few doors from customers so I need to get back on top of painting them and putting them up.  Some of the doors have survived the years and some are falling apart.  I wanted them to have a worn look so it's working out. As some get too bad outside in the weather I just swap them out.  I've found once you start looking for doors, they pop up everywhere. I also know what it looks like when someone is gutting a house. I obtained some solid wood interior doors on my way to work one day, I saw them sitting in the back of a pickup on top of a pile of garbage and simply asked the guys that were going in and out of the house if they were throwing them out, and if so could I have them. They were happy to help my load them into my vehicle.

Valeta's Gears Bangle

I did submit a few pieces into MLH's online exhibit. It was nice because I was able to show anything and since I made a bangle commission for a friend it never got to make the exhibit rounds but I had good photos and submitted it, so it got some view-time. The lack of creating new work came from a pit in my stomach of "what's the point" because as many photos as I can take to show what my work looks like, fiber pieces really truly need to be seen in person. It's hard enough going to a fiber show and not being allowed to touch, but at least you can see each thread, stitch and handwork in the pieces up close. Most of the shows I submit to have to have work finished in the last 2 years. So that was another reason for not finishing any big pieces, not until they can be on display again and they have that 2 year time period of being able to be submitted.  I'm back to trying to finish the large "Leaf Me Alone" piece, once that's done I'll allow myself to get back to my current doubleweave "Is There a Thing to Which Brings Us Less Joy Yet We Devote More Time".  I'm a bit tired of looking at greens and blue of leaf me alone, the black and grey of the next one is exciting because I have individual threads spaced through that have little pops of verigated color. My brain is also starting to dream up the warp for a Theo Moorman Inlay weaving that will be next.  I havevariegated  to roll around in my head how to get a drip or smear feel in that piece. 

Jewelry pieces have just been falling out of me on occasion. I find that I don't feel as stressed out to follow fashion color trends or make new pieces now that I'm not is clothing retail.  I'm letting Pinterest and my bead stash speak to me more. My work style now is hand knit socks, the Barley Light hat all winter, often handknit neck wraps gaiters and some of my earrings. I've fallen in love with the firehose flex cargo pocket pants at Duluth trading company.  I thought "I'll never use these cargo pockets"....I'm pulling so much stuff out of them when I go to throw them in the wash! I still can't really pull off a flannel, I'll always be more into hoodies and I found a new favorite the tie-dyed Wanakome hoodies. I also find that the dryride Burton zip hoodies are great for work right now in case I'm moving a lot of doors and get hot, I can take them off.

Speaking of moving doors... My arm muscles are bigger than they've ever been. One day this summer I was stocking a large shipment of interior doors and thinking about how the previous summer I was so exhausted putting away a few pallets of doors. Not this summer, I can pick up and throw around the interior doors easily. I still struggle with the weight and awkward shape (the attached brickmold adds a lot) of the exterior doors, I just don't quite have the wingspan/height to get those picked up too high, luckily there's plenty of help at work too. This 2-week at home with COVID is going to have me out of shape but I'll get back to it, I am enjoying being this strong and healthy.

Fabric Scrap Playing (beginning, back, front)

As much as we've been wearing masks, distancing and staying in (which I rather enjoy) we still managed to get this round of COVID. So I've been home since the 20th, the first week was awful. I've never had to take so much ibuprofen before. The body aches would wake me up, and I mostly slept the first week. As my health returned my motivation to work on my artwork came on full-force. I got back to make leaves to finish Leaf Me Alone. I've started the beaded edging for the piece that's on my loom, I started doodling  thinking about fabric and making cat patterns, plus some scrap fabric play.... it's like it's been a 1-week artist residency. Bryan and I are both on the other end of it, thankfully.  

Lastly, I'd like to rave about Bryan...he's so easy to be with, 5 years has flown by with him and I'm still shocked that 2 weeks quarentined in the house together has pretty much been a breeze. I feel so thankful for him every day. Being an artist is hard to juggle art, day job and relationship. I'm lucky to have found someone who can entertain himself and also respect the space that I need in my life to do my artwork. I have so much creativity to get out of my sometimes its overwhelming, I'm much better at taking it one day at a time, one stitch at a time, one bead at a time lately.  I now understand that there will never be enough time in the day but I can make the best of the 24 hours I've got. 

Lastly, I had this all written up, then last night at midnight we opened a bottle of non-alcoholic champagne and Bryan wanted to a toast, which led to our engagement! He had it all planned out to do it at the We Are the Union's Ska show that we were going to but COVID...I guess it was finally going to affect something big for us.  We still dressed up (above), ordered in a lovely meal for 2 from Tannin and played games and talked. Things are always so perfect with him despite having to change plans. <3

I love love love my ring, it's so sparkly!!

Speaking of sparkly, we ordered custom shoes for the NYE Ska show

Mine are pink glitter Converse with leopard print tongue, 

his are Vans with leopard, checkers, and a glitter side stripe.