Weaving

THE OWNER of Designed Fibers at Savage Mill, Margaret Vigneulle, has an interesting project in mind.Vigneulle is a professional weaver with a shop at Savage Mill. Some time ago, she saw a performance artist use weaving as a medium in a creative public demonstration and was impressed.The artist strung warp threads (those that are extended lengthwise on a loom) across trees in a mall and, while folks watched, wove the weft threads through, making a tapestry in the center of the mall.Vigneulle was taken with the idea, but she wanted to include the community more actively in an event.

This week's episode starts in the middle of last week's blowup between Kim and the rest of the girls. Kim makes up an excuse to the other housewives that she cannot attend the couples trip to Anguilla because of her pregnancy. After NeNe and Kandi call Kim out on her serial excuses, she storms out of the restaurant and Kroy comes to her rescue. Kim and Kroy are outside of the restaurant cussing and fussing at the camera men and the rest of the housewives realize that Kim's focus is now on her and her family and she no longer has any regard for her friends.

An article and headline about the Starting Point rehabilitation program in yesterday's Carroll and Howard editions indicated that its clients are patients at Springfield Hospital Center. Starting Point leases space from the hospital, but is an independent, nonprofit agency.The Sun regrets the error.Hunched over the loom, weaving a purple, blue, brown and rose-colored wall hanging, William Albaugh explains the complexities of the craft."It takes a lot of coordination, and you've got to watch whatyou're doing so that you make a good project," said Mr. Albaugh, a patient at Starting Point, a residential and rehabilitation program for the chronically mentally ill at Springfield Hospital Center in Sykesville.

Outhouses. Potbellied stoves. Four-mile walks in the snow. These are legacies of the Rosenwald Schools. For the past several weeks, county students have been studying the schools, a loosely affiliated network for African-American children that a white businessman, Julius Rosenwald, helped start with a grant in 1917. Twenty-three would spring up in Anne Arundel County alone. But what fascinated history students at North County High School in Glen Burnie and Southern High School in Harwood were the minutiae -- where children went to the bathroom, how they stayed warm and got to school, and what their classrooms looked like.

Deb May leaned back to survey her work, a neat row of orange and brown wool tightly wrapped around a piece of wood. Did it look right? Would there be enough to make a knot and then warp the other side of the loom? "You have to just trust," said one of her classmates in the Navajo -- or Din? -- weaving class at Common Ground on the Hill. "I'm not that trusting," May said. An experienced weaver, May's uncertainty came from tackling a loom unlike her own -- and an equally unfamiliar technique.

The basic process of weaving fabrics, the interlacing ofhorizontal threads over vertical ones, hasn't changed much since the invention of the loom.What's new is the way some textile designers are changing the face of fabric: They are rethinking the way threads are dyed or put together, the design of the pattern and even how a fabric might be embellished -- with everything from rhinestones to embroidery.Color, pattern, weight, texture and touch are what grab our attention when we shop for fabrics, whether in clothing, upholstery, drapery, tablecloths or bed linens.

Barbara Stam worked the treadle of her floor loom so fluidly that it looked as though she were dancing. Nancy Spies picked up a bag and pulled out an intricately woven thin purple band brocaded in gold that she reproduced from a 500-year-old pattern. Lizanne Smith described her captivation with the mathematics and machinery associated with textile weaving. Although these women have diverse interests and use different techniques, they share a common bond as members of Fallston's Warped Weavers Guild, a group of hobbyist weavers that formed in 1974 to foster the art of hand-weaving.

Mary Elizabeth Brown, a retired librarian for the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory who also raised sheep and sheared their wool for weaving projects, died of complications from cancer Saturday at Mercy Medical Center. The Ten Hills resident was 70. Born Mary Elizabeth Bomberger in Washington, she was raised in Alaska while her father served in the Civilian Conservation Corps. She earned a degree in geography from the University of Maryland, College Park, where she also took theater courses.

A venerable downtown cloth weaving business seemed headed for the rag pile until Helen Sarafidis came along.This resourceful woman has given her Baltimore Weaving a new life in new quarters in upper Fells Point.Thanks to the care and patience of her staff, many a prized overcoat, pair of pants or cherished tablecloth is almost as good as new."People are so relieved to find out that this nearly extinct service is still available," she says at the cozy neighborhood shop she opened at 2029 Bank St. several months ago.She rescued a specialty business established in 1919 in the 200 block of W. Saratoga St.That firm, something of a downtown landmark, was known as Reliable Weaving.

When you've earned the nickname Mrs. Crafty, you'll go pretty far to hone your skills. Even to the point of standing knee-deep in sheep.Friends and students of Evelyn Garbe weren't surprised when the 79-year-old Odenton resident moved to her Vermont farm for 10 summers to raise the fuzzy animals just to find out how "all that weaving wool was made," she said.Mrs. Garbe, who teaches weaving, quilting and lacing to area seniors at the O'Malley Senior Center, said she wanted to learn the entire process of making a wool sweater -- from raising the animal to sewing on the last button.

Lynn Zwerling speaks of knitting the way others talk about yoga or long distance running or even particularly potent cocktails. It's life-changing, she'll say. Mind-altering. Zen. The Columbia retiree doesn't care if she's making a hat, a sweater or a scarf. It's just the way she loses herself in the lightly clicking needles, plush wool and repetitive motion. Zwerling, who's 67, took up knitting after retiring from selling cars, quickly becoming an evangelist, more enthusiastic than skilled.

History and present day are interwoven along the train tracks of the old B&O Railroad in Ellicott City. The ruins of Hell House, an old seminary, and the railroad itself are full of stories, and Columbia writer Jamie Wasserman has added one more tale to the list. Wasserman, 37, capitalizes on the haunting, magical qualities of the historic mill town in his book “Blood and Sunlight: A Maryland Vampire Story.” A fan of vampire lore long before the phenomenon of Stephenie Meyer's  “Twilight” series, Wasserman saw his story as a way to bring together two things he loved dearly: the vampire mythology and his teenage stomping grounds of Ellicott City.

Two of the most important car owners in the IZOD IndyCar Series, Roger Penske and Chip Ganassi, sat beside each other Saturday afternoon to discuss the rivalry between their teams as the IndyCar season heads toward its finish. Penske's Will Power and Ganassi's Dario Franchitti are locked in another tight points battle. Franchitti has the 26 point lead going in to Sunday's Baltimore Grand Prix, but Penske said that might be the key to Power winning the title.

For actor Hugo Weaving, the distance between his farm in Sydney, Australia and Los Angeles isn't just 7,500 miles, give or take. It's the distance between his identities as a pop culture icon and as a conservatory-trained actor who revels in the classical canon. Both of Weaving's faces are on prominent display in the Baltimore area this month. As a cartoon villain with inverted facial features in a red rubber mask, Weaver is stomping around the screen in the dozens of movie theaters where "Captain America" is now showing.

M&T Bank will be a sponsor of the inaugural Baltimore Grand Prix, race organizers announced this morning. M&T becomes the first bank to join as a sponsor and the deal includes signs on the race course and green flags to be given to fans near the start/finish line, among other promotions. "We are very excited to have M&T Bank as one of our sponsors," Jay Davidson, president and CEO of the Baltimore Grand Prix, said in a news release. "This partnership is significant as it ties one of our leading institutions into this new and exciting event for our city.

She remembers having "wonderful" history teachers growing up in 1940s and 1950s Annapolis, and she has explored and chronicled this area's past for more than 40 years. But as historian Jane Wilson McWilliams researched her massive, colorful and comprehensive new book, "Annapolis: City on the Severn," she sometimes found herself stunned to encounter truths about her hometown she'd never run across. If you did your high school history homework, for instance, you know the 15th Amendment to the Constitution (passed in 1870)

A speeding car weaving between lanes on southbound U.S. 29 crossed the median south of Columbia and collided with a northbound car yesterday, sending both drivers to Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore. Howard County police said an officer in an unmarked police car saw a 1993 Toyota Paseo speeding and weaving between lanes on U.S. 29 at 2:40 p.m. The officer tried to stop the vehicle, but the driver sped up, police said. As the Paseo's driver approached Rivers Edge Road, south of Route 32, the vehicle suddenly changed lanes, skidding across the grassy median and into the northbound lanes, where it was struck by a 2000 Toyota Camry driven by Joshua Jacobs, 39, of the 6100 block of Rusk Ave. in Baltimore.

Fiber art -- Slayton House in Wilde Lake Village Center will present a group exhibit, FABrications: New Work from the Fiber Artists of Baltimore, from Thursday through Feb. 10. Members of the FAB group work in quilting, weaving, book-making, embroidery and other media. A reception, with refreshments and music, is planned from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Jan. 14. Gallery hours are from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday. 410-730-3987.

When white settlers arrived in what is now Virginia, bringing with them their strange and sometimes warlike ways, the Powhatan peoples of the region had some decisions to make. The settlers had fired on Powhatans almost the moment they landed in 1607. Their leaders inadvertently insulted Chief Powhatan by asking him to kneel to accept a ceremonial crown. John Smith, president of the Jamestown colony, sent soldiers to drive many Powhatans from their homes. "The clan mothers got together, talked and prayed: How will we handle this problem with the white settlers?"

For Americans, Gomorrah will play like every other Mafia epic - and no other Mafia epic. The movie is named for Sodom's sister city and for the crime syndicate Camorra, which has made a Gomorrah out of Naples, Italy. The director, Matteo Garrone, working in the charged, realistic style of his predecessor Francesco Rosi (Salvatore Giuliano), achieves a journalistic drive on a scale so broad that it takes your breath away. Like Rosi, Garrone puts together a machine-gun mosaic as he depicts the Camorra's domination of everything from public housing to toxic-waste disposal and high fashion.