Twelve.
That is the number of years I’ve been writing this blog. I have enjoyed being here every week. I am a natural journaler and to some extent, the blog is an extension of that. I have used it to talk about whatever fiber-related thing was going on in my world—and maybe a few more chickens than you all might have liked. It has also been a place to give you information about tapestry techniques I am asked lots of questions about, and perhaps this is one of its most useful functions. I’ve written posts about looms and sett and yarn and that helps me too because when I get an email asking about one of those things, I can just send you to the blog.
I do feel like the blog has been neglected over the last 18 months. By extension I feel like you, dear readers, have also been a little neglected. I was writing a book and it turns out it was a crazy huge monster of a project. Those of you who know me aren’t surprised by that. My wish to be clear and make the information understandable and complete leads me to make almost every teaching project far larger than my original vision dictated. And so it was with The Art of Tapestry Weaving. There are only one more round of edits left and then the book will fly off to the printer. It goes out into the world October 27, 2020.
This blog has connected me to all of you in a way that I don’t think anything else could. Thanks for reading, commenting, and asking questions. Thanks for being interested in the marvelous world of tapestry weaving and for wanting to hear me talk about it.
Moving into the thirteenth year of the blog now, I have some gentle plans. I love sharing what I’m weaving, but to do that I have to be weaving. The ending of the book project will allow me finally to get back to the loom in a serious way. And of course I’ll continue with posts about books I’ve loved and other people’s work and techniques I think are great and one day maybe reviews of tapestry shows I’ve seen in person.
Last year I wrote an entry with some photos pulled from posts over the last eleven years. That post is called Eleven and you can see it and all those old photos HERE.
But mostly I just want to say thanks for reading. You, dear reader, have changed my life in more ways than you can possibly know.
I’ll leave you with this beautiful painting completed last week by a friend of mine, Kelsea MacIlroy.
“When we lived on the Olympic peninsula at the remote rhododendron farm there was an earthquake, which literally destabilized me. Part of the property we lived on slid downhill, but the slide happened 150-200 feet below the surface so nothing was really impacted or damaged. Except for the pump house, which was connected to a pipe that went down 250 feet. The whole thing just tilted. It shook me to my core and reminded me that nothing is stable, permanent.”
Kelsea MacIlroy, After the Earth Shakes, watercolor on paper, 2020
“And then one day, some certitude fissures - in the broken surface of a split lip, a split love, a split in Earth’s quaked crust; in the slow-burning wildfire of a pandemic, smoking its way across the globe until it blazes into a shared inferno; in the cold blade of a terminal diagnosis, sudden and close to the bone. We wake up to unalloyed reality with a scream, a silence, a hollow hallelujah.”
Because maybe the earth slides a little under our feet and maybe we’re hanging on like the pump house or maybe we’re riding it out, but one way or the other, eventually the shaking will stop and we will take a breath and re-evaluate where we are standing.
Take care of yourselves and don’t forget to breathe.