It seems like most of 2023 has been devoted to looking for a new place to live and at long last, moving. My hope is to feel all settled in by the end of the year and feel some stability again. Moving is a royal pain. Our realtor said it best. “Moving sucks no matter what.” But it will eventually be done and we have new views and ideas to embrace.

I am most interested to see how this new perspective influences my art-making. This place is rural and very quiet. It is near Mesa Verde National Park which is a dark skies park and the skies are indeed very dark. Sometimes the Milky Way is so bright I have difficulty picking out the constellations at all. I am grateful to have landed in such a beautiful place with such plentiful access to the outdoors and far fewer people than the Front Range of Colorado.

Emily and I have lived in Fort Collins, CO for over nine years. We never intended to stay that long, but Covid and other things kept us there about four years longer than we intended. We’ve now moved to southwestern Colorado near Durango and not far from where I grew up in northern New Mexico.

After having two house offers fall through, last summer we gave up on purchasing a house and decided to get two dogs instead and try again in 2024. Of course we immediately found the house we ended up purchasing, so the whole move was wrapped in how to manage a puppy and a rescue dog who is afraid of everything. I’m happy to say that the dogs are adjusting and I think we are too.

My studio in Fort Collins was in the basement of our house. Basements are never ideal for studio space, but you take what you can get sometimes! In the photo below I’ve started to take things apart. The bench is off the Harrisville rug loom but I haven’t cut the warp off yet and tapestries are still hanging on the walls.

The studio in Fort Collins as I’m starting to take things apart.

Piece by piece everything came apart and found its way into lots of boxes. I save long boxes for loom parts and tapestries. Some of the boxes have been used for 15 years. I think maybe I can get rid of some of them now. I’m not planning on moving again any time soon.

Here the Harrisville rug loom has been taken apart with some help from Emily. I have taken this loom apart without help but I definitely do not recommend it!

Harrisville rug loom taken apart during operation studio pack.

There were so many parts to take apart and fit into boxes. I have many light stands and two overhead rigs for teaching online. There are ball winders and swifts and shuttles and a skein winder and so many small looms. I wanted everything that could possibly be packed into boxes to be safely tucked away to avoid breakage. But it took forever to make that happen.

One of the last things to come apart was the Leclerc Gobelin tapestry loom. This loom was my grandmothers and it is probably at least 60 years old. In the photo below I’ve taken off the top beam and am ready to take the four long supports off leaving the two short sides. The bolts on this loom were old and corroded and I’ll need to replace them before reassembling as I don’t need that kind of swearing in my life again.

Leclerc Gobelin tapestry loom before it comes apart — Leclerc Gobelin tapestry loom that belonged to my grandmother

The cobbled together assembly of parts that allowed me to get the screws out of this loom without a trip to the hardware store.

My photo files contain a lot of images of me taking various pieces of equipment apart so that I can get the parts in the right order when I put them back together. When taking the LeClerc apart, I had forgotten that the secondary screws have a weird square hole in them (WHY not just use Phillips screws??). I distinctly remember finding a tool my grandmother had labeled “Leclerc tool, IMPORTANT”. The last word was probably written in red ink and underlined. I had absolutely no idea where that tool was and in the moment remembered being in the same situation when I moved this loom from Santa Fe to Fort Collins.

After a lot of grumbling and digging through tools in the garage, I came up with the same assembly I’m sure I used in the last move. But this time I took some pictures of it. After all, it is entirely possible I won’t remember by the time I put this loom back together.*

Passing on treasures

I did get rid of some things before moving. As I unpack I wish I had gotten rid of more. I gave almost all the IKEA furniture I bought for my Santa Fe studio to our 22-year-old neighbor who just moved into his own apartment and didn’t have any furniture beyond a mattress on the floor.

I was able to pass on yarn and tools I’m no longer using to Paula Becker. She runs a weaving school in Fort Collins and I recommend going to take a class in her lovely studio! She also agreed to re-home my grandmother’s warping reel. I’ve hung onto this thing for a long time now and not used it one time. I’d love to get a small warping reel, but I simply don’t need one this big for tapestry weaving. I hope a weaver of cloth who does long warps can make good use of it.

warping reel for weaving — This is a warping reel. It is a fast way to wind long warps but I prefer a warping board for my fairly short tapestry warps.

Dog adjustment

The move has been hard on the dogs. Beaumont, our 2 year old rescue, has had the most trouble with it. All the packing and shuffling and traveling and unpacking is terrifying to him. The new place has a small casita where we kept the dogs and lived for several weeks. This allowed us to keep the chaos they were exposed to to a dull roar. But even moving him into the regular house last week was challenging even though he had been in here many times by that point. Everything is new and something to be afraid of. (He gets a LOT of treats, some of which are just his kibble with words of praise.)

While we were packing up, I tried to make sure he was in the backyard when anything loud or noisy was happening. Much of the time though he wanted to sit on the stairs to my studio watching me and probably making sure I didn’t disappear.

Now that we’ve been in the new place for several weeks, they are both adjusting. Sal is a teenager at 6 months old and feels that barking at everything is necessary. It is so quiet here that any sound stands out. Beau is less barky to sounds and is spending lots of times sleeping in the sunshine that graces this house.

Moving trucks

I’m sure no one wants to hear all the nitty gritty of how to move a home and studio across the very large state of Colorado, but here are a few photos just in case you are curious.

We needed two trucks and everything personal and studio-related was mixed in the two moves. We divided stuff up into “light stuff that we can move ourselves without too much swearing” and “stuff there is no way we’re going to try to pick up.” The first category we moved ourselves in a big UHaul. I have to admit that the load was largely full of bins of yarn and fleece as well as the things that don’t pack well like bikes and garden stuff. We had two mountain passes to go over but the truck was new and the brakes held for that breath-taking descent off Wolf Creek Pass.**

Rebecca behind the wheel of the largest truck she’ll likely ever drive.

After that fun time with the UHaul, we headed back to Ft. Collins for the second run. This time someone else would be lifting the heavy stuff. We mostly own books and looms with a piano thrown in for good measure. This truck was pretty full and very heavy but the movers were professional and quick and they had this whole thing loaded in about half a day.

I heard some grumbling about the book boxes and I can’t blame them. I didn’t count them, but we have many hundreds of books. They thought the piano was easy after that though the Macomber 48 inch loom did throw them a bit (awkward, heavy, weird, barely fit through the door in Ft. Collins).

They originally said they wanted to drive to the new place and unload that night. I had to say no. It was already afternoon by the time the truck was loaded and I knew it would take 9-10 hours to get across the state in a heavy truck over a couple passes. No way I wanted to be unloading (or watching that happen) in the dark at 2am. The next day they arrived in the afternoon after a long detour to Gunnison which is not even remotely on the way here and a blown tire. The load was intact and they were in high spirits, so all worked out as they unloaded all those books. Their GPS fail meant they drove over a lot more passes than I did but they managed it all well and I would recommend this company for a move in Colorado!

My studio in Fort Collins when empty and my new studio in Mancos. Which do you think will have the better light and inspiring views?

Unpacking

Where am I now? If you saw Change the Shed on November 1, you know that I have a ways to go especially since I’m teaching in Taos next week. But I’m making progress! I’ve quickly learned to put the yarn out of reach of the puppy Sal who can quickly dismantle a ball or tangle a skein. I think I’ll wait to put the Harrisville rug loom together until my dad is here over Thanksgiving. It was his father’s loom and it’ll be a fun project to assemble it together.

I live here now

View from Mancos, CO looking west; Mesa Verde

We’ve already had more visitors than we had in months in Fort Collins. Our friends from Pueblo visited and the 4-year-old was very helpful with some yard tasks assisted by Emily. My parents have seen the place and will be up a lot more since they live so close now. And our good friends from Germany stopped by last week. The photo below was a snapshot taken by Cornelia Theimer Gardella as we were exploring the yard and neighborhood. We’ve met many of our neighbors now and are relishing the feeling of support with the winter coming soon! (Neighbors with snow plows are very popular… and we actually purchased a snow blower from the prior owners of this house.)

Hesperus peak is behind and to the left of my head. The dogs are enjoying sniffing out rodent burrows and yes, they are going to get year-round flea and tick protection as well as frequent baths.

Studio organization

Several of you have asked for some ideas about organizing a studio. I’ve been thinking about that while I try to fit my studio into a very different sort of space. I’ll write a post about that in the next month or two once I have some more concrete thoughts and examples. Next week I’ll be teaching a retreat in Taos, New Mexico where the weather promises to be lovely and the weaving fun.

If you’re interested in my free or paid tapestry education offerings, I recommend signing up for my weekly newsletter, Tapestry Picks. I have a yearly sale coming up as well as some fun things planned for December and January.

*Not because my memory is THAT bad mind you. I intend to put together the Ruthie loom for a trial run and then decide between the Leclerc and the Ruthie long term. I only have room for one of them to be assembled at the moment. So it could be a minute before the Leclerc goes back together. Actually, I think I’ll print out that photo right now and attach it to to the loom! If grandma is looking out for me, the actual tool will appear as I unpack and if I’m really smart I’ll tie it right to the loom itself.

**When I was a kid we used to camp at the base of Wolf Creek pass in a national forest campground which is no longer there. When I was in college, my parents were camping there when a semi-truck full of beer went off that tight hairpin turn heading west over the pass past the last brake-fail ramp. The driver died and my parents reported there was a lot of beer running down the hillside. That turn still makes me nervous so driving a huge heavy truck over it was not my idea of fun. Fortunately there was a heavily loaded semi in front of me who had shifted all the way down and was going about 10 mph. I was mighty happy to follow him for the whole way down.