Remember when blogs were popular? Then they weren’t. Then they were again and now it is all about Substack. But that is just a blog, isn’t it? An electronic way of writing and communicating with people online.

I’m still writing this blog 18 years after I started it. The very first post was about a tapestry I finished called This Time I Dance. I’m not sure what prompted me to start a blog on April 20, 2008, but I did. It was on Blogger back then.

I found an image of that tapestry.* Blurry and with a black background, it must have been a big dye job to make the colors for this piece and the one I did after it in the series, This Time I Dance II. My teacher was photographing all his work on black backgrounds back then, so that is probably why I put this image on black. The photo was probably taken on a light background and then photoshopped onto black. I have no idea where the original image is and it could have been taken with a film camera.

I am sure both of these pieces used the same yarns so the difference in color between the two photos is from the photography and also the way we experience colors surrounded by black or white.

In the spirit of the Yarn Harlot** who used to write an ode to her blog every year on its anniversary, I’d like to thank this blog for everything it has given me over the last 18 years.

I started the blog as a way of electronic journaling where I could include photos and it turns out people were interested in learning more about tapestry and fiber stuff. 2008 was before I started as James Koehler’s apprentice when I was weaving these kinds of tapestries without guidance beyond some books. I was living in a cabin off the grid in rural Colorado without running water, a composting toilet, and a solar electric system that didn’t power much. I had rented an apartment in town for my looms and to have a place to get away from the one room cabin and the partner who spent most of the day meditating.^

In that apartment over a real estate office, I had a shower, a regular kitchen, and a sunny room for my walking counterbalance loom. Not many months after I wrote that first post, I left the meditator on the mountain, moved back to New Mexico, picked up where I’d left off several years before with jobs in rural school systems as an OT, and became one of James Koehler’s apprentices.

The skunk house, also in the San Luis Valley of Colorado, did have a place to dye in the backyard. It also had running water and a regular toilet… and skunks living in the crawl space.

This blog followed me from that point forward, marking wins and challenges, laughing with me when I lived in the skunk house, and following me on a tapestry tour to France. She had amassed a larger following than I ever thought possible by the time I was ready to teach online classes in 2014 and it was this blog I believe that allowed me to find success with those classes. I already had people following me and a lot of them wanted to learn more about tapestry in a class format.

So in some ways, I owe my current job which I love a great deal, to this old blog. She can now drive and vote though she can’t yet drink or rent a car. I suspect she’ll still be around when she is old enough to do those things too.

In 2023 when she was 15 (and could get her learner’s driving permit), I wrote THIS post. There are more photos there and links to various things I’ve posted about. If you want to explore past posts be they rambling about life or specific teaching about tapestry, look for the archive drop-down to the right of the posts on a computer or scroll down a ways on a mobile device.

And lest you think that the blog is full of stories about composting toilets and skunk houses, there are a lot of teaching posts, many of which include videos. Most of those are under the category Tapestry Weaving.

The very first post looked like the screen shot below. The tapestry is Emergence III.

Thanks for reading the blog. It would still be useful for me to write it, but it is far better for some of those words help other people in some way.

*All my tapestry photos were taken by me back then. Lots of them still are, but until my photographer retired, I was having a professional do it.

**The Yarn Harlot is Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, a knitter, author, and educator who has written some very funny books about knitting and life. She used to write on her blog often and I enjoyed her posts and followed her closely. Now she has a Patreon and she is mostly doing video. Those are also great, but it isn’t the same as her writing. Fortunately you can read her archive if you’re so inclined HERE.

^I’m not saying meditating all day every day is a bad thing, but the practical side of me says it isn’t fair to depend on your partner to buy dog food (and everything else) when you can’t face the outside world or talk about what is going on. Needless to say things didn’t work out and years later I learned more about depression.

The header image of this post is a mountain in southern Colorado. The off-grid cabin was at the end of a very bad dirt road which is currently impassable except to 4WD vehicles. If you need some land in Colorado, let me know! I have 5 acres near that cabin I lived in that needs a new home. No infrastructure and a horrible access road, but it would be an amazing place to go camping!

She is a full-fledged adult now. 18 years of blogging.

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