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Summer is coming! Right now spring in southwestern Colorado is reminding me of where I grew up, Gallup, NM. The wind makes itself known this time of year and apparently this corner of the Colorado Plateau is part of that weather pattern. The wind talks and I suspect I’ll be weaving something about wind this year as part of my sketch tapestry practice.
Every year I run a class I call Summer of Tapestry. It revolves around a practice I’ve had for many years now of bringing a small loom with me when I’m hiking or traveling and weaving something about what I experienced or saw. I often call the practice sketch tapestry because my goal is to capture something interesting about the experience, not to replicate whatever it was necessarily in any realistic way.
I find that the practice of really looking at something and then weaving about it makes me pay attention instead of just rushing blindly through life. The inspirations I’ve woven something about are things that I remember months and years later.
I’ve linked many of these sorts of tapestries on my blog over the years and you can find some of these stories under the tapestry diary category. The concept is simple. It is a way of paying attention to something in my experience that caught my eye or had some sort of meaning. Making a tiny piece of art about it allows me more time to sink into the experience and I find that I remember the things I wove about clearly in the future.
I have had two bird tapestries on the go for months now. Those of you who took Summer of Tapestry 2023* will recognize them and will also raise your eyebrows at the fact that they are not yet finished even though the live version of the class wrapped last month.
Yesterday on Change the Shed I cut off five four small tapestries from a variety of looms. I had planned on five, but the last one was not done. I wove on it some at the end of the broadcast, and you know what? Then I sat down and finished the thing and cut it off too.
This particular weaving is frenetic and WAY too busy for my taste. But it has been so fun to weave and it does fit well in the sketch tapestry spirit that the Summer of Tapestry class follows. It was woven for the process. I took photos of birds that came to my backyard feeder last spring and then I matched their colors and wove a bit about each bird. I enjoyed the time thinking about each of the birds and attempting to match their colors. The joy is in the process.
It has been a busy summer and I haven’t had nearly enough time to backpack. But I did get away for a few days to the Rawah Wilderness this week. This is one of my favorite places to visit but I hadn’t been back since the 2020 Cameron Peak Fire. The fire started perhaps 10 miles from where I camped but went in the other direction. It ended up lasting 5 months and becoming the largest wildfire in Colorado history. From this spot 60 miles from Fort Collins, the fire burned within 5 miles of the city limits.*
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I left the pups at home and hiked in about 7 miles to one of my favorite camps near Twin Crater Lakes. I spent three days sitting in the sunshine, exploring a bit, spinning, drawing, and weaving. It is a good reset to get outside, sleep on the ground, and listen to the quiet, the birds, and a moose chomping willows nearby.
I spent last week at one of my favorite places. I haven’t been to Colorado State University’s Mountain Campus since 2019 due to Covid. It was high time I went back. I do go hiking in this area outside of Fort Collins fairly often and have seen the campus from trails above many times since 2020. It felt great to move back into a cabin and teach in the lodge.
The campus is largely used by environmental and forestry students for summer study. They also have a small conference center where I hold tapestry retreats. The property is at 9,000 feet elevation surrounded by high peaks of the Mummy Range and is just a few miles as the trail goes from the border of Rocky Mountain National Park. I love spending part of each of my teaching day wandering the trails, watching moose, birds, and other creatures in the forest and river, and seeing the stars at night.
This year’s retreat was about sketch tapestry. We wove small tapestries based on things we were either experiencing on campus or some students worked from images of other places they brought along. There was frequent laughter, many discoveries, and a lot of tapestries were woven.
The Easy Weaving on Little Looms Summer 2023 issue has landed and in it is an article I wrote about my favorite summer weaving activity, sketch tapestry.
Sketch tapestry is what I call my practice of weaving something simple and fairly quick from an environmental inspiration. I also call it my tapestry diary and I’ve been doing it since 2016. I find this practice a lot like sketching. Especially if I practice it while traveling or backpacking, it reminds me to take the time to look at what is around me as I explore. If my intention is to weave something about my day, I’m much more likely to actually stop for an extra moment and explore whatever caught my eye and spend some time really looking.
Like a dog alerting to the small of cooking sausage, I noticed a loom I hadn’t seen before on the table of one of my students while teaching at SOAR. It turns out it was made by one of my favorite small loom makers, Janet Fox of Handywomanshop.com, but I had never seen one in person.
My backpacking loom was made by Jim Hokett and it is the lightest loom I can find that will allow me to weave small tapestries at 12 epi when hiking. Of course for backpacking I need something that is not only very light, but also very small but sturdy so I don’t break it in my backpack. Since Jim retired in 2019 I’ve been looking for a replacement, worried about the day that I’d lose or break his loom dropping it somewhere in the backcountry. When I picked up Emma’s loom at SOAR, I knew I’d found what I was looking for.
