Book Review

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Untangled: A Crafty Sheep's Guide to Tapestry Weaving

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Untangled: A Crafty Sheep's Guide to Tapestry Weaving

Untangled: A Crafty Sheep’s Guide to Tapestry Weaving has been several years in the making. The idea came from a student in a workshop I taught at the Michigan League of Handweavers Conference in 2015. Marg heard me describing yet another little trick I like to use when weaving tapestry and she said I should write a book about those tips. So I did.

I happen to know a fantastic children’s book illustrator, Molly McNeece, who was interested in the project. Molly is my first cousin and this project has become a wonderful collaboration. The book is dedicated to our grandmother, Marian Mezoff, who encouraged us to be artists when we were kids.

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The Mighty Ugly

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The Mighty Ugly

. . . The same thing has to go for tapestry weaving. It might be that I weave something and then weave it again another way and then again and again… and the good thing about that is then I have something that art people call “a body of work.” How cool is that? I thought I was just correcting mistakes! I find myself looking at weavings my online students make and recommending they try that idea again. I mean this in the sense of, “That is a great idea! Run with it!” and I hope they take it that way.

Raw Material: Working Wool in the West

Raw Material: Working Wool in the West

Raw Material: Working Wool in the West is a new book by Stephany Wilkes. Stephany is a certified sheep shearer, wool classer, and author. She had another life before this one and you can read about her transition to her sheep-y career in the book. She lives in San Francisco.

I love this book. I had not heard about it before receiving a copy for Christmas from my resident sociologist and I read the entire thing in a few days. The story starts with Stephany’s experience in shearing school, a journey she undertook on something of a lark because she wanted to figure out why her local California yarn store had no California-made yarn. California is the second largest wool-producing state in the US after Texas and it didn’t make sense that there was no local yarn in the shop. California produces a lot of wool, but almost none of it is processed within the state.

Spider Woman's Children

Spider Woman's Children

When Lynda Teller Pete told me she and her sister Barbara Teller Ornelas were writing a book about today’s Navajo weavers, I knew I needed to get a copy. Lynda an articulate speaker and a spokeswoman for traditional Navajo weaving. I had the opportunity to look at some of the Navajo Textile Crane Collection at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science with herself and DY Begay several months ago and her knowledge of this art form is informed by her personal knowledge as a weaver, her experience as a Navajo tribal member, and her study of Navajo textiles at the museum level. I knew the book, Spider Woman’s Children: Navajo Weavers Today, was going to be excellent. Plus it was published by Thrums Books and everything Linda Ligon touches in this business is magic. Photography done by the magnificent Joe Coca was icing on the cake.

If I had to say what this book is about in one world, I would have to say family. It tells a story of family, both the larger family of the Navajo Nation and the particular family of Lynda and Barbara.

Need a great summer read? Try Hidden Tapestry

I just finished reading Debra Dean's new book, Hidden Tapestry: Jan Yoors, his two wives, and the war that made them one. I really enjoyed this book. It is well written and the story is far-ranging. It is a biography of Jan Yoor, an artist from Belgium who spent much of his youth with the gypsies and was part of the resistance during World War II. He survived the war, married his childhood sweetheart Annabert, and eventually added her friend Marianne as a second wife to their family. The Yoors moved to America eventually and ran a tapestry studio in Manhattan. Jan designed the work and the women wove it.

Silk reeling and a drawloom made of string and sticks

Silk reeling and a drawloom made of string and sticks

This week I've been reading a beautiful new book from Thrums Books, Silk Weavers of Hill Tribe Laos: Textiles, Tradition, and Well-Being. It is written by Joshua Hirschstein and Maren Beck with photographs by Joe Coca.

The book is framed by the story of Josh and Maren along with their two sons Ari and Zall and their many trips to Laos. With memories of travels in Asia when they were younger, Josh and Maren returned to Asia in 2005 for a six-week backpack type trip and then went to Houaphan Province, Laos in 2006.