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 this image of that tapestry.* Blurry and with a black background, it does remind me of that tapestry and the one I did after it in the series. My teacher was photographing all his work on black backgrounds back then, so that is probably why I did this. The photo was probably taken on a light background and then photoshopped onto black. I have no idea where the original image is.

I’m off to Taos to teach another retreat soon. I know, I know, I just came back from teaching in Taos. The spinning for tapestry retreat with Jillian Moreno was an added workshop this year because the venue had an opening in October. So though I just made that trek two weeks ago, I’m off for another round.

This retreat is an alumni retreat about design. It is one full of people that come back every year and it has become a wonderful place to share our triumphs or struggles over the year with tapestry and life.

I started a four-selvedge tapestry with the word Notice in it sometime long enough ago that I can’t place the circumstances… but fortunately I know I wove it on Change the Shed and I have a whole archive of them with thumbnails to help me find what I was weaving in any particular episode. If you want to find something interesting to watch, you can access those archives HERE.

The copper pipe loom has been hiding under my Harrisville rug loom for awhile now. Seeing the current state of my studio, you can understand why it has gone unnoticed for some time.

The first day of February, the author Austin Kleon posted a simple downloadable PDF on his Substack newsletter. I downloaded it because I thought, maybe this is simple enough for me to follow. The idea is to take the thing you want to get better at and do a little bit of it every day. February is the shortest month and also 28 days makes a nice 7 x 4 grid. I thought I’d try it and the fact that I was trying to finish the rocks tapestry didn’t hurt my motivation.

As Kleon’s poster says, you just practice every day and when you do, you put an X in the box. No rules about how long you have to practice or what practice even means. Just do it.

I moved to this new home and studio almost a year and a half ago now and I’ve had many requests from followers and students for some tips on studio organization. I definitely understand the hope that someone will have just the answer that will make me feel like I know where everything is and it is easy to use.

I was searching for some tapestry teaching video footage on some old hard drives recently and came across the recordings from my senior recital in college. Most of you probably don’t know that I was a music major as an undergrad. I played piano and clarinet while attending Lawrence University in Wisconsin. I was a liberal arts major among a conservatory of bachelor of music majors. I knew I didn’t want to be a performer, but I was interested in teaching so I took a lot of piano pedagogy classes. My senior thesis was writing a piano pedagogy curriculum for preschoolers.*

For all the decades since I graduated from Lawrence I have avoided listening to that recording. And that is because of what happened in my piano playing before the recital.

I like learning new fiber skills. Sure, I made granny square afghans like all geeky kids in the 1980s, but I hadn’t crocheted much of anything since. Then Gist Yarn’s amazing team started a sister brand Zollie and I wanted to try one of their kits. Marty the duck was the one for me!

I knit a lot and I’m used to following patterns and of course searching YouTube for whatever weird abbreviation or odd stitch someone is asking for. Since my crocheting was rusty, I was off to a questionable start when one of the first skills was to make a magic ring. But then I realized I was not alone. This kit is not only gorgeous, it is not simply a kit. It is an online class that comes with all the materials and tools needed. As a maker of online courses, this presentation of a class seems like a genius idea.