Happy Holidays! May the depth of winter (or height of summer!) be peaceful and I hope you enjoy some good company, beautiful lights, and a few good books. And if you do a little creating, all the better.
Reflecting on a career in tapestry | The Weave Podcast
Gist Yarn produces a wonderful podcast called Weave. I was interviewed for one of the earliest episodes and last week, we did an updated episode. We talked about my weaving life, my teaching philosophy, and a bit about a new tapestry yarn that is now available for pre-order. The yarn is called Array. I wrote more about the yarn which I’ve been testing for at least a year HERE.
You can listen to the podcast episode HERE or wherever you get your podcasts! It is episode 140.
Let's have a throw-out-fear day, shall we?
The word fear in relation to tapestry design has come up a lot lately both in the Design Solutions course and in my own work. I’m stuck and have been for a long time. I thought I was unstuck, but still I haven’t started. There is a warp on the loom and a room full of dyed yarn waiting, but the final design decision is something I keep walking away from.
Partly I keep having new ideas. Since ideas are endless, this could mean the tapestry never gets started, so at some point I have to just settle on one of them. The rest of it is just some unfounded worry about it not being good enough!
Dead batteries, best practices (7 years in the bathroom), and Ruthie
Here is a little bit of what has been going on in my world. Most of it is at least tangentially tapestry related.
The Ruthie
While scrolling through Instagram in January, a post popped up of a lovely tapestry loom which I have long admired.* The Crisp Ruthie loom is a high-warp tapestry loom which is no longer made and hasn’t been since perhaps the 1980s. I know a couple tapestry weavers who have one (Joan Griffin and Tommye Scanlin) and love them. So my scrolling stopped when I saw the Ruthie and when I read the post, thought, someone is going to be the lucky new owner of that loom! After reposting to my IG Stories, I had a shocking thought. What if I bought that loom? Certainly it is somewhere far away and who wants to ship something so heavy across the country?
Keep up the wonder
Curiosity.
Is it the key? To everything?
As an annoyingly persistent optimist, I am feeling a little blue of late. It isn’t new, it comes and goes, and I blame it on 2020 entirely. It is hard to watch this pandemic flatten my country when we could have managed it so much better. It is hard to see people dying when they didn’t have to. And there is a lot of fear in the unknown future. I do feel a measure of hope (that is the persistent part of the optimist in me), but some days I need a little reminder.
A new look, a new book, and the energy the fire took...
About the logo! I’ve been working on a logo for my business for about a year now. Some of you saw an earlier version and I appreciate your feedback on how you thought it did or did not reflect me and my teaching style.
And the book! My answer on Tuesday about my favorite part of the book was about a piece in the Introduction called “How to be a Beginning Tapestry Weaver.” This might actually have been the seminal idea for the whole manuscript.
And a bit about the fires in Colorado at the end.
Seeing the little things. One day at a time.
June has come and mostly gone and the shifting sands of the global “new normal” continues to make time feel like it has tilted off its axis. Sometimes it flows fast, sometimes moments seem to last forever.
Seeing. Being there for the experience. That is my goal this summer. There are long stretches where I have let the running of a business and my propensity for a jumbled, rambling mind to propel me through my days at breakneck speed, scarcely experiencing the moments passing me by. I have taken the opportunity this month to take a breath and it feels great. My focus for the summer is to see what is right in front of me.
I have three avenues in this goal of taking the time to see. You won’t be surprised to hear that the first two are weaving and hiking. The third is drawing.
I had planned to hike the Colorado Trail again this year. I was going to weave as I went—my favorite sort of documentation of my surroundings in my little tapestry diary. The pandemic has squelched that plan. But it has given me the gift of exploration. Instead of walking a trail that will force me into small towns and into contact with many different people over our fragile mountain towns already overrun with tourists, I'll stay closer to home and hike all the trails I can get to easily from my house. The 500 mile plan has become a series of 20-50 mile ideas and that opens up the opportunity for growth. Because I know the Colorado Trail so well I can watch thru-hiker’s videos and tell you where the images were taken. Visiting new places as a solo backpacker is scarier but it also opens me to new experiences and vistas and that seems like something that could remind me to take the time to really see what is around me.