Tapestry Diary

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Wishes, self-care, and a new year

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Wishes, self-care, and a new year

Intention setting for the new year is a healthy practice. In my own life I am working to increase the amount of time I spend in a special kind of self-care. Making art is something that feeds the core of who I am and makes me a better person. Finding time to create something every day is the trick in a busy life and for the coming year it is at the top of my list of private intentions.

The short video below talks about setting intentions around tapestry weaving for the coming year. I am not going to tell you to put it on your calendar (though that might be helpful for some of you) or to beat yourself up if you don't touch your art supplies/weaving tools for a month. What I am going to tell you is to consider making an intention for the new year around taking care of yourself in this special way. As humans we are creative beings, so please make sure to make time as often as you can to let your creativity fly. 

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My Hokett kit

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My Hokett kit

I get questions fairly often from people who know I backpack with a loom and want to know what I take. What I pack does vary depending on whether I am going backpacking or car camping or traveling to teach somewhere. 

As a lightweight backpacker, my total pack weight before food and water is between 13 and 18 pounds. The lighter the better as food and water can add another ten pounds to the total. Hiking becomes miserable with more weight than that. So any craft that I bring into the backcountry has to be both small and light.

The weaving I did at Hambidge

The weaving I did at Hambidge

After finishing the big design at Hambidge, I moved on to some small weaving projects. Of course I wasn't able to bring a big loom to this residency, so I worked on my galvanized pipe loom, a Mirrix, and a Hokett loom.

One of the things I wanted to work out was how to do a four-selvedge weaving that was shaped. Of course you can use a home-made pin loom to do this, but I don't like weaving that way as you don't have a shed. I wanted to use the method that I learned from Sarah Swett using a jig.

Flowers, tapestry design, and spring water

Flowers, tapestry design, and spring water

After about a week of hard work, I finalized this large tapestry design. You can see part of it in this image. This is the next large work you’ll see me weaving. I struggled with imagining how big the design was actually going to be, so I did a mock-up in paper full size. This allowed me to see what parts of the form were going to be more difficult to weave, how to adjust things to make the curves better, and decide what sett to use. It also impressed upon me just how big this piece of weaving is. It will be a massive dye job followed by a whole lot of weaving.

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A review of the A-I-R tapestries

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A review of the A-I-R tapestries

I thought I would put all the little tapestries I made at my artist-in-residence in one post. I have included links to prior posts at the end--some have more details about individual tapestries.

I wove one of these each day. Most of them took about 3 hours to complete. I was surprised how much I enjoyed it despite the amount of time it took to finish them and I ended up doing one every day of the residency. Here they are with their inspiration. Most of the tapestries were woven at 12 epi on a 6-dent Hokett loom. The warp was mostly cotton seine twine though there is some linen in there and the weft was mostly Weaver's Bazaar 18/2 wool though there are some wool singles and some handspun.

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Leaving the desert

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Leaving the desert

I had a marvelous month as artist-in-residence at Petrified Forest National Park. I learned so much about myself and making art, and was reminded again how much I love wandering around the desert. This place was perfect for that. I know many of you can't imagine not having trees, but there just aren't any there except in the bosque. That means you can see forever, and if you're paying attention, you can't get lost. So I walked and walked wherever I wanted and always found my way home again before dark. That also meant that any time I was near the bosque (where the water is when it rains), I scanned the cottonwoods incessantly for sleeping porcupines. One of the biologist interns saw three one day and I was determined. But alas, none were found by me.

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Go for a good wander

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Go for a good wander

My experience as artist-in-residence at Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona has been exceptional. There have been moments where I wished I had requested a different month--one which did not include an election which seems to have shaken this country to the core. But perhaps being in this amazing place while dealing with my feelings about the direction of this country and the world is a good thing after all. The many hours a day to hike, sketch, and wander without a goal is healing. My challenge as this residency comes to an end is to carry the spirit of those practices into my daily work.