Tapestry Weaving

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Weaving the rainbow in silk: tapestry diary fun

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Weaving the rainbow in silk: tapestry diary fun

I’ve been playing around with some silk yarn I got from weaversbazaar over the last week. I first grabbed it as I sat down to watch the semi-final of the World Cup and made the second one during the final a few days later. First it must be noted that it is an exceptional event when I actually plan to watch a sporting event of any kind, especially one that doesn’t involve someone’s children at a nearby park. I know almost nothing about soccer but something about that women’s national team grabbed my imagination and they did not disappoint.

So now I call these two pieces my soccer tapestries. I’m kind of fascinated by the hole-y effect especially in the white one. I could pretend that idea came from watching the ball fly through the holes between the players, but really I was just experimenting with making curved lines, using eccentric outlines, and figuring out how best to minimize the number of ends I was creating.

Colorado retreat: Moose from the start

Colorado retreat: Moose from the start

Every year when I come to CSU Mountain Campus to teach tapestry retreats, I spend a fair amount of time walking and looking for moose. I would be walking anyway as that is just who I am (solvitur ambulando). But always I’m looking for those huge gangly creatures who hide in the willows by the river so well. I count it a good retreat if I see at least one moose.

From my arrival this year I started seeing them. In fact, I couldn’t miss them as I got moose-blocked immediately. (What they call it here when the moose decides to stay in the path where you’re walking and frankly, he gets to decide since he outweighs me by so much.) Here is my moose count for this retreat. These are actually sightings. Some of them I can identify as being different moose, but most certainly some of them are the same moose visiting different spots around the campus.

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Tapestry Diary: The cabin that burned

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Tapestry Diary: The cabin that burned

One of my favorite walks at CSU Mountain Campus in Pingree Park is the long valley loop. It goes by the Far Away cabin and of course I always thought it would be great to live there for awhile. This year when we arrived for the Foundations Tapestry Retreat, the staff told us that the cabin had burned down the week before.

I have continued to do a tapestry diary of sorts to remember events and places. Last year I had noted my wish to weave that cabin in my tapestry diary journal but I never got around to it. And this year it was gone.

Learning the basics of tapestry weaving: Foundations Tapestry Retreat 2019

Learning the basics of tapestry weaving: Foundations Tapestry Retreat 2019

I just got home from an amazing week teaching my Foundations Tapestry Retreat at CSU Mountain Campus. This is the fourth retreat I’ve taught at this location and I have loved every single one. I didn’t want to leave yesterday but I’ll be back there next year for two retreats in June.

Three Lindas and two Karens

This group of twelve women included three Linda/Lyndas and two Karens. I will admit that it made learning the names easier for me, but in general everyone seemed to become a cohesive group quite quickly. It is my belief that the location of a retreat self-selects certain traits in people. Tapestry weavers already tend to be people who have a certain level of fortitude and even a little stubbornness and from that pool of potential retreat participants, the high-mountain setting, the difficulty in getting there, and the promise of time outdoors further self-selects people who are pretty darn easy going. These women* were a group that got to know each other fairly quickly, shared ideas and experiments, and made sure everyone was included in all the discoveries happening. I’m so grateful for their good humor, laughter, and can-do attitudes!

The workshop focused on beginning tapestry techniques. We started with warping tips, yarn choices, and how to create a structurally sound textile. From there I presented the basic tapestry techniques and allowed each weaver to choose where they would start their explorations. Everyone made different choices, but in the end, every single person had a good grasp on the basics and had started incorporating their own design ideas into their weaving.

Eleven

Eleven

The blog began eleven years ago, April 20, 2008.

I started it on Blogger before I had any thoughts of ever teaching tapestry much less making weaving my whole career.

I moved the blog to my website years later and though it could use a good going over with an eye to fixing links and making a better tagging system, it is one long glorious song about the joy of making things.

Occasionally someone will write me and say they sat down and read the whole thing from the beginning. I like to think maybe they had the flu and had inexplicably run out of unread books and Harry Potter movies. But maybe it is just the sign of someone who starts a project and decides to see it through to the end. That seems like a trait a tapestry weaver would have. Plus there is a lot of good stuff in there though it is mixed with a lot of goofiness.

Making choices

Making choices

Anyone else really bad at making decisions?

I’m the worst.

I suppose it depends on what I have to decide about, but sometimes I’m a twitching mess of indecision. This place is painful and I’ve worked hard to learn to settle into the reasons for the struggle and listen for the right answer. That is slightly easier to do when it comes to which pizza to order than when I’m trying to decide on a design for a huge tapestry. But let’s face it, even choosing clothes for a trip to see tapestries in France can seem pretty difficult some days. (It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, right? The weight of the world in a pair of shoes…)

These sorts of indecisive moments become a habit. At least they do for me. This is part of my personality and one that I wish was different some days. I want to be one of those people who just know the right answer and go with it quickly. But I’m not. Maybe you’re not either.

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Making long-overdue color choices

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Making long-overdue color choices

My studio Fridays this year have been devoted to getting the yarn and design ready for a new large tapestry. I don’t have a name for it yet, but the inspiration came from my artist residency at Petrified Forest National Park way back in 2016. That experience made me think a lot about time. Petrified Forest does have a lot of petrified wood—trees that grew when Arizona was near the equator and fell in some great event 220 million years ago. The park is also full of amazing landforms that are stratified. As you walk through the landscape you’re walking through landscapes formed during entirely different time periods. The only way I know to travel through time in a single day.

During my month at that park, I did a daily 2 x 2 inch weaving every evening about my experiences in the park that day. I spent much of my time hiking, sketching, and taking photos. In my little casita after the early winter darkness fell, I had many hours to do some weaving. On day three of the residency, I wove a piece about the layers I saw everywhere.