My next adventure...

There is a tapestry mouldering on the loom--a fact I greatly regret.  But I also regret the slipping away of summer without a single backpacking trip yet.  My soul needs to walk and so I am leaving the tapestry unfinished for now and heading out for a solid month of hiking.

Here is the sad lonely tapestry waiting for me to finish her up... Finished tapestry will be 45 inches--not quite halfway there.

Before I leave on the hike I will be teaching a 3 day workshop for the Pueblo weaving guild.  From there I'm headed out on the Colorado Trail.

My sister and I hiked the entire trail in 2003 from Denver to Durango (about 500 miles) with my then-3-year-old dog Cassy.  Cassy will be coming on part of this hike, but she is turning 12 in a few days and will not have to carry a backpack this time around.  She is a spry old thing -- a fact I attribute to her walking every day of her life perhaps as well as a puppy-ish personality and a lot of joy.

When we finished my grandmother had trophies made for us.  Too bad the trophy shop misspelled Colorado(A) !!

I have been busy dehydrating food and making some gear in between getting ready to teach the tapestry workshop and figuring out how I am going to finish that big tapestry and a commission before I return to gainful employment (NOT that tapestry weaving isn't gainful, it just doesn't quite pay the mortgage YET).


So I'm off for a little walk.  Part of it will be on my own and part of it will be with my two best girls, Emily and Cassy.  About 300 miles of the Colorado Trail before we come home again... You may not hear much from this blog until mid-September, but rest assured I am having a grand time outside.

Colorado Mountains... (This is actually Little Bear, a 14er that is part of the Blanca Massif near Alamosa, CO.)


Go For a Hike!!!  (before it snows again)

My grandmother is a weaver...

I remember growing up standing beside my grandfather as he wove on a 60 inch Macomber in his basement.  I think he was working on a large drapery project for their greenhouse (some horrific yardage number in what must have been doubleweave--and all white).  Grandpa learned to weave after he retired from a long career as a metallurgical engineer.  (It is amazing to me how many musicians, engineers, and scientists become weavers in retirement.)  Grandpa got me interested in looms--how they work, how amazing it is you can make cloth on this machine...



But it was my grandmother Marian who inspired me to actually make art.  She received her bachelors degree in art when she was 60 years old.  (Do what you love no matter what age you are.)  I loved her collection of children's books and her garden gnomes in her Tulsa, OK garden (I was never really sure they weren't real because she talked about them like they were).  Grandma was a person who encouraged IMAGINATION in a child (and sometimes terror if we didn't finish our breakfast cereal).



Grandma is in retirement now and no longer has her looms.  In fact, I have her and my grandfather's looms and I thank them every day I sit down to weave for those beautiful pieces of equipment.


This is a piece my grandmother did many years ago which I rediscovered recently when the medical clinic it has been hanging in was being redecorated and the piece was temporarily relocated to my parents house.  I loved the peek-a-boo flaps and all the faces in this round tapestry-ish work and I hear the kids in the clinic still do today.



(Yep, sometimes you have to sacrifice some stuffed animals in the name of art...)

Grandma has a fantastic drawing ability.  Her family Christmas cards are legendary and I wish I had a complete set--the little cartoonish family-member characters all set in their lively lives yet somehow blended on one piece of paper.  Every letter I've ever received from my grandma was covered with little doodles and marks to imply motion.  She also loves to underline and accent her writing.




I have her 60 inch LeClerc tapestry loom.  I am saving it's inaugural tapestry for a time when I have a big enough studio to set it up next to my favorite Harrisville Rug Loom (grandpa's loom) which I use for all my tapestry currently.  Her last cartoon for this loom, which was never woven, was a drawing from Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak--a favorite in her book collection.




Thanks for living such a creative life Grandma... and for inspiring me to do the same.

In search of tapestry yarn?

NOTE: As of 2/24/2012 I can no longer recommend purchasing Weaving Southwest tapestry yarn if you intend to make it your long term yarn source.

I sell my work through Weaving Southwest in Taos, which conveniently for me, is only about 40 miles from my house.  I stopped by today after getting my hair whacked (I can say whacked, right?  Or do you have to be Canadian to do that on a blog?) to drop off Emergence IV (you'll have to visit it there--see post with photo HERE).

I walked in the door and saw this:

I gasped a little.  I've never seen those walls empty.  Teresa was having the ultimate fun of hanging a new show arrangement.  I'm sure it'll look lovely.

Some of my students were asking about where to get tapestry yarn.  I dye my own as I have had the same problem, but Weaving Southwest does sell a nice line of tapestry yarn which is all hand-dyed.  They will sell you this color card if you are interested!





It is hard to see that the gradations are bunched together on the card.  But there are 5 colors in each bundle.  Here are the Persian Lilac colors.  It is a two ply 100% wool yarn which comes in 4 ounce skeins (162 yards).

I can't wait to see the new show.

Garage sales don't sell looms...

Well, I tried to unload a couple looms last Saturday at a family garage sale, but turns out that a yard sale in rural Colorado is not the place to sell even small looms. (Excellent garage sale street art by my sister Laura, somewhat modified by me to block out the address.)


These are the looms I had for sale.  I'll have to list them on some site once I get back from my next adventure sometime in September.  The LeClerc Dorothy loom is a good piece of equipment, but I just don't have any use for an 8 harness table loom anymore...  apparently neither do garage sale hunters in rural CO!
 

 I have an identical inkle loom to this one and I don't need two!  Probably no one knew what it was among the piles of old drills and bicycles.
 
 It is amazing what people WILL buy at a garage sale though.  Even if you tell them 10 times that something is irrevocably broken, they will stay pay a quarter to haul it away for you.

 Cassy wishing she could come and lick the sticky fingers of the kids under the tables...
 Then there was an injury...
Garage sales can be dangerous you know.
 It happened not far from where this sign was posted....

Turns out it was only STAGE BLOOD...  (Don't worry Tommye!)
 Whew.
 
I think I might need a 12 step program like this one... Do you think they have daily meetings?




And after the conference relaxation...

I was exhausted after teaching for three days.  I had no idea I would be so worn out.  Undoubtedly it has something to do with extroverting myself for four days straight.  Fortunately I had the foresight to purchase Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge rail tickets for Monday after the conference and Emily and I had a fantastic time riding the train and exploring some more of western Colorado.




There is a weaving shop in Silverton called Weathertop Wovens.  They don't allow photos in the shop, but here is the storefront.  In the past when I've visited they have both spent a lot of time explaining how they create their garments.  They are great people to visit.  They use multi-colored warps mostly in cotton to weave fabric which they then sew into ruanas and jackets.  (Does the name come from The Lord of the Rings?  I didn't think to ask them while there this time.)

This is perhaps one of the funniest signs I have ever seen.  It was in front of a house in Silverton--a town where only the main street is paved, most of the town leaves for all but 3 months of the year, and the people who live there year round are tougher than nails.  I suspect this sign belongs to one of the tough ones.  (Silverton also gets a LOT of summer-time tourist traffic and I suspect people get sick of tourists parking in front of their houses.)





On our way home we drove through Bayfield, CO.  I had asked the woman at Yarn (an amazing little yarn shop where I have spent some money in past months!) in Durango if there were any other yarn shops in the area and she mentioned one in Bayfield.  We ran across this one which has one of the most clever names for a knit shop that I have ever seen... considering that the shop is on Pearl Street.

Color Gradation for Tapestry

I taught a new class at Intermountain Weaver's Conference in Durango last weekend.  The conference was July 21-24 at Fort Lewis College.  I greatly enjoyed teaching this class.  I had wonderful students and we learned a lot about structural techniques for mixing color in tapestry as well as a little bit of color theory.




Prepping an example for the class...

Dyed yarn.  We had many discussions about where to get tapestry yarn.  I dye my own because it is so difficult to find gradations to purchase commercially (and because I like dyeing). For people who don't want to dye their own yarn, finding more than a couple values in one hue is difficult!
Some student examples...    
Use of blocks to grade color.



Pick and pick on doubled warps...

We had two rigid heddle looms in the class.  I never would have advocated using this loom for tapestry, but I have to admit that the tension was significantly better than I expected it to be.

We also had a couple Archie Brennan style looms in the class which get a great tension although they can be difficult to get a shed on.  One student had modified her loom with a shedding mechanism, though she still had to use a shedding stick due to the narrow width of her top copper pipe (not this loom).

There was one table loom made by Mountain Loom Company.  I was surprised that this loom held an excellent tension which has not been my experience with table looms.  There was a Wolf Pup and the rest of the looms were Mirrix.

One student designed this great transparency exercise with two circles (this is the back--due to the Mirrix warp wrapping around, I couldn't photograph the front of this example).


We went over to see the Fiber Celebrated show and look at a couple pieces I had there.

Fort Lewis College is a great place for a fiber conference.  The vendor hall was marvelous, the IWC board members kept the whole thing running smoothly, and the cafeteria actually did make me gluten-free food.



The juried show Fiber Celebrated 2011 also opened during the conference.  You can see my blog post about that show HERE.

There was also a non-juried show at the conference and I've posted some photos of that HERE.

Lastly, I was a little surprised to see the advertising for the Swedish singles yarn that James Koehler used as it seemed to imply that the proceeds somehow had something to do with James...  In reality the vendor was just trying to sell an overstock that James left behind.