Chaco Canyon


I found out James Koehler died not many hours after he passed.  I was on my way to Chaco Canyon March 4th, 2011 with Emily and some good friends and I got a phone message somewhere between Regina and Cuba.  

Chaco Canyon is a place of stillness.  It has a long history which is much debated--and is one of those places I like to go to because there aren't any answers to why it exists or what really happened there during its centuries of occupation.  

Chaco is a place that can push you.  Camping the first weekend in March was cold and the wind and blowing sand can needle you incessantly.  There is little shelter out on the desert and you are forced to take what comes at you when walking out on the mesas.  But I find that the discomfort that first appears at Chaco quickly disappears as I am forced to let go of noise and electronics and remember to look at the vastness of the sky and appreciate the brightness of the stars.
 
The great houses and kivas are a marvel and a mystery.  I love to trace the patterns of the rock walls with my eyes.  It is a place of repetition.  It feels old and unchanging, but even when it was being built it changed all the time.  We like to think of the Anasazi as a particular group of people in one time and place, but they were much like us—building and changing and creating and destroying their society all the time.


Chaco is a place to go when questioning.  It was a good place to be when I found out my tapestry teacher had died... a good place to wonder what that meant for me personally and in a more general sense.




Chaco is about doors and passageways and empty questions.  It is also about sand and sky and stars.  It pushes my boundaries and I will return.




All content copyrighted Rebecca Mezoff, 2011.

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.