Fall?

It is raining. I know in my heart of hearts that it is snowing at 10,000 feet and 11,000 feet and 12,000 feet and likely any feet higher than that. And it is snowing hard. I know this in the depths of my hiker bones and I am so very sad about it. I know we need the snow and the snowpack has to start sometime and the sooner the better, but I was still hoping to get up high and feel the above-timberline rush from the high Colorado mountains this year. My brother-in-law and four friends headed up high today for a climb of Kit Carson peak--one of the gnarly 14ers I won't attempt because I'm either chicken or smart enough to know that I am a klutz and when the guidebook says that the hike requires hand-over-hand scrambling up scree and significant exposure (a climbing term meaning you'd better not be afraid of heights), I had better not attempt it. He sent a photo a few hours ago of snow on the rocks. They're camping at 12,000 feet tonight and I can't wait to see the photo of the tent buried in snow.

I keep looking out at the rain and the dye shed in the backyard remembering the yarn prepped for dyeing this afternoon. Starting the dye pots at 5pm in the rain just seems foolish, so I'm going to make muffins and skein some yarn and when I get good and ready I'm going to work on that little tapestry. She is going to be ever so sweet and hopefully lead to a new experiment in weaving for me.

So the answer is that fall doesn't really exist in the high arid regions of southern Colorado. We have lovely summer, then it gets a little cooler for about two seconds, and then it snows. Today we hit the snow, though I will try hard to pretend for a little while longer that the -20 degree (F) temperatures are not going to happen. But the propane guy was just here to fill our tank and since we left the plastic on the windows from last winter, I guess we're ready.

Tapestry workshop looms

I have been teaching workshops in a variety of places recently, to guilds, conferences, and smaller shops. Each has their own challenge in terms of looms.  I frequently get questions when posting photos of student looms on my blog. People want to know what others are using and why. Here are my feeling about tapestry looms for workshops. Keep in mind, these are just my opinions and you undoubtedly have your own reasons for what you use... as does every tapestry teacher out there. When I am in my own studio, I weave tapestry on a Harrisville rug loom. Most of us have a small loom we use for carting about and those are the looms I want to talk about.

A tapestry loom has to hold a high tension. A loom you are working on in a workshop is no exception. If you start with a poor tool, you won't be encouraged by your results and won't want to continue working in tapestry. Using a good loom to learn on is important. Tension is one of the biggest issues.

Rigid heddle looms: My issue with most rigid heddle looms is that, in my experience, most of them do not hold a good tension. The shedding device (the rigid heddle) works fine for weaving tapestry, but the tensioning mechanism is usually poor. Many of these looms have a "beam" on each side which just doesn't tighten enough. That said, I have had a couple rigid heddle looms in my classes that worked far better than I expected them to.

Table Looms: I used to have a LeClerc Dorothy loom which my grandmother gave me. It was meant for weaving fabric and actually had 8 harnesses. The beams were tiny though and I couldn't ever get it tight enough for tapestry. I have found that most table looms have this problem. I have seen looms that do work fairly well for tapestry in this category. In the Michigan (Michigan League of Handweaver's Conference) class I taught this summer, one of the students makes looms with her husband and their table loom was not only beautiful, it worked quite well for tapestry. You can see Bruce and Ann Niemi's looms at www.kessenichlooms.com.

A loom that a blog-reader recently asked me about was the LeClerc Penelope II. This link is to a vendor's website. LeClerc has a website but it is exceedingly clumsy (so go to that link at your own risk--you have to download PDFs to see what they sell, though LeClerc does make excellent looms). I have never seen one of these looms in person, but from this photo and the description, I feel that this is basically a table loom tipped upright for weaving tapestry. If you've tried it, let me know!

Archie Brennan pipe looms: These looms show up at almost every workshop and if you want to make your own loom, I recommend the design. Archie has offered the design for these looms for a long time. Here is a link to a place you can order one disassembled or get diagrams for making one.
Archie Brennan pipe loom diagrams.
These looms are made of copper pipe and use threaded rods for a tension device. People use various methods for standing them including Tommye's solution here. I have seen people use inexpensive painters easels also to hold the loom. Of course some people just lay them on their lap and against a table (perhaps not the best ergonomic solution however).

Photo Source: Tommye Scanlin's blog

Another tapestry weaving friend of mine, Jane Hoffman, makes her own copper pipe looms and has made her own shedding device so she doesn't have to use leashes or pick a shed.

The loom below is one that a student brought to the last workshop I taught. The loom is not labeled. Does anyone know what it is or who makes it? It had a beam system for tensioning, though the teeth on the beams were large and I didn't feel like it got a tight enough tension. It used leashes for shedding. The advantage of a loom like this is that you can put on a long continuous warp.

I don't work for Mirrix, but for my money, it has become the best tapestry loom out there that you buy ready to weave on. These looms are pretty much bomb-proof, super sturdy, infinitely tightenable (if you don't loose that little wrench they send with it--seriously, keep track of that!), and come in a wide variety of sizes. I believe Elena and Claudia originally designed this loom for beading, but it quickly became apparent that tapestry weavers were going to love it. The shedding mechanism is easy to install and works smoothly. You can put on a warp that wraps around the loom and rotate it for more length. It uses a spring at the top (and now at the bottom if you choose) to space the warp evenly (yes, you need to take the spring at the bottom out after you have woven a few inches so that you can advance your work).

This is the tightening tool for a Mirrix loom. It is extremely handy and you should not lose it... though I'm sure you could buy another if you did.

I recently read this blog post by Janette Meetze about a recent tapetsry workshop she taught. I looked at her photos and realized everyone in her class was using a Mirrix. I emailed her and turns out she has a stash of them that she uses for teaching. It is an interesting idea to have a set of little looms for teaching beginners. Of course my current house/studio combination being quite small, I think my partner might have my head if I decided to invest in a fleet of new looms. Perhaps one day though.

What workshop loom do you like to use?

Salida Fiber Festival

Yesterday, though I had to work at my "moonlighting" job in the morning, I was free by noon and took a trip to Salida with my family for the first annual Salida Fiber Festival.

 Brooks Farm Yarn from Lancaster, TX was there. I always see them at the Taos Wool Festival and in the past I have succumbed to their beautiful wool and silk blends. I went back three times, fingered the yarn, imagined what great things I could knit with it, and believe it or not? I didn't buy any. I couldn't. I already have a couple skeins in the closet waiting to be knitted and the stash couldn't hold any more. Maybe if I get it out and knit fast I can get some in Taos in a few weeks.

 Woods Canyon Woodworks, the makers of the cactus flower loom were there. I have never used one of these looms, but I have had students who have and really like them. One day I will buy one and try it myself.

 Salida is a wonderful but small mountain town about an hour and a half north of where I currently live (Alamosa, CO). I didn't have high expectations for the first year of a new fiber festival, but it was a wonderful event with a lot of vendors and many people buying yarn. I think they'll be back next year!

This is my favorite store in Salida, Fringe. Penny carries yarn, fabric, and a lot of very cool fun stuff. Her booth was fun too.

 Lots of fiber...

And people spinning...

 But sadly, no animals to pet. Penny says next year.

They did have a wine/beer garden and a vendor selling deep-fried things that smelled heavenly but were decidedly not gluten free.

Here is my niece being supervised by my brother-in-law and checking out a Schacht loom for sale. She didn't quite seem interested enough in the loom for my taste, but she is only 7 months old. And later at Amicas while I was eating gluten free pizza, she was playing with the tie on her bootie in such a way that I am SURE she is going to be interested in fiber.

After the festival we climbed to this great waterfall in the Collegiates. We earned that pizza!  (Though the flourless chocolate cake might have been a little over the top.)

Today I did not get any weaving done either. Instead, I went south and hiked to Duck Lake. I didn't see any ducks, but did see a lot of cows. The lake was beautiful and all the hiking this week has made me feel a little better about the changing leaves.

The need for cupholders

Some days Emily suggests that I get a mini-van. This suggestion seems to be coming more frequently these days. I think it has to do mostly with looms and the transport there-of, though I'm not completely certain about this. It might be that she is just fed up with my little manual transmission Volkswagen Golf. She (the car) is 13 years old now and just turned over 234,000 miles. She has a few issues. The air conditioner is touch and go. As we currently live at high altitude in Colorado I am toughing that one out until next summer (just in case). The antennae for the radio fell off years ago which can get a little frustrating when the only station that comes in is that station that I'm sure teenagers love but I'm just too old for... or Focus on the Family radio. They must have strong signals because NPR NEVER comes in. The locks pretty much don't work (until they do and I set the car alarm off), and the squirter on the back window has emptied the contents of the washer fluid reservoir onto the ground when you turn it on accidentally for about a decade.

The very worst problem though is that the cupholder broke. This happened a few months ago spilling a large soda all over my lap. And I ask you in all seriousness, what good is a car without a cupholder?

So the mini-van isn't a horrible idea, though I have always reserved them in my mind for soccer moms. I completely understand why if you have four kids you need a car with a big side door that opens magically with a remote keychain, a flat floor that is easier to vacuum the cheerios off of, and a long distance to the backseat so you don't get hit in the back of the head quite as often by flying bits of soccer gear. After all, minivans get relatively good gas mileage considering how large they are, they have seats that come out resulting in a large cargo area with a flat floor which would be great for looms, yarn, and other weaving-related items. The slider doors would be fantastic for accessing the tubs of teaching materials or the wet dog, and if I got a newer one, I bet it would have a cupholder. What I'm worried about is that a minivan is definitely not cool for a young(ish) artist... but then is weaving tapestry really cool anyway? Maybe it is a lost cause.

At any rate, this is what is happening in the Southwestern USA right now...

The Hatch green chili is out in huge burlap bags in the grocery store parking lots. And the chili roasters are going ALL the time.

I hiked up to twelve thousand some feet on Sunday and was disturbed to find this:

I know I go through this every year and every year it is traumatic to me. My list of hikes to be completed this year is hardly touched and the snow will fly within the month most likely. The high country will be inaccessible to me by Thanksgiving (no, I don't want to heli-ski or learn to telemark). But winter brings it's own time of growth and I will soon be looking forward to the spring again. Plus the changing leaves are very pretty.

And I am still dyeing yarn.

Sometimes in the rain. (Yes, this yarn is white. It was drying after scouring a large batch. It will be colored soon enough.)

But the best news is that I was able to start a new tapestry yesterday. It turns out I don't hate the LeClerc tapestry loom as much as I thought I would and the little tapestry is coming along nicely. It is so good to weave again. Since I just took a new part-time job in which I have to drive a fair amount, lets hope that (1) the Volkswagen doesn't shit the biscuit, (2) the job is enjoyable and leaves me more time for weaving *it should*, and (3) I figure out a way to fix the cupholder because I am really going to need it.

In which I am up to my eyeballs in technology.

You know you may be a little too busy when you find yourself reading "An Introduction to Telehealth as a Service Delivery Model Within Occupational Therapy"* on the toilet as a way to get your professional development updates in somewhere.

I am not the most tech-saavy person, though I do try hard and I get by with a little help from my friends (okay, a lot of help from my friends--yes, I had the Beatles album Sgt Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band when I was a kid, but no, I'm not really that old. I was a 15 year old stuck in a 40 year old's world for awhile). Somehow this week I am getting a grand education in all things web-based.

• A website migration (this might take awhile--I use Squarespace and they have a great new platform and I want to use it, but it takes some learning for me to get the new stuff figured out... fortunately for me, Squarespace is great at those little videos where you look at a screen and someone is talking and the little arrows click on things and you can sort of do the same thing on your screen)
• Some new teaching products  (new websites, new concepts in creating online forums... etc)
• Use of a real newsletter mail server in which people who want to hear from me can just sign up and I don't have to manually manage a whole lot of email address... which will keep gmail from getting too mad at me also
• Learning iMovie for making videos for teaching (actually using the video camera itself was a bit of a challenge and I lost all the video from my sister's baby shower and that is really quite horrible as I promised to send it to many many people, but I'm better now. I haven't deleted anything important in the last few weeks and I even made a video of my niece in which she is adorable and I hope my sister will forgive me one day)... 

There is a big learning curve on a lot of these things, but with the help of some people smarter than me and a little swearing, I am going to come through it without losing my marbles.

In other technological news, my little Canon Elph camera is giving up the ghost. I am really sad about it, but she has stopped writing reliably to the SD card. I will admit that though I bought the camera  exactly 2 years ago just before going to Germany for the Bauhaus project, she has taken tens of thousands of photos and I suppose that is all you can ask for a camera that cost just north of $100. I haven't brought myself to order a new one yet, but I know it is imminent.

All this is my reason for not weaving anything at all recently (well that, a wedding, a month-long trip, and the fact that I just can't love the LeClerc Gobelin loom like I love my Harrisville Rug Loom.  I have tried, but I feel like I'm in 7th grade again when I'm trying to use the vertical loom... awkward, gangly, and full of acne.)

At least I'm getting some yarn dyed--mostly when the really really bad internet we have out here in the boonies absolutely refuses to work. I plead and dance around the modem and promise it kindness and that I won't stream anything offensive, but it frequently balks and sends me back to the dye pot. Perhaps that is a good thing.

Boot Mountain Bristlecone (great Sunday field trip!)

*In OT Practice, April 23, 2012 (I'm a few months behind). It is the issue with the superhero on the cover. I have given up on the REAL professional journals--those would be the articles in the journal without pictures with pages of references at the end of each 30 page article. I don't have that much gut trouble.

A day in Taos, NM

 
Yesterday I took a day trip to Taos (which really isn't so far away after all). You see, I have a sort of "temporary life" which has become somewhat permanent. But the original idea was that my things were only going to reside in the climate-controlled storage locker for a few months, half a year at best. It has been most of a year now and they may languish there a bit longer. So I have returned to that point in my life (which I experienced a decade ago when I was a traveling OT and swore I would never go back to) where I make pilgrimages to my stuff which is in a Butler building (albeit air conditioned) behind a flimsy garage-type door. Oh, the security of the storage unit is quite good and I have little doubt no one will want to rummage through my piles of book boxes and loom parts, but I do miss that stuff... especially the Harrisville Rug Loom.

Honestly, I have tried and tried to love the LeClerc Gobelin loom I have in my current studio, but it just isn't the Harrisville. The LeClerc has excellent tension and it is beautiful and it tries hard to make me happy, but I miss the vertical loom and the overhead beater and the warp tensioner on the back of the Harrisville. I may have to rent myself a truck and rescue her from lock-down, though Emily may make me sleep under the loom if I bring more stuff into this tiny house!

At any rate, the trip to Taos came off well. I managed to find the last of my stash of undyed student yarn (Harrisville Highland) so that I can get that ready for the next class. And we visited some of my favorite Taos spots...

There was, of course, Moby Dickens, the excellent independent book store in Taos.

This book was fascinating. I almost took it home with me, but put it on my Amazon wish list instead. (I use the Amazon wish list so that my family gets me things I actually want, but also as a marker of things I need to get in the future. Perhaps on my next trip to Moby Dickens this one will come home with me.)

I thought this pattern was particularly hilarious--the English Bull Dog. My grandparents had them when I was a small child and I remember that they weren't particularly smart or able to walk well or cuddly... but they loved them!

And this book was displayed on the New Mexico shelves. Life on the Rocks was written by my prior landlady, Katherine Wells and I highly recommend it. It is about her work with the petroglyph project she has established in northern NM. It is also a fascinating autobiography of someone who ended up in rural New Mexico. I had the privilege of living on her land among the petroglyphs for three years. Katherine is a good writer and the book is fun to read.

I had an emergency stop at The Yarn Shop. Fortunately, though they carry few knitting needles, they had the number 6 double points I needed to finish a baby hat in the car on the way home. I found myself swearing one too many times at the short needles I started the hat with on the way south. New needles had to be had. I do miss Taos Sunflower though!

 

 Cassy modeling the finished hat (before blocking mind you) in the car on the way home.

I stopped at the toy store, Twirl. I love this place. The kid in me can't resist touching everything. I'm sure they hate that. (And Emily would be correct to give me a squirt of hand sanitizer when leaving.)

I came home with this toy. I had Tiddlywinks as a child and with the excuse of my new niece, I can buy toys again, right? Clearly this toy is not for a 6 month old, so I must have gotten them for myself.

(We were having lunch at La Cueva. I highly recommend this place with excellent Mexican food. Most things are gluten free and they know what you're talking about when you ask about gluten.)

Here is the real reason we went to Twirl--she got her stacking cups though she might have preferred to play with the bag.

I do like Taos. I'm sure I'll be back soon... to visit the Harrisville loom if nothing else.

View of the Cumbres & Toltec train on the way down.

Pacific Portals and video viewing

Here is a link to a video of the entries in the Pacific Portals small format exhibit at Convergence 2012 in Long Beach, CA. I was unable to attend Convergence this year and was glad to be able to see the exhibit in this format. I got my copy of the catalog from ATA last week, but seeing the pieces in a video format helped me better envision what they were like.

(This is the first time I've tried to actually imbed the video on the blog. If it doesn't work, use the link here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv29EJRLezo&feature=em-share_video_user)

A big thanks to Debby Thompson for making this video and posting it for us all to see. The combination of the catalog and the video made the show much more real for me. I still wish I could peer at the tapestries from a foot away, but perhaps next time.

The Pacific Portals catalog can be purchased from the American Tapestry Alliance on their catalogs page linked here.

Perhaps video will be a new way to see artwork for the times we can't travel. It certainly helps the spatial experience of something like tapestry which is not completely flat (and often not flat at all). Any thoughts on this?