How Would it Be?

I am sitting in a hotel room in Denver awaiting a flight tomorrow morning. Here is a snapshot of the art that is on the wall. (My apologies for the poor photo and that I don't know whose work this is.)

I was, as I am wont to do, lounging on the bed surrounded by knitting, books, my journal, and my computer (having abandoned the television as hopelessly unimaginative) and I looked over my right shoulder and saw this picture. It made me gasp actually, and that is something I have never said about hotel room art before. It made me think of a song I was listening to today as I drove north through the Arkansas valley watching the Collegiate peaks appear before me. Ellis is one of my favorite folk singers. I love her song How Would it Be which is on her Break the Spell album.

How would it be if everything that you thought you knew
Was turned upside down, opposite from your point of view
How would you feel if the ground was really the sky
And all this time you've been walking when you could've been flying

[...]
What if all the birds were flying just to show us
And all the trees were really holding the sky up
And everything that you do matters some how
What if heaven and hell was right now?

How would it be if you really created your life?
[...]
What if loving what you have is everything?

[...]
How would you change your life?

(You can listen to the whole song song at her digital store on her website HERE. It is the first song on Break the Spell... or just buy the album. Or if you like the visual, here is a YouTube video of her singing it at the 2007 Rocky Mountain Folks Festival in Lyons, CO. Incidently, I was there listening.)

The Sangres and Collegiates were gorgeous today with the sun peaking through the clouds and shining off the snow. The wind was fierce driving through South Park (yes, the place the cartoon was written about) and there were ribbons of snow racing across the road. They were beautiful (and admittedly they turned me into a white-knuckle, multiple cars behind me, pretending to be 85 years old, driver... but just for a little bit. I got my mojo back as soon as I could see again). When I started climbing Kenosha pass I glanced back at the valley below me and it was all brilliantly white and yet soft and fuzzy from the snow blurring the boundaries.

Sometimes blurry boundaries and turning things upside down is a very good thing. It sure feels like heck when you're hanging upside down by your toenails though!

(Yes, it did occur to me that the people who hung the photo put it up upside down. This is a new hotel. But I like it this way. New perspectives are important.)

Mighty cold

Last night Alamosa, CO had the distinction of being the coldest place in the nation. This isn't a huge surprise. It happens every year. Still, the fact of the cold is shocking. When we beat out Fairbanks, Alaska and Bismarck, North Dakota, I know it is cold. Minus 33 degrees to be exact. I am still completely amazed my car started at 7:30 this morning. It took a few tries. She was really cranky when I let the clutch out but on the third try she kept running. After 20 minutes of letting her warm up, there was ice on the inside of the windows and no melting at all of the 1/4 inch of ice on the outside of the windshield. Though I parked in the sunshine at work, when I went out to eat my lunch at noon, it was frozen in my lunch bag.

The cold makes me hold myself tight to my bones.
It doesn't let me fly free. It makes me clench against the pressure of it.
This is hunching in your coat cold.
Dog won't walk on the snow because it hurts her feet cold.
I don't care if my hair gets messed up, I'm wearing a hat cold.

Our house is an old farmhouse outside of Alamosa a few miles. It still has single pane windows (which you might remember I complained about being painted shut in the summer...) and no insulation in the floor. My laundry room which is also the storage room, coat room, mud room, and entryway to the house as the real front door is broken, was below freezing yesterday evening. The door hinges scream when you open the door because they are iced together. Needless to say the washer is frozen.


The cold is insidious, insistent, and a little frightening.
The neighbor's sheep, in all their pounds of wooly glory, are huddled together en masse against it.
And that is saying something.

2012 in the rearview...

2012 was not a bad year. It had some phenomenal highlights as well as some really deep struggles (okay, I haven't written about the really deep struggles, just the funnier ones). Here are some of both. The links are to earlier blog posts about these events.

I got married. This was the BIG one. Even when committed to a small ceremony, getting married consumes a great deal of a year. Couple that with the need to drive 9000 miles to have the ceremony in a state where our union is celebrated (and legal), and you have a wonderful summer of wedding. Okay, we didn't have to drive and we didn't have to go all the way to Prince Edward Island or the northern tip of Nova Scotia, but damn it was fun to do it. Iowa would have been closer, but how romantic is getting married in Iowa?
 The Wedding blog post.

My niece was born. This was another biggie. I've never had a niece before. In 2012 I got one niece from my sister and married into another one (see THIS post about Megan)! This kid is already following in her auntie's footsteps--she is lying in a tent holding onto a Macintosh computer.
The day I became an auntie post.
My little knitter post.

I did not weave... well not very much. I did finish a couple pieces including a great commission for a couple in Pheonix.
Emergence VI post.
Cherry Lake post.

Emergence VI

I did teach many workshops and greatly enjoyed my students.
Symbols of the Southwest at EVFAC post.
Michigan Leagues of Handweavers Conference post.
The City of Love post.

Teaching at the Michigan League of Handweaver's Conference in Holland, MI. These ladies were amazing.

I spent a lot of time in my dye shed dyeing yarn for myself and my students.
Dyeing red yarn post.
The Dye Shed post.

I took a workshop with Helena Hernmarck. She is an amazing woman who has woven hundreds of monumental tapestries. She was a huge inspiration.
Helena Hernmarck "In Our Nature" post.

I revisited the studio of James Koehler and helped dismantle a loom that I almost bought shortly after he died. The Cranbrook has moved on to a new studio where it will be very loved. There were a LOT of parts in that loom. There were some posts about selling James' looms and the struggle with losing a teacher.
The Shannock loom post. This one you may still be able to get your hands on.
The Cranbrook loom post. (This one sold.)
James and the Cranes post.

 There was the never-ending skunk saga.
A Skunk in the Night post.
Why Skunks are not smarter than I am post.
The Cask of Amontillado post.
And the FINAL skunk post.

We came home from our trip to Mississippi on New Year's Eve to enter a house smelling of skunk. There were no breaches in the foundation, but we did turn off the skunk fan when we left, filling the opening with insulation against the minus 20 degree weather. Turns out the fan is needed to battle the stench even when everything is frozen solid. That is some serious stink.

I took some business courses and worked hard on advancing my tapestry studio business. I had a fantastic photographer do some new portraits of me for the business. Cornelia Theimer Gardella did both my wedding photos and these portraits. She has a great eye. She is also a great tapestry weaver. You know that head shot you're still using from 20 years ago? Consider a new one.
Artist Headshots post.

I started a mailing list and published my first YouTube videos.
Go to this link to subscribe to my newsletter.
Here are the two posts with the YouTube videos:
James Koehler Interlock Join video is in this post.
A little post about making tapestry butterflies is in this post.

 
There were, of course, many many visits to yarn stores. I can't resist them. I think you call someone like me a "fiber freak."
Taos Wool Festival post.
String Theory and yarn bombing post.
Salida Fiber Festival post.
Vermont Yarn stores post.
Double Yarn Stores day post.
The Why I Knit post.  (Answer: To keep from killing people.)

I turned 40. I'm not sure what else to say about that.
The birthday post.
I think you'll agree (if you are a knitter) that this was an awesome birthday present!

 
There was the disappointment of being rejected for ATB9.
The rejection post.

Emergence V: The Center Place; 44 x 44 inches, hand-dyed wool tapestry.

I found out about the closing of Weaving Southwest and the death of Rachel Brown in the same day. The closing of Weaving Southwest came with not only losing my gallery, but a struggle to get paid for my work.
The closing post.

 2012 was a good year. It was full of love, family, adventures, and yarn. But I do hope that 2013 is just a little better... at least in some ways. Best wishes to all of you.

Happy New Year from the snowy and cold southwestern United States!

2013 or What Tapestry Still Has to Teach Me

New Years Day. After an exhausting few days of marrying Emily and my storage lockers across 1200 miles of the United States, I slept 15 hours last night. When I woke up I didn't know what time it was as Emily consistently unplugs all the appliances when we leave the house for more than a few days. My clock said 3:10. I came downstairs to find that it was closer to 11am. With great hope I tried to find the Rose Parade on TV, but we only get 4 PBS stations, 3 of them in Spanish and though I'd have been happy enough watching the Rose Parade in Spanish, they were more interested in showing soap operas on New Years morning. I did manage to find it streaming live on the internet and caught Dr. Goodall (she is such a bad-ass!) going by before the parade was over. I missed all the bands and everything. (I always hope that one of these days they will show the half time show at a football game and I will see some marching band... but they never do. You'd think I'd give up on this, but I continue to hope in vain that I will see "the band".)

In the spirit of looking forward and hoping for positive changes, I spent today doing what I hope to do much more of in the coming year. Weaving. I happily warped the Mirrix and started a new piece. Yes, I miss my big loom terribly. I patted her beater yesterday in the storage locker and promised to free her sometime this year. In the meantime, the ever-versatile Mirrix will have to do. There is more travel and relocation in our future and no matter how I try, I can't fit the Harrisville rug loom in the back of my VW.

Being an artist and making a living have been the biggest struggle this year. I have learned a great deal about how to be an artist and make a living at it, but have not yet accomplished that while supporting myself or my family. I have learned a lot about balance, and if my not-infrequent tears of frustration are any indication, have a lot more to learn.

I think that tapestry weaving still has a lot to teach me. And when I am not weaving much (like in 2012), I forget the lessons of the slow accumulation of fabric. I forget that if you put a little bit together every day, eventually you have a whole tapestry and something new is born. I forget that the process of each of those weft passes is building something important even if I just can't see it minute to minute. And I think that steady activity of weaving builds something in me too.

So for 2013, I am returning to the loom. I have many other goals, but this is the most important one. Whatever loom I am able to use, I will weave on it. I will make things which may or may not become public pieces, but I will weave nonetheless.

2013 has begun.

The forecast for Alamosa tonight is minus 27 degrees.
27 degrees below zero.
Twenty-Seven.
Degrees (F).
Below.
Zero.

Makes your snot freeze when you breathe.

Happy Happy

Happy Holidays, whatever they may be.

As seen in Salida, CO. There was a large pile of sticks in the back.

Cassy at 13 and a half years.

Another minus 20 degree night

The San Luis Valley is full of bald eagles.

So cold, all the windows are iced on the inside.

And the neighbor's sheep are snowy.

I wish you all some holiday magic, rest, and joy... many messes, kids, dogs, smiles, cookies, and love.

Contemporary tapestry studio newsletter

I have finally launched my studio newsletter. You can sign up for my mailing list HERE! I will be sending infrequent updates on my studio events, workshops, online teaching, and my whereabouts. And you can unsubscribe at any time. Rest assured, I don't share my mailing list with anyone.

So go to this page and sign up!

Rebecca Mezoff Tapestry Studio Newsletter SignUp 

 

Making tapestry butterflies

I have been teaching workshops for a couple years now and I have noticed that one thing I am asked to demonstrate in every workshop over and over is making tapestry butterflies. There are many methods for holding the yarn while you are weaving a tapestry, but the cheapest is the butterfly because it requires no extra tools.

People get frustrated when their butterflies end up in knots, so pay attention to my tips in the video to avoid this.

And if you don't like butterflies, people use other things to hold the yarn. The tool most frequently used for holding yarn while weaving tapestry are tapestry bobbins. Kathe Todd-Hooker is an expert in different kinds of tapestry bobbins. This page on her store website shows clearly the different kinds of bobbins used. Kathe knows a lot about bobbins, so ask her which ones you need for the kind of tapestry you do! You can see her blog HERE.

Kathe Todd-Hooker sells these bobbins at Fine Fiber Press

I have also seen people use little plastic clips made to hold yarn colors while doing stranded color knitting or embroidery.  Like these!

One of my students loves these. They are definitely inexpensive, but if you are doing large tapestries, they definitely don't hold enough yarn.

My personal preference?  The butterfly.