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Untangled: A Crafty Sheep's Guide to Tapestry Weaving

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Untangled: A Crafty Sheep's Guide to Tapestry Weaving

Untangled: A Crafty Sheep’s Guide to Tapestry Weaving has been several years in the making. The idea came from a student in a workshop I taught at the Michigan League of Handweavers Conference in 2015. Marg heard me describing yet another little trick I like to use when weaving tapestry and she said I should write a book about those tips. So I did.

I happen to know a fantastic children’s book illustrator, Molly McNeece, who was interested in the project. Molly is my first cousin and this project has become a wonderful collaboration. The book is dedicated to our grandmother, Marian Mezoff, who encouraged us to be artists when we were kids.

Visiting The Lady and the Unicorn

Visiting The Lady and the Unicorn

I was lucky enough to be able to join a tapestry tour of France with Cresside Collette in May. Fittingly, the first place we visited was the Musée de Moyen Age* in Paris to see The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries (La Dame a la licorne). Unfortunately most of the museum was closed for renovations and I was disappointed we couldn’t see the Life of St. Stephen tapestry. But I was grateful that the Unicorn tapestries were on display and suspect they are a major draw for this museum. They are displayed in a one large room. Each of the six tapestries is between about 3.5 and 4.5 meters square.

There are six known tapestries in this series. They were probably woven around 1500 and were discovered in the mid-19th century in the château de Boussac in central France. They were in poor condition and the Musée de Moyen Age (the Cluny) purchased them in 1882. The tapestries were commissioned by the Le Viste family whose coat of arms is seen in each of the tapestries. A set of tapestries as fine as these would have cost a literal fortune and only someone with great wealth could have afforded them.

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Wet feet and weaving in the woods with a new yarn

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Wet feet and weaving in the woods with a new yarn

Life gets too busy too often and I forget to sit still sometimes. One of my favorite things to do is go backpacking. I think I like it mostly because it is so simple. A few bits of gear, some food, a good pair of trail runners, and the all-important bug repellant and I can spend time in the woods. Last weekend I went up to the Rawah Wilderness in Northern Colorado for three days. It rained much of the time. There has been so much snow in Colorado this year that not only was I camping next to snow banks, but the ground everywhere was mush… and of course the mosquitos love all the water.

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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.