Making hue and value decisions as I weave

Making hue and value decisions as I weave

Those of you who have been following me on Change the Shed on YouTube since March have seen first hand how I make decisions as I’m weaving. For me, many of my tapestry design decisions are made before I start the weaving. But often color choices aren’t really clear until the tapestry is underway. In a small piece I am unlikely to weave a sample, so I am experimenting while working on the actual tapestry.

In the December 9th episode of Change the Shed I was struggling with a value choice that I didn’t trial before I turned the camera on that morning. After briefly considering (silently) how embarrassed I was going to be when I made live “errors” to a fairly wide audience, I decided that letting it play out on camera was just fine with me.

Keep up the wonder

Keep up the wonder

Curiosity.

Is it the key? To everything?

As an annoyingly persistent optimist, I am feeling a little blue of late. It isn’t new, it comes and goes, and I blame it on 2020 entirely. It is hard to watch this pandemic flatten my country when we could have managed it so much better. It is hard to see people dying when they didn’t have to. And there is a lot of fear in the unknown future. I do feel a measure of hope (that is the persistent part of the optimist in me), but some days I need a little reminder.

Fyber Monday: All tapestry classes on sale

Fyber Monday: All tapestry classes on sale

The Monday after Thanksgiving in the USA is often called “Cyber Monday.” It is a day created by marketers to get you to buy online products. I hardly think we need days devoted to convincing us to buy more stuff, but I do value education. And since my online courses are digital programs and it fits with the Cyber Monday theme, I have chosen it as the one day a year I have a sale.* Fyber Monday of course being a play on “Cyber Monday.”

This year I’m offering all my current classes for sale.** Each of these codes will only work once, but you could get three classes during this sale! Choose Design Solutions, Season 1, Fringeless: Four-selvedge warping, and any third class you want.

Fiber books: a brief look at my favorites so far this year

Fiber books: a brief look at my favorites so far this year

In the northern hemisphere, winter is bearing down on us. With COVID and colder weather keeping us home, I am digging through my “to be read” shelves and making stacks around my favorite reading spot.* I thought you might like a few possibilities for your own favorite reading spot so I’ve listed some of my current favorites below. These are fiber-related books but I definitely have a good mix of other types in my stack. These books are also all more process-oriented. I have some history-of-fiber or tapestry books queued up to talk about soon.^

How to Weave a Navajo Rug and Other Lessons from Spider Woman

How to Weave a Navajo Rug and Other Lessons from Spider Woman

Lynda Teller Pete and Barbara Teller Ornelas are sisters and tapestry weaving and teaching powerhouses. I’ve had the pleasure of talking to them at various events over the years and I’m always delighted to connect with their knowledge, insight, and fantastic sense of humor. They are not only wonderful human beings, but they have a passion for teaching that I seldom see matched. Before COVID they traveled extensively to teach most of the year. They teach workshops for Diné (Navajo) students frequently as many families lost their weaving knowledge due to racist and repressive practices of the US government two generations ago (and more). There are young Diné weavers working again today thanks in part to Lynda and Barbara’s work. (See the resources guide in the book for how to contact some of them about purchasing their artwork.)

What a crazy week.

What a crazy week.

Well.

What a week it was!

The first week of November, 2020 is not one I will quickly forget. Not only was it perhaps the most contentious election season in American politics in my memory, but my book also launched. The launch date was supposed to be a week earlier, but due to an unfortunate delay in the book’s arrival at the warehouse from the printer a day late, the publication date was moved to November 3.

For me it was a week of extremes. The polarization in the United States is incredibly distressing to me and I found myself so often during the week of waiting for election results wondering how we were ever going to learn to listen to each other. And on the other hand, people started receiving my book and I had wonderful messages from all over the world about how much they loved it. (Believe me, that is a huge relief. If the book was a total flop after putting so many years of work into it, it would be disappointing to say the least.)

How to start over without rewarping

How to start over without rewarping

Have you ever been several inches into a tapestry and had an overwhelming feeling that it just wasn’t working out? Maybe the colors are wrong or the forms just aren’t weaving well or you’ve chosen the wrong weft materials.

What do you do if you reach a point in a tapestry where you know you just have to start over?

On one of my recent pieces for the Pandemic Diaries series, I got about 3 inches into the weaving and realized I really hated what was happening with both the forms and the colors. I am weaving this piece as a way of cheering myself up at the end of a very long year and in the middle of a difficult election season in the USA. (WHY do our election “seasons” last so long? It feels like it has been an eon since this started.) To me, the piece is funny, though in a sarcastic, wry way, being a riff on the saying, “Going to hell in a handbasket.” The border of the tapestry is supposed to represent flames and though I did cartoon the forms I would weave I did not plan the colors beyond picking out a pile of warm colors and choosing them as I went. I hated the result.