Blog
Some time before my class at Harrisville Designs in New Hampshire, one of the students in the class, Kerri Keeler, emailed me that she knew about a tapestry just a few miles from our workshop that we should visit. She offered to take care of the logistics and I told her if she could set it up, I would be happy to encourage the group to go.
So Wednesday night during our color retreat, we caravanned to Peter Pap Oriental Rugs to see the lost Frida Hansen tapestry, Sørover.
While at Harrisville Designs (HD), I took another tour of the mill. I never miss a mill tour as I learn more about making yarn every time I go. The mill manager Sarah took my tapestry class on yet another great tour of the Harrisville Designs spinning mill. I made another video in 2013 about the mill which you can see on YouTube HERE. In that video, the mill was in a different building some distance from the rest of Harrisville Designs. In that video you can see the now-retired long-term mill manager Babs talking to us about the process.
They had to move the mill a few years ago due to a flood and if you want to hear some stories from very nervous mill workers, ask about moving this equipment! HD moved their equipment from the late 1800s and early 1900s to one of the original mill buildings. It is interesting to see the video linked above from 2013 because they’ve also updated their washing and skeining systems since then.
In late June I taught a week-long class at Harrisville Designs in Harrisville, NH. I love visiting Harrisville for so many reasons. I think the main reason is that it is a place full of heart. It is a beautiful small town filled with kind people. From the friendly greeting from the librarian to the chatty cooks at the General Store and the local mechanic who helped me after hours with a car problem^ to the oh-so-helpful postmaster who shipped my boxes home, the people are solid.
I can’t say enough good things about Harrisville Designs itself either. What a place of wonder it is. Any working mill is fascinating to me. Turning piles of fleece into yarn is magic.* The owners of Harrisville, Chick, Pat, and their son Nick Colony are so interested in what the students are doing. They embody the friendly, community-centered nature of the business and the town. The shopkeepers who will greet you with their knowledge of yarn, knitting, and weaving and make you feel like you’ve come home are all exceptional humans. I have to give a huge thank-you to Sara Parker who not only helped me run a successful workshop but she got me out of a self-imposed and potentially disastrous jam one night.
Last month I taught two tapestry workshops in New England. One was a retreat I ran myself in Plymouth, VT and the other was for Harrisville Designs in Harrisville, NH. In between the two teaching events I had 6 days and that is not enough time for me to go home even if I could stand the two extra days on airplanes. Instead I did the ultra sane thing and found a little cottage to stay in.
I was sure my time in eastern New Hampshire would result in lots of adventures but somehow the week flew by. There were a few including a hike, a trip to Portland, ME, and a few yarn stores.
This month I had the good fortune of leading a retreat all about color use in tapestry. Our focus was designing color palettes for our work. I suppose we could say we were playing with the process of choosing colors. Color is a big part of designing and tapestry weaving has its own particular set of challenges and advantages when using color.
We do not have the advantages a painter does in that they can modify colors endlessly by just adding a bit more of this or that hue to the mix to shift a color. But we can use weft bundling to change the perceived color of a weft bundle. That is all about optical mixing which is always a focus in any tapestry color class.
I’ve been teaching color for tapestry weaving in Vermont and New Hampshire this month and I was excited to add this color tool to my toolbox just before I left on the trip. We were able to use the Palette Scout in both of the workshops I taught.
There is a lot of power in a color swatch tool like this. There are many color tools out there and I introduce many of my favorites in various online classes such as Design Solutions, but this one is different in that each hue is on a different card. That means that you can move the cards around as you create a palette and that makes all the difference.
Before I left for my teaching trip in Vermont and New Hampshire, I recorded a short Change the Shed episode to air on June 12, 2024. I wanted to address some of the questions I’ve been asked mostly about my business in recent months. The questions range from how big my team is (you might be surprised) to what I do with tiny tapestries. I suspect that person was wondering the bigger question, what good is tapestry really? And that quickly morphs into why do we even make art? I promise I don’t get into that in the video, but I definitely do in some of the online classes. It is a short episode at about 15 minutes.
