Join me on Patreon

Join me on Patreon

I can hardly believe it has been almost five years that I’ve been running Change the Shed, my free YouTube tapestry weaving live event. I still do it twice a month and plan on continuing that. I have had so many people support this program through donations and I appreciate all of you more than you’ll ever know. But the time has come to get some more consistent support so this program can continue.

To that end, I’ve started a Patreon page. Patreon is a sort of membership site created to support artists and creators. In general, creators ask for support from people who follow them in exchange for some sort of learning or community opportunity. The membership rates are low and the funds help the creator continue their work.

Many approaches to tapestry weaving | Taos in January

Many approaches to tapestry weaving | Taos in January

There is a lot of joy in getting together with a group of people who love the same things you do. I think we can safely say the people who came to my Taos retreat this month love yarn. Everyone has a different reason for weaving tapestry and those differences are always interesting for me to observe and ask about when I’m teaching. But generally we can all come together around the love of creating and yarn.

In the workshop this month I had a lot of different approaches. One student was motivated to study tapestry for historical and sociological reasons related to her family and their place or origin. Another student was very interested in Norwegian weaving and using that style to express personal images. Someone else was working on recovery from the death of a spouse and the feelings of loss and recovery that brought up. There were students who were interested in three dimensional tapestry, depicting water, interpreting dreams, interpreting life events, or working from inspiration other tapestry artists’ work brought them.

Winter Trees Weave-Along Re-cap

Winter Trees Weave-Along Re-cap

If you wove along with me in the winter trees project in November and December, thank you! I know some of you are still weaving or are just starting your winter scenes now. I wanted to post a little update with my finished projects and a link to those of yours that I’ve collected so far.

If you’d like to join the project, there is a free PDF in my blog post on November 13, 2024 you can download for ideas and guidance. You can find that blog post HERE.

I wove two projects. The first was a pine tree in the snow.

Hot air ballooning: flight among the red rocks

Hot air ballooning: flight among the red rocks

During the holidays I was able to return to my hometown of Gallup, New Mexico to watch my favorite balloon festival, the Red Rock Balloon Rally. This small invitational rally is full of skilled pilots and beautiful balloons. They fly among the red rock canyons of Red Rock State Park. I find the flight of these balloons through the canyons and against the brilliant blue sky inspiring.

Ancestral Futures show in Taos

Ancestral Futures show in Taos

During the retreat I taught in Taos last month, I took a bit of time at lunch to walk downtown and duck into a couple of stores I like to visit. I was long out of time, but was walking by the Taos Center for the Arts (TCA) before racing through Kit Carson park back to my students when I remembered an important detail I failed to put on the class calendar that week. The Ancestral Futures show was still up at the TCA. So I resolved to be late and ducked into the gallery. I was so glad I did!

This post is full of images of outstanding tapestry and fiber artists from Northern New Mexico, both contemporary and passed on now. I hope you enjoy the photos!

Misspelling Crotchety and other tapestry mishaps

Misspelling Crotchety and other tapestry mishaps

Sarah Swett and I made a class about a particular warping technique six years ago now. Monday we did a live chat on YouTube to talk about our experience with Fringeless, answer your questions, and talk about the tapestry life.

I have to say that hanging out with Sarah and making goofy videos (along with lots of serious ones) was a lot of fun then and clearly it is still fun now. I think the photo below clearly indicates the difference in our knitting abilities and probably also our weaving abilities. All tapestries in those photos are by Sarah and she wore gorgeous hand-knitted sweaters which she designed on every day we shot the class. I was apparently wearing a cheap cotton sweater from Eddie Bauer which is still in my closet.

We answered a lot of questions about four-selvedge warping including why you might want to do it and how we both use the practice. And if you want to see the misspelling of crotchety, I recommend watching the whole video as Sarah shows us her current work in progress. I hope you enjoy the video!