String Theory and yarnbombing Taos

I was passing through Taos yesterday and stopped at the new yarn shop. Yeah! New Yarn Shop!!! Ever since Taos Sunflower closed many many years ago (I know Martie, it was a good decision for you, but your shop was so great), Taos has been without a welcoming yarn shop where they let me pet the yarn and maybe take a few skeins home with me.

I heard rumors about the new yarn shop a few weeks ago. The name is fantastic: String Theory. The shop is still small and they are carrying mostly local yarn at the moment. But they will branch out and create fiber community and it will be fun and lovely. I'm sure of it.

These people are seriously funny. Check out their About page on their website. I met Guinevere who was sitting on one of the inviting leather couches in the shop knitting a bikini for a parking meter. And I already knew Alex from Weaving Southwest, a rug-weaving career cut too short. Anyone who invents a holster for rug shuttles definitely has potential in the weaving community. Alex is fantastic and I hope he gets his own loom and keeps weaving rugs. In the meantime he is apparently a genius crochet-er.

I have in my head an image of Alex standing at one of these Rio Grande looms at Weaving Southwest with big rag shuttles stuck in his pockets. But I can't find the photo. Perhaps I never really took it.

I do realize that my obsession with yarn shops is not exactly natural for a tapestry weaver. After all, most yarn shops are trying to sell to knitters who feel pretty good about a 4 oz skein of yarn costing north of $18. But for a weaver of large tapestries, that is a pretty high price tag considering the distance 4 oz will take you. I think yarn stores are my comfort food. They have beautiful skeins of yarn that have such potential all shiny in their wrappers. And knitting is easy. It is relaxing. It doesn't carry expectations with it (art, financial success, beauty, shows...).

Taos plaza was yarnbombed this week. I learned about it on Facebook (where else?) and was happy to have an opportunity to see it for myself. Here are a few shots of this ongoing project. I think it will be up through Taos Wool Festival.

I love these little guys on the wrought-iron railings.

And this is my favorite. Breath In. Breathe Out. Move On.

I am interested to see the bikini-wearing parking meters.

A day in Taos, NM

 
Yesterday I took a day trip to Taos (which really isn't so far away after all). You see, I have a sort of "temporary life" which has become somewhat permanent. But the original idea was that my things were only going to reside in the climate-controlled storage locker for a few months, half a year at best. It has been most of a year now and they may languish there a bit longer. So I have returned to that point in my life (which I experienced a decade ago when I was a traveling OT and swore I would never go back to) where I make pilgrimages to my stuff which is in a Butler building (albeit air conditioned) behind a flimsy garage-type door. Oh, the security of the storage unit is quite good and I have little doubt no one will want to rummage through my piles of book boxes and loom parts, but I do miss that stuff... especially the Harrisville Rug Loom.

Honestly, I have tried and tried to love the LeClerc Gobelin loom I have in my current studio, but it just isn't the Harrisville. The LeClerc has excellent tension and it is beautiful and it tries hard to make me happy, but I miss the vertical loom and the overhead beater and the warp tensioner on the back of the Harrisville. I may have to rent myself a truck and rescue her from lock-down, though Emily may make me sleep under the loom if I bring more stuff into this tiny house!

At any rate, the trip to Taos came off well. I managed to find the last of my stash of undyed student yarn (Harrisville Highland) so that I can get that ready for the next class. And we visited some of my favorite Taos spots...

There was, of course, Moby Dickens, the excellent independent book store in Taos.

This book was fascinating. I almost took it home with me, but put it on my Amazon wish list instead. (I use the Amazon wish list so that my family gets me things I actually want, but also as a marker of things I need to get in the future. Perhaps on my next trip to Moby Dickens this one will come home with me.)

I thought this pattern was particularly hilarious--the English Bull Dog. My grandparents had them when I was a small child and I remember that they weren't particularly smart or able to walk well or cuddly... but they loved them!

And this book was displayed on the New Mexico shelves. Life on the Rocks was written by my prior landlady, Katherine Wells and I highly recommend it. It is about her work with the petroglyph project she has established in northern NM. It is also a fascinating autobiography of someone who ended up in rural New Mexico. I had the privilege of living on her land among the petroglyphs for three years. Katherine is a good writer and the book is fun to read.

I had an emergency stop at The Yarn Shop. Fortunately, though they carry few knitting needles, they had the number 6 double points I needed to finish a baby hat in the car on the way home. I found myself swearing one too many times at the short needles I started the hat with on the way south. New needles had to be had. I do miss Taos Sunflower though!

 

 Cassy modeling the finished hat (before blocking mind you) in the car on the way home.

I stopped at the toy store, Twirl. I love this place. The kid in me can't resist touching everything. I'm sure they hate that. (And Emily would be correct to give me a squirt of hand sanitizer when leaving.)

I came home with this toy. I had Tiddlywinks as a child and with the excuse of my new niece, I can buy toys again, right? Clearly this toy is not for a 6 month old, so I must have gotten them for myself.

(We were having lunch at La Cueva. I highly recommend this place with excellent Mexican food. Most things are gluten free and they know what you're talking about when you ask about gluten.)

Here is the real reason we went to Twirl--she got her stacking cups though she might have preferred to play with the bag.

I do like Taos. I'm sure I'll be back soon... to visit the Harrisville loom if nothing else.

View of the Cumbres & Toltec train on the way down.

Tapestry weaving and the nature of an art form

I picked up Joan Potter Loveless's book, Three Weavers again this morning (of all things, I had to buy another copy of it because mine is buried in a storage locker, but I needed this particular book and bookfinder.com almost always pulls through). I had forgotten that she studied with Anni Albers at Black Mountain College (and took color classes with Josef Albers).  Perhaps this book should have been on the Interwoven Traditions: New Mexico and Bauhaus reading list.

Here is a quote from page 17 that got me thinking of other aspects of tapestry weaving and more questions about why contemporary tapestry is most often not considered an art form by the larger art world (though historical and traditional tapestry often are--why is this?).

Even though, in one sense, the "evolution" of handweaving can be seen as a progression toward more ease, more efficiency, with the development of equipment and tools that accomplish these things, this is not a true picture of what weaving is all about. Weaving in the present is also, and most importantly, all of the minute, separate, weaving occurrences that have gone on in the past, all of the particular, individual, bits and pieces that have been woven in the the past by people sitting at looms or simply twining fibers into some form.  The satisfaction that we derive from being involved in a piece of weaving is exactly the same satisfaction that weavers always have derived from their work. Our work is no better; often it is not nearly as good. Weaving is not involved with the concept of progress; it is much more concerned with holding still the moment, with savoring and with marking it, with this still very simple participation with the fibers that we find around us.

Is this a common perspective among tapestry weavers? (and keep in mind that this book was published in 1992). I feel that meditative aspect of weaving almost every time I sit at the loom and I believe other weavers do also. Is there a fundamental rift between the glittery, monied art world and the slower universe of the tapestry weaver that we just can't overcome? Probably this is just one very small part of the problem of tapestry's place in the larger art world. After all, I imagine all artists have to find that meditative place when they are creating and thus experience this glaring difference of realities when faced with marketing and showing their work. But are tapestry weavers particularly inhibited by the slow plodding nature of our work when it comes to marketing and professional issues?

 

(photos Canyon of the Ancients National Monument, November 12, 2011)

Taos Wool Festival

I spent last weekend and part of last week in New Mexico. It was the Taos Wool Festival Saturday and Sunday and I greatly enjoyed seeing all the great yarn, animals, and talking to the people who love fiber. I managed to get out of there Sunday having only bought two skeins of yarn--a silk/wool blend that should be lovely for something knitted. There were many booths, a little weaving, and all kinds of animals including alpaca and lots of angora bunnies. There were people spinning and knitting all over the place. And the festival was busy even though it was cold and overcast for New Mexico in October.

I also visited my friend Emily and her family in Dixon, NM. Her husband is a farmer and his specialty is chili. He was working on hanging these ristras all across the front of their house.

I spent Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday taking a tapestry weaving class from James Koehler in Taos. James is always ready to challenge me and this class was no exception. I enjoyed learning some new gradation and hatching techniques as well as being part of a group of tapestry weavers for a few days. It was a quick class, but I did manage to start a small tapestry. While I was there I stayed at the Columbine Inn in the Taos Ski Valley. I highly recommend the place! It was quiet (off season) and beautiful. I was able to hike right from the hotel. I did have to scrape ice off my car in the mornings and there was snow on Wheeler peak. The colors are changing fast and winter is on her way.