tapestry diary

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My travel weaving kit: Have loom, will travel

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My travel weaving kit: Have loom, will travel

I’ve done a few different posts over the years about my summer travel fiber kit. This year I’m taking it on a long backpacking trip so it has to be especially streamlined and lightweight. I’ll be hiking the Colorado Trail this summer for about 5 weeks. At least I hope so. You never know whether a long trail will actually happen end to end. So many things can take you off trail from injury to illness to weather. But I’m going to give it a try.

I’ve given myself a 6 ounce weight limit for this fiber kit with an additional few ounces for a drawing/journaling kit. So half a pound total for my entertainment on trail (plus I bring Kindle books on my phone which I need for camera and back-up navigation).*

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Tapestry diary: Agnes Martin

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Tapestry diary: Agnes Martin

While teaching in Taos, NM in January, I visited the Harwood Museum. I saw many marvelous things there, one of them being the Agnes Martin room. On my Tacoma trip this month, I wove a tapestry diary piece in tribute to Agnes Martin (1912-2004). . . .

I wanted to play with these feelings in a tapestry diary piece both to think more about how her paintings were constructed physically but also as a way to remember my reaction to the work. The tiny 2 x 2 inch tapestry is nothing like an Agnes Martin painting, but the experience of making it absolutely cemented something about the work in my mind and made me excited to learn more about her creative experience.

The making of this little tapestry diary piece was nothing special and indeed, did not take long to weave. But the experience and process of making it helped me revisit the art in my mind and think again about how and why it was made.

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Yarn experiments and more little weavings

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Yarn experiments and more little weavings

I grew up in New Mexico so it always feels like coming home when we decide to come south for a little vacation. We’re back for the week spending some time with family and friends and watching the snow storms roll across the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. I packed the car with a small selection of little looms, fleece, yarn, and a couple spindles for a week in northern New Mexico. Thus far I’ve finished a piece I started in Georgia and have warped a few more looms with some vague ideas what the next tapestry diary piece will be on one of them. I thought I’d share a few things I’m messing around with for fun this week.

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Little Looms and Ani

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Little Looms and Ani

I’ve been going to Rocky Mountain Folks Festival in Lyons, CO since 1996 when I was gifted a ticket for the weekend. Later I dated someone who not only went for the full weekend but also for song school the week before. Now I choose who I want to go hear and this year it was Ani DiFranco. She was headlining Friday night and there were a few other bands I wanted to hear, so off we went last Friday to Planet Bluegrass to sit in the sun and the rain and hear some music.

It turns out that festivals are also good places to weave. I brought my tiny copper pipe loom and finished the tapestry diary piece just before it got dark.

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Process not product. Travel weaving.

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Process not product. Travel weaving.

Emily was off speaking at a conference on the east coast last weekend and I decided to take myself camping. I loaded up the car with all my favorite bits of camping gear, a cooler of random stuff that was in the frig, and looms + yarn. I had multiple small projects in process and somehow I thought three days in the woods was going to be enough to finish all of them.

Instead, I started a new one.

This little idea was in my tapestry diary idea book and I decided to weave it while testing out this new Handywoman loom.* The piece is called The Beckys and it is about the way I mostly see myself versus how someone else in my life sees me. I’m pretty much the eternal optimist, so you can guess which side is the one I think expresses something about me.** The yarn is wool and silk from weaversbazaar with 20/6 cotton seine twine warp. The campground is pure Colorado.

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Tapestry Diary: The cabin that burned

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Tapestry Diary: The cabin that burned

One of my favorite walks at CSU Mountain Campus in Pingree Park is the long valley loop. It goes by the Far Away cabin and of course I always thought it would be great to live there for awhile. This year when we arrived for the Foundations Tapestry Retreat, the staff told us that the cabin had burned down the week before.

I have continued to do a tapestry diary of sorts to remember events and places. Last year I had noted my wish to weave that cabin in my tapestry diary journal but I never got around to it. And this year it was gone.

Inhale

Inhale

A vacation.

It does not seem like taking some time off should be difficult. Humans need rest.

But I do find it difficult to absent myself completely from my business. It turns out in two weeks there were no monumental tapestry emergencies, my website went back up, and I enjoyed watching my brain relax its anxious grip on whatever it perceives as reality in that moment.

I picked up Krista Suh's book, DIY Rules for a WTF World in a yarn shop recently and it seemed like great deck reading. Right at the beginning of the book. . . .