Rebecca Mezoff Blog — Rebecca Mezoff

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Making

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.

A new look, a new book, and the energy the fire took...

A new look, a new book, and the energy the fire took...

About the logo! I’ve been working on a logo for my business for about a year now. Some of you saw an earlier version and I appreciate your feedback on how you thought it did or did not reflect me and my teaching style.

And the book! My answer on Tuesday about my favorite part of the book was about a piece in the Introduction called “How to be a Beginning Tapestry Weaver.” This might actually have been the seminal idea for the whole manuscript.

And a bit about the fires in Colorado at the end.

Seeing the little things. One day at a time.

Seeing the little things. One day at a time.

June has come and mostly gone and the shifting sands of the global “new normal” continues to make time feel like it has tilted off its axis. Sometimes it flows fast, sometimes moments seem to last forever.

Seeing. Being there for the experience. That is my goal this summer. There are long stretches where I have let the running of a business and my propensity for a jumbled, rambling mind to propel me through my days at breakneck speed, scarcely experiencing the moments passing me by. I have taken the opportunity this month to take a breath and it feels great. My focus for the summer is to see what is right in front of me.

I have three avenues in this goal of taking the time to see. You won’t be surprised to hear that the first two are weaving and hiking. The third is drawing.

I had planned to hike the Colorado Trail again this year. I was going to weave as I went—my favorite sort of documentation of my surroundings in my little tapestry diary. The pandemic has squelched that plan. But it has given me the gift of exploration. Instead of walking a trail that will force me into small towns and into contact with many different people over our fragile mountain towns already overrun with tourists, I'll stay closer to home and hike all the trails I can get to easily from my house. The 500 mile plan has become a series of 20-50 mile ideas and that opens up the opportunity for growth. Because I know the Colorado Trail so well I can watch thru-hiker’s videos and tell you where the images were taken. Visiting new places as a solo backpacker is scarier but it also opens me to new experiences and vistas and that seems like something that could remind me to take the time to really see what is around me.

Walking. Weaving. Drawing.

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My sometimes annoying process of iteration. Some call it sampling.

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My sometimes annoying process of iteration. Some call it sampling.

I worked on several different making projects this week. I was struck by how much I approached two completely different sorts of projects in the same way. The first was the dye project I talked about last week. The red-orange yarn turned out quite well. I did 22 samples over four days of a color that I had dyed before. In the end, the dye formula I used was the first one—my old tried and true with only two dyes and a toner.*

The final answer was NOT one of those last skeins as I’d hoped in last week’s post, but it was a simple matter of changing the depth of shade slightly before I had it. Matching a color in yarn, including the feeling and depth of that color, isn’t a one-shot deal. Maybe if this had been the yarn I usually dye it could have been, but it was not my yarn. I started by dyeing 8 colors in jars from several different formulas. Some were sort of close, some were not remotely close. In one I inverted the proportion of colors when writing out the formula and ended up with hot pink.

Twelve years. Blog-o-versary

Twelve years. Blog-o-versary

Twelve.

That is the number of years I’ve been writing this blog. I have enjoyed being here every week. I am a natural journaler and to some extent, the blog is an extension of that. I have used it to talk about whatever fiber-related thing was going on in my world—and maybe a few more chickens than you all might have liked. It has also been a place to give you information about tapestry techniques I am asked lots of questions about, and perhaps this is one of its most useful functions. I’ve written posts about looms and sett and yarn and that helps me too because when I get an email asking about one of those things, I can just send you to the blog.*

A tapestry January in photos

A tapestry January in photos

January has come and gone. It was a busy month for me. Here is a tour in photos.

January 1: New Year’s Day. #weaveeveryday

I have no illusions that I as a business-owning, traveling teacher, tapestry weaver will be able to weave every single day of this year. But my intention is to weave as often as I can because even a few minutes of weaving means that my hands and eyes return to the process and little by little, progress is made.

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Habits not resolutions: Weave every day.

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Habits not resolutions: Weave every day.

Historically speaking, I think we can safely say that I’m rubbish at New Year’s Day resolutions.

I remember a New Year’s Day when I was a pre-teen deciding that I was going to write a letter to someone every single day of the year. This was in the 80s before the internet though I probably had learned to type on my electric typewriter by then. But my resolution was to put pen to paper and hand-write someone a letter. Every. Single. Day.

I made it to January 8th.

As humans we certainly love to make grand promises to ourselves of how we’re going to change our lives starting with this one day which marks a new calendar year. But it is just another day and we are still the same people we were on December 31st (though hopefully a little more sober).