Tapestry Weaving

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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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Untangled: A Crafty Sheep's Guide to Tapestry Weaving

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Untangled: A Crafty Sheep's Guide to Tapestry Weaving

Untangled: A Crafty Sheep’s Guide to Tapestry Weaving has been several years in the making. The idea came from a student in a workshop I taught at the Michigan League of Handweavers Conference in 2015. Marg heard me describing yet another little trick I like to use when weaving tapestry and she said I should write a book about those tips. So I did.

I happen to know a fantastic children’s book illustrator, Molly McNeece, who was interested in the project. Molly is my first cousin and this project has become a wonderful collaboration. The book is dedicated to our grandmother, Marian Mezoff, who encouraged us to be artists when we were kids.

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Wet feet and weaving in the woods with a new yarn

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Wet feet and weaving in the woods with a new yarn

Life gets too busy too often and I forget to sit still sometimes. One of my favorite things to do is go backpacking. I think I like it mostly because it is so simple. A few bits of gear, some food, a good pair of trail runners, and the all-important bug repellant and I can spend time in the woods. Last weekend I went up to the Rawah Wilderness in Northern Colorado for three days. It rained much of the time. There has been so much snow in Colorado this year that not only was I camping next to snow banks, but the ground everywhere was mush… and of course the mosquitos love all the water.

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Weaving the rainbow in silk: tapestry diary fun

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Weaving the rainbow in silk: tapestry diary fun

I’ve been playing around with some silk yarn I got from weaversbazaar over the last week. I first grabbed it as I sat down to watch the semi-final of the World Cup and made the second one during the final a few days later. First it must be noted that it is an exceptional event when I actually plan to watch a sporting event of any kind, especially one that doesn’t involve someone’s children at a nearby park. I know almost nothing about soccer but something about that women’s national team grabbed my imagination and they did not disappoint.

So now I call these two pieces my soccer tapestries. I’m kind of fascinated by the hole-y effect especially in the white one. I could pretend that idea came from watching the ball fly through the holes between the players, but really I was just experimenting with making curved lines, using eccentric outlines, and figuring out how best to minimize the number of ends I was creating.

Colorado retreat: Moose from the start

Colorado retreat: Moose from the start

Every year when I come to CSU Mountain Campus to teach tapestry retreats, I spend a fair amount of time walking and looking for moose. I would be walking anyway as that is just who I am (solvitur ambulando). But always I’m looking for those huge gangly creatures who hide in the willows by the river so well. I count it a good retreat if I see at least one moose.

From my arrival this year I started seeing them. In fact, I couldn’t miss them as I got moose-blocked immediately. (What they call it here when the moose decides to stay in the path where you’re walking and frankly, he gets to decide since he outweighs me by so much.) Here is my moose count for this retreat. These are actually sightings. Some of them I can identify as being different moose, but most certainly some of them are the same moose visiting different spots around the campus.

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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.