Rebecca Mezoff Blog — Rebecca Mezoff

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A game of yarn chicken

A game of yarn chicken

I finished the piece today. Emergence VIII. Three panels, total size, 54 x 54 inches. Though really I should say I finished weaving the piece. There is still a great deal of work to be done before it is hanging in the client's home.

At some point yesterday I realized I might run out of one of the colors in the spiral. This almost never happens to me with weaving anymore. Because it used to happen a lot and now I dye much more yarn than I think I will need for a piece (see photo, right--yarn for this very piece). But I miscalculated a particularly wide spot in the spiral and there I was. 5 inches from the end with an amount of yarn that looked suspiciously slim.

Refusing to panic, I looked around for another ball of the missing yarn.

Deborah Chandler and the Traditional Weavers of Guatemala

Deborah Chandler and the Traditional Weavers of Guatemala

Deborah spoke at the Handweavers Guild of Boulder's January meeting last week and I was able to go hear her. She is an engaging speaker and she kept us laughing and following closely her stories of the weavers and explanations of the weave structures and looms. It seems to me that, just like here, there are many types of looms used there. The difference seems to come in flexibility. I was fascinated to hear Deborah describe how each person specializes in one kind of weaving and they rarely do anything else. Their string heddles are tied together in the patterns needed for that shaft for the particular weave they are making and to re-tie them means to get someone who knows how to do it involved, and with most things that become expensive and complicated, it isn't done. So weavers specialize.