You might not know this about me...

You might not know this about me...

I love long-distance hiking fiercely and unapologetically.

I love long-distance hiking (backpacking to many of you) with the same engrossing focus that I love tapestry weaving. I think both activities bring my brain to a similar place where worry falls away and creativity slowly spins out bit by bit. Something happens and I find myself completely invested in the activity, just waiting to see what comes next. When I'm weaving, there is this little voice that is always wondering, what will happen here? What will this color do? What if I move this sequence over by one warp? And though that sounds completely boring, in the moment I am absolutely engaged.

The weaving I did at Hambidge

The weaving I did at Hambidge

After finishing the big design at Hambidge, I moved on to some small weaving projects. Of course I wasn't able to bring a big loom to this residency, so I worked on my galvanized pipe loom, a Mirrix, and a Hokett loom.

One of the things I wanted to work out was how to do a four-selvedge weaving that was shaped. Of course you can use a home-made pin loom to do this, but I don't like weaving that way as you don't have a shed. I wanted to use the method that I learned from Sarah Swett using a jig.

Flowers, tapestry design, and spring water

Flowers, tapestry design, and spring water

After about a week of hard work, I finalized this large tapestry design. You can see part of it in this image. This is the next large work you’ll see me weaving. I struggled with imagining how big the design was actually going to be, so I did a mock-up in paper full size. This allowed me to see what parts of the form were going to be more difficult to weave, how to adjust things to make the curves better, and decide what sett to use. It also impressed upon me just how big this piece of weaving is. It will be a massive dye job followed by a whole lot of weaving.

I finally made it to Georgia... Hambidge!

I finally made it to Georgia... Hambidge!

Some days you can look at your travel adventures as a blessing or a curse. I choose blessing. Because otherwise midnight with hundreds of other tired travelers at Atlanta International would be a lot more difficult.

I finally made it to Hambidge this week for my artist residency here. I spent about 10 hours longer in the Atlanta airport than was desirable, but who needs sleep?

How to make beautiful yarn out of poorly dyed singles

How to make beautiful yarn out of poorly dyed singles

Mistakes in dyeing can be messy... but sometimes there is a happy outcome even when you think it is all going to crap partway through.

I made a measuring error while dyeing a violet/blue yarn and as the dye was already in a jar with water in it, I couldn't easily save it. I wanted to use this large volume of dye so it seemed the right moment to try some overdyeing.

A friend recently gave me quite a lot of churro yarn that was dyed by someone else. The colors weren't quite what she wanted and she asked if I could use it. And not being able to say no to free high-quality yarn even when the colors were a little bold, it came to live in my studio.