Blog
I’ve been working on a fun project in collaboration with Gist Yarn. And this week, it is ready for the world. The Tapestry Discovery Box has launched and I’d love to share it with all of you. If you’ve ever wished for an ongoing community of tapestry weavers to talk about and troubleshoot technique and design problems with, this subscription course might be exactly the thing for you.
Have you reached that point in tapestry weaving where you feel you have a decent or even excellent grasp of technical issues but you are unsure how to design your own images? This happens to almost all of us, so you’re not alone. Designing is simply a skill and it can be learned.
There is a lot of pressure in the art world. How many messages do we get telling us that you have to be born with some sort of special talent or that you have to go to art school to make “good” art? Those messages are everywhere in our culture and it is easy to let those messages keep you from creating.
The truth is that designing for tapestry or any art medium is simply a skill and that skill can be learned.
I started doing my live YouTube broadcast, Change the Shed, in March of 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic locked us all down. Almost three years later, I’m still doing it. A few things I learned/remembered as I looked back over all those episodes:
The things that will make me cry in front of unknown numbers of people are (1) racism and (2) wildfire.
You sometimes always learn technology under pressure.
My live videos got a lot clearer once the city installed fiber optic.
Green screen is a bad choice for a weaving program.
On Change the Shed on December 7 and 14, 2022, I wove a gnome. If you’d like to make your own version, grab a pencil, decide what size you want to weave it, and join me!
You can watch the Change the Shed episodes HERE and HERE. I talked some about why I designed it the way I did in that first video broadcast on December 7th.
A gnome is a mythical creature (they aren’t real, right?). As such, you can be as creative as you’d like in designing yours. Most gnomes I’ve seen have pointy hats and round, squatty bodies. It is easy to suggest a gnome while leaving out many physiological details such as hands, eyes, and other appendages. It is a great holiday project for tapestry weaving because you can make it pretty simple.
Like a dog alerting to the small of cooking sausage, I noticed a loom I hadn’t seen before on the table of one of my students while teaching at SOAR. It turns out it was made by one of my favorite small loom makers, Janet Fox of Handywomanshop.com, but I had never seen one in person.
My backpacking loom was made by Jim Hokett and it is the lightest loom I can find that will allow me to weave small tapestries at 12 epi when hiking. Of course for backpacking I need something that is not only very light, but also very small but sturdy so I don’t break it in my backpack. Since Jim retired in 2019 I’ve been looking for a replacement, worried about the day that I’d lose or break his loom dropping it somewhere in the backcountry. When I picked up Emma’s loom at SOAR, I knew I’d found what I was looking for.
After teaching a retreat in Taos a few weeks ago I was able to go home to Gallup for Thanksgiving. I love returning home to the brilliant sunshine and the mesas and red rocks of my western New Mexico home town. I did some walking on the desert, a little weaving on a project I can’t show you yet, and had fun relaxing with my family. Below are a few snapshots of my southwestern wander.
On Fyber Monday, November 28th, 2022, all of my online courses are on sale. This happens just once a year.
The Monday after Thanksgiving weekend in the USA has been deemed “Cyber Monday.” It is a day for businesses to sell digital products. Though I care not for holiday hype, I do want to offer at least one opportunity during the holidays for people to purchase my online courses at a discount.
I have dubbed this day “Fyber Monday.” All of my online courses are on sale. And yes, you can purchase more than one! Treat yourself, or give a gift. Gift certificates for all of my courses can be found in my shop HERE with discount included.
I have courses for beginner and intermediate weavers in technique, a course about four-selvedge warping that features the marvelous Sarah C. Swett, a course teaching you to dye your own yarn, and a couple design courses.
