tapestry – Page 14

>Wedding Shower

June 13, 2008 | Leave a Comment

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I finished the cover kimono from Knit Kimono in time to wear to my future dil’s shower tomorrow. I’m not happy with my photos, but I’ll try again. Bob and I are still hurtling ourselves around, and I had to find the camera in his packed bags in order to take this photo! I’ll be camera-less for the weekend….

He’ll be sailing in the Shelter Island area of Long Island, and I’ll be on the Connecticut River at the shower and then visiting my sister. Hopefully we’ll be buying a flower girl dress this weekend! Poor mother of the groom is going to be the last one to get her dress!

Tapestry is beginning to seem like something I used to do. I’ve started a new warp for a small sample project while I have two larger projects in various stages of woven incompletion (my neglected historical piece and ‘Handsome Rob’), and there’s a Hudson River design that is dying to get out of my head onto some paper. sigh…..

My weld is huge, and I’m ready to dye. I’ve got some handspun single-ply Romney for tapestry, as well as some commercial merino/mohair and some commercial wool, both of which I’d probably use for knitting. All I need is some time at home!

My dog Riptide continues to take up much of my time on weekdays. He’s not failing yet, but he needs to be monitored fairly regularly to see if his liver function can improve enough to get him back on his chemo therapy schedule. If he doesn’t improve soon it will become too late to accept him back into the program. It’s a clinical trial being done by Abbott Labs. He’s done very well on it for nine months before chemicals began to build up in his liver. He still acts perfectly healthy, although a bit more subdued than he was before getting lymphoma.

On that note….I have to get ready to take him for his blood work….

>Found Time

June 8, 2008 | Leave a Comment

>It feels like I haven’t had a moment for anything spontaneous in months. I’ve done lots of outrageously wonderful and fun things lately, but it’s been all pre-scheduled and hurry, hurry, hurry! This weekend was to be no exception. It’s both my 31st wedding anniversary and my husband’s birthday. We had family come down for CT to have dinner Friday, and it was wonderful to sit in the back garden among the foxglove, peonies, iris and cranesbill as the evening turned to night.

To celebrate our anniversary, we spent Saturday at the Cloisters as you’ll see below. It was ‘garden days’ with special tours planned every hour, some focusing on medicinal plants, plants for scent, and general tours. We arrived in time for one of the general tours, which included a stop inside in the room with the ‘Hunt for the Unicorn’ tapestry series. (I’d already gone in there to make sure I had my own visit since I never go to the Cloisters without visiting the tapestries!) I had not expected the tapestries to be included in a garden tour, and it was a pleasant surprise! The docent did an excellent job talking about the works. Everything she said about tapestry weaving was very accurate, although not terribly detailed (after all this was a garden tour), and she did a very credible job talking about the plants depicted in the tapestries and the sacred/secular underlying meaning of unicorns in medieval lore. It was an unexpected highlight! We finished the day with dinner at our favorite restaurant, which just happens to be in our town!

Today I was busy making plans for the another round of relatives who were coming for lunch, when we realized that we’d all misunderstood each other about where lunch was taking place! I was waiting for them to arrive for lunch in the garden, and they were waiting for us to arrive at our typical half-way meeting place on the shore of Long Island sound in Rowayton. It was too late for either of us to jump in the car to get to each other, so I’ve got an unexpectedly free afternoon! The first thing that comes to mind is spinning! And secondly, doing a little research on how to use the weld I have flowering in the garden this year, and the woad seeds I’ve just managed to obtain (not willing to admit where I got them just yet…..)…..

So….without delaying anymore….I’m off to spin!

>New Ideas Brewing

December 19, 2007 | 2 Comments

>I’m feeling rather smug that the presents are wrapped and the house is decorated. After my annual panic about whether I remembered everyone on my list, whether have I been fair with everyone, and whether are there enough goodies for the stockings, I am pleased to report all is well and I’ll be sleeping soundly for the next few nights!

So that gives my mind time to pursue other tasks, like a lineup of possible future projects. There are a lot of wonderful shots of desert in Nevada from our recent trip. There is a large pile of linen tow singles in luscious colors waiting to become dishtowels. There is a little warp left on a Theo Moorman project that wants to become a stylized image of sunflowers. There is a warp on my table loom waiting to become a silk scarf in my own design network twill (from aBonnie Innouye class last fall). So what am I doing HERE at the computer???

>Here’s Buddha

November 7, 2007 | 1 Comment

Here’s Buddha, not quite ready for prime time. I took a load of pictures of him today and didn’t get a good one yet. I’ll keep tweaking and replace this when I have a better one. Well, with help from my camera savvy husband, here’s a better photo.

My younger son called today in a bit of a funk. A friend of his from school was walking home to her off-campus apartment last night when she was hit by a car. He doesn’t know too much except that she had head injury with internal bleeding and needed surgery. She’s a physics major, like Chris, and this is her senior year also. Chris does problem sets with her and a few other students in the library each week. I hope she will recover. I can’t get her off my mind…. If you see this please say a prayer for her. Her name is Sarah.

>Another visit to Tapestry Exhibit

November 3, 2007 | Leave a Comment

>I managed to get another visit to the exhibit. I was hoping to walk through backwards, but I was with my husband who didn’t want to see it out of order. He can certainly dash through an exhibit when it’s not to his interest. I always feel I have to at least read all the plaquards hoping to learn something!
I’ve got pictures from the website, but none of my own. Of course my own would be quite different as I’d focus on what appealed to me. I loved one of the early works of a naval battle in the Netherlands. If I could weave just a small section of water I would be immensely pleased with myself! I’m so sorry I can’t show a detail of the water….believe it or not this is a detail even though not as tight as I would have done!

This is another detail from a much more involved work. These two men are in the foreground and so dramatic. I could barely walk away from this piece!

And this is one of my favorites. The apostles and Jesus are so sensitively portrayed, their reflections in the water are incredible, and the birds in the foreground are beautiful. The water is beautiful too.
An earlier version of this piece was in the Renaissance exhibit a couple years ago. I’d love to be able to compare the two pieces. I don’t think the earlier piece had such an elaborate border, and perhaps no border at all. But the central image seems very much like this one.