tapestry – Page 7

On the Road Again….

January 29, 2014 | Leave a Comment

We have slipped our land moorings and are on the road to our vagabond life on Pandora. I will miss my looms over the next few months, but I’ve brought some fun projects to keep me company….knitting (of course!), and this time some embroidery and a small tapestry loom. I’m intrigued with this image, and hope to play with it a bit. It will give me lots of practice with circles, won’t it? Circles are considered the hardest shape to weave…..I’ll deliberate on that while I weave a few dozen of them!

As you can imagine I’ve brought just about every color imaginable….small loom, big bin of yarn. I really wanted to design something with minimal colors, but my time was spent elsewhere over the past few months….and I’ve always been a sucker for color! It has been such a hectic fall and winter, and I have struggled to find a balance between weaving and designing while also enjoying the holidays and spending precious time with my husband’s parents during our last wonderful month’s with Bob’s dad. It was a tremendously moving time for both Bob and me. One week ago we moved Bob’s mother to her new assisted living facility, into a one bedroom apartment with magificent views of Long Island Sound. It was one of those days with gale force winter winds, and the views of the Sound were quite dramatic. She likes it! Her belongings look very pretty in her new place, and it already has a nice sense of home. On Saturday she told Bob that he has taken wonderful care of her since his father died, that she loves her new place, and that she felt he should take a well deserved, long vacation. So, although we hated to leave her so soon after such big changes in her life, we have hit the road for Florida where our boat Pandora has been waiting for us since November. Honestly, I was in no big hurry to return. I have grown quite complacent to be home in our quiet little town on the Connecticut River, even with the single digit temperatures and the snow. I got a fair amount of work done over the summer, and this most recent project is finished pretty much to my liking. Surprisingly, the first painted warp is the one I prefer. I could not have known this until I did the second one. I have made two braids that the piece will hang from, and I am happy with them as well.

Here is a detail of the braid….a fiddly process of making a tiny braid in the middle of the strands of silk, and then closing the braid into a loop and adding in more silk to continue with a bigger braid.

We have rushed down the East Coast in order to stay ahead of the ice and snow that has shut down Georgia and the Carolinas. We spent a wonderful night with Rob and Kandice in Baltimore before we hightailed it for Florida. We are in St. Augustine now, and although it is a nippy 40 degrees F with wind and drizzle, we don’t dare complain!

We are staying in this pretty little inn right in the historic district. Our balcony overlooks the Lightner Museum. We managed to sit out and enjoy the view for a few minutes before the chill drove us back inside. Here is a shot of our room with the railing outside of the large window and the little balcony for sitting just off to the right of it.

I am looking forward to dinner in the cozy, intimate dining room later today. Yesterday we enjoyed a glass of wine in the bar. A cocktail in the evening and a full breakfast in the mornings comes with the room.

Stocking up on a few luxuries for our time onboard, like blood orange infused olive oil and some good books from the used book shop!

Later we will visit the Lightner Museum and tomorrow we will do a little more touring before heading down to Ft. Pierce where Pandora awaits.

Weaving Adventures

December 3, 2013 | 4 Comments

I’ve neglected mentioning some of the events that have inspired me this fall. First would be the 18th century tapestry series titled “Weaving the Myth of Psyche” on display at the Wadsworth Atheneum.

There are some stunning images in these tapestries. Look at this donkey….

And the spinner….

And Cupid’s wing….isn’t that something? I am going to have some fun with this image!

The museum asked for some guild members to demonstrate tapestry that day, and three of us participated. Here one guild member is luring in the children with her spinning.

A couple of weeks later, the state guild meeting featured the boundweave work of Rebecca Arkenberg, called “Tales from the Loom.” Her boundweave figures are whimsical and creative, and it is obvious she is having a great time combining boundweave with a sense of humor. She said that people often can’t see what she is portraying, and she’s learned to let that go and just enjoy herself. What terrific advice!

Rebecca has a great knack for reducing world wide cultural images to the barest essentials.

This one is particularly fun! Navajo women, rugs, and Churro sheep!

And how about bunnies with angora tails sitting in rows of carrots and beets?

Cat and mouse….

A highlander in kilt!

The Scarlet Letter….

I had so much fun at this guild meeting and came away buoyed with ideas for returning to my own boundweave project that has been neglected for some time now!

Thanksgiving

December 1, 2013 | Leave a Comment

It wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without some outdoor time, walking in the woods, putting the garden to bed, and (hopefully) having bulbs already planted. This is not the first time I’ve posted photos of these two lovely structures. There is moss growing on the cedar shakes of this pretty barn. I did not catch the light properly because (in real life) the moss was glowing vivid green in the soft light.

I can’t seem to walk by this house without taking yet another photo of it. It was a mostly grey holiday weekend, rainy and raw, but I seem to love the scenery along this walk in almost any weather.

The highlight of our walk yesterday was seeing the beaver that has caused so much destruction along the banks of this stream! He has not left a single tree untouched….busy guy! I was thrilled to see him, although I know you probably won’t! He reall is there, right in the center of the photo, just under the branches with the green leaves! Trust me!

Moss and lichen on rocks. Someday I’ll get just the right photo to begin a tapestry cartoon. This is intriguing, but the light is not quite what I saw yesterday.

At home I am re-mounting my Flax Spinner and getting a new silk warp ready for painting.

The Wednesday Group

October 7, 2013 | 2 Comments

A perfect first week of October…. it started with the beautiful drive to Archie Brennan and Susan Martin Maffei’s studio along the Hudson River. The drive takes me north into Massachusetts and then west through the Berkshires. And although it was barely October the color was already reaching peak along parts of this drive! This month the Wednesday Group was quite large, 10 of us in all. That can be a challenging number to fit into Archie and Susan’s studio, large as it is! They have a generous enclosed porch that overlooks the Hudson, probably 40′ long with a wall of windows along that whole length. The views are amazing and distracting! Large ships bearing gravel power by throughout the day and night, and there is pleasure boat traffic as well.

A couple of us are very lucky to stay right nearby at the house of a friend. Doing this means we get to have home cooked meals at night and can bring homemade lunches to class. We eat like royalty and enjoy evenings sitting out on the terrace watching life on the river amongst the herb garden and fruit trees. This week the weather was warm and one evening, while having wine and cheese on the terrace we were entertained (and I was amazed!) by the loon-like call of a screech owl…..over and over… it was idyllic!

In spite of our numbers in class, we all seem to have gotten some good work done this month. It’s great to be together, and a larger group ensures that there is plenty of inspiration and good vibes flowing. I came home ready to get down to work!

….but WHAT work? I am working on a sample for some lengthy text, an excerpt from the Robert Frost poem, “Mowing.” This poem ends with: The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.

And I’m thinking about a photographic image that Christopher took from the passenger seat of our new car while facing backwards. The photo was taken at dusk with with the fading light in the distance while cars are zooming along into the night, away from the light. The image has a lot of motion and light and dark in it….it intrigues me.

Bucket of Gold

September 25, 2013 | Leave a Comment

Summer has ended with such glorious days! Along my daily walk the views seem extra lovely, with dappled light coming through the canopy of tall trees, playing on the thick undergrowth of fern. The light is getting long so it is particularly nice in the morning and late afternoon. The goldenrod is glowing along the roadside…

And goldenrod is just what I need to donate to my guild’s annual natural dye day. Bob came along with me to tote the large shopping bag as we both cut flowers. I was aiming for two pounds, but before we knew it we had four!I sat on the front porch to cut the flowers into smaller bits. The smell of cut goldenrod is delightful!….green and sweet/spicy!

I never get tired of seeing the houses along this walk. I like to imagine how I’d live in each of these houses, where I’d put my looms, how I’d make some gardens!

On the last full weekend in summer we finally had our first sail since returning home to New England. We sailed down the Connecticut River, then spent a night at Fisher’s Island, then four days in Newport. It’s been decades since either of us have toured any of the mansions. We chose The Elms, which is considerably smaller than either The Breakers or Marble House but still quite impressive. You can lunch in the carriage house. The ambience is great, but the food not so much, so we opted to take a picnic to a nearby park.

I found a mansion that is just my size! Unfortunately, it is not for sale… I can just imagine myself weaving on that upper floor…

We walked along the cliffwalk and along the harbor, where we were anchored. We volunteered for few hours at the annual Newport Boat Show which gave us free admittance to all the exhibits. Bob loved that!

Back at home, I am settling in to the first week of autumn. My goldenrod dyebath is ready, my yarns are mordanted. I’ve got a year old indigo vat that I’d like to reconstitute, and I’ve got fresh indigo ready to harvest. That will be a new process for me! I have a couple of tapestry designs swirling around my brain. Bob is gathering firewood, and I am gathering apples. I love the change of seasons!

Our son Rob visited over the weekend and saw his finished portrait for the first time.

Back at my looms, I am weaving a bit text and making good progress on the final painted warp. It’s time to think about painting another warp!