Opened Etsy shop!

Thank you Jose Lopez for the beautiful photos!

It is amazing how much time and energy it takes to translate real into virtual.  Please check out the shop connectedthread.etsy.com. And check it again soon! There are more pieces woven and waiting to be photographed and talked about, but it all takes time...precious time when I could be weaving...

A piece of summer

,

Summer...a need for red that maybe is fusia. In the end....the cloth always speaks its own mind.  I dyed the warp, about 6 yards. I Wound it onto my copper loom, took it to town...wove.  Life and death happened. The cloth revealed itself In small sections each one as compelling as the section before.  The woven parts disapeared around the beam and remained memories as the unwoven warp presented itself. Falling in love again and again and again... New days new places, the tannery courtyard, a garden...

The End came before I expected it to...and all of the sudden I had plans. I could see the end. I would finish the very next day...but plans are not the same thing as life.  The end required patience.  It required fixing broken strings. It required breaks for conversations. It required going home.  It asked me to slow down and keep going.  

And this end seemed only to make room for begining again...

This time there are 12ish yards to dye...

The ending of summer

Warping the loom....for the second time....because when you build the loom without plans sometimes things need tweaking...maybe the break system needs to be finished before warping....just an idea...

And in the end it is beautifull and so compelling that no more pictures are taken and the weaving must commence...

And before you know it the first two yards are off the loom waiting to be finished, whispering about what they want to become.  I often have ideas before the cloth is done but the cloth itself usually has its own ideas about what it should become...  It is an unfolding of mystery.

And the next four yards await... To be woven on this finaly almost finished new incarnation of a very old table loom...I think this is the fourth incarnation.  At first she was a four harness table loom that belonged to Kathryn Courson who died in 1983 . She was a weaver and an art teacher.  After she died the loom sat in storage for about 30 years.  It then came to live with me.  The loom came apart and was reassembled as a four harness counterbalance floor loom with a big bulky stand.

 ....time passed I wove on her.  Built a two harness folding loom  and then a year ago decided that this loom must be rebuilt into a folding loom as well. But it wasn't to be that simple it must not be a counter balance...it must have a new harness hanging system with springs, that would allow one harness to sink evenly without lams.

 I don't even know what to call this kind of loom, but it seems to make a lovely shed. And I think she needs a name....

Almost summer, almost red

100 black, 120 color, 100 more???, 6 yards ish of warp

Endings make room for beginnings

End of 12 yard warp.  Lots of hand spun wool, spun on the drop spindle... I fall in love with every piece it seems.  

Sold the one that came before this one. Before I took a picture.  It was like the sun rising in a see of black,  a wild bit of color......no matter how fixed my idea may seem when I start weaving the piece always surprises me.  This surprise came in grey.

The scary parts often become the best parts

 I want them all to fly out into the world to far flung places and I want to wrap myself in it all! 

And the moon rose and cast a shadow and then the moon began to set...and it's the scary yellow that brings an extra breath of life and a good kind of vibrancy to the whole long thang.

This was just a nice moment.

The colors are not true in the picture... But it's ok , the way it all comes together is true but perhaps with alittle less contrast. The scary yellow lent itself to a vibrant turquoise.

Note- there are no pictures of the long tangled days of warping...sometimes that part is best left behind. A weekend not to be immortalized.

Technicolor nightmare

Lemon yellow nightmare. Fix? More indigo!  Green is better than a garish yellow.