slowly she turned

I knew that I needed some kind of daily art practice, but I am terrible at sticking to it. In 2018 I wove a tapestry diary for the first part of the year, which started as daily, then became weekly, and then monthly, before I finally gave up due to depression that summer. I had serious decision fatigue, for reasons I won’t go into here. Based on how much I enjoyed making a Tunisian crochet temperature based scarf in 2019, I decided that temperature and weather was the way to go with a tapestry diary this year. As a farmer’s daughter who was always expected to give my father the weather report when he came home in the evening (in the days when we had 2-3 TV channels in rural NC, no cable or Internet), I have always been fascinated with and attuned to the weather.

This month has been consumed with moving out from the studio downtown, moving stuff from the back building to the house, and in general, chores concerned with getting the back building repaired, cleaned, and turned into Slow Turn Studio. So I started the diary a bit late, but that’s okay. I’m not going to be OC about this thing. Now I am weaving the day’s weather data from the day before, measured at the airport at the Weather Underground website for consistency on the high and low temperatures. I use Weather Underground because it has a calendar of history data for some stations, and that’s handy when you need to catch up.

I noticed that in 2019 I used white for all temps under 30F degrees. Ha! This year I would have a LOT of white in the tapestry already if I had chosen that. My chart for this year is more complicated, because it is a diary as well as weather related, and I wanted to add more colors for the lower range of temperatures.

In general, the idea is to use the loose yarns in the box at the top of this post. Some are leftovers from past tapestries, others are old Paternayan crewel yarns from long long ago when I did needlepoint and embroidery, and came from my mother’s house. Some are dye samples or thrums (thread crumbs) given to me from other weavers. I’m going to use the colors in this box before I turn to my other tapestry yarns.

So here’s how this is set up: the first row is 2025 in Roman numerals. After that, the edges are zig-zaggy and represent the earth, with whatever browns I pull out of the box. I’m not going to try to have straight edges because I don’t want long slits and I want it to look more organic. The first column of colors represent the high temperature of the day, and the third column of colors represent the low temperature of the day. The middle column is more flexible, representing the weather or whatever else I might feel like popping in there. So far, except for 1/20/25 I have used the weather. “pnp” means pick and pick, a tapestry weaving technique that creates vertical lines.

There are three warps on this frame loom that are about six inches wide and the weavings will likely be around 28 inches long. We’ll see when we get there.

Each day is 6 passes of weft. I started out doing more, and quickly realized that I would not have enough room on this frame loom if I made the days larger than that, so in the beginning I unwove and rewove until I got my ideas in line with reality. It works out, because even if I’m left wanting to do more, I have gotten my motor running and I go on to do other things. Motivation is difficult for me right now and this is part of the value of having a small, doable practice to begin the day.

I shade the lines on the spreadsheet after I complete the weaving for clarity, especially when I was playing catch-up after a few days.

If I’m traveling, as I will be doing next week (to Tucson, yay!) I’m going to chart the weather where I am, not here at home. It’s not a data set, like the scarf was. It’s a diary.

Here is the tapestry diary up to 1/23/2025. I’m going to weave 1/24/2025 when I finish here, then I’m heading to the back studio to put down carpet tiles on that bare plywood floor. Soon I’ll have a space where I have room to work and play, with at least one large heavy work table. I am SO ready for a dedicated art space without the distractions of computer, housework, and cat. I hope it works!