slowly she turned

First, here’s my current tapestry project. I’m still musing over a title because it is truly abstract. What I’ve noticed is that the lines and shapes have taken on lives of their own in my mind. Right now I’m leaning toward “Fuzzy Dreams.”

The inspiration and cartoon is a painting I did in a mark making exercise with Jill Berry. I’ve had this painting on my bedroom closet door for a long time – this is often an incubation space for me. I took it down because I’m planning to get rid of those squeaky difficult metal doors, and I tore it. Later I thought, “I could weave this with the handspun naturally dyed wool singles that somebody gave me long ago.” So it began, although I am using natural linen for the border and black linen for the lines and dots, along with a funky synthetic(?) mix that Betty gave me.

I didn’t like the left top corner so I revised the design when I got above that shooting star of happiness through the middle.

The tapestry weather diary for 2025 is finished except for a small white linen hem I will weave at the top. This is the fourth panel of the year, showing September 1 through December 31, 2025. The brown border is black walnut dyed wool that I dyed many moons ago. The first column represents the high temperature of that day. In the middle, the weather, along with information of where I was during that time. Blue is generally sunny, no rain, and gray is overcast. Pick and pick gray and blue is rain, pick and pick gray and white is snow. We went to Asheville early on, then I went to Wildacres, Little Switzerland (where we saw a rainbow), and Lake Waccamaw just before Christmas. The third column is the low temperature of the day. The coldest day of the year hit 13 F in Greensboro, just before I went to the lake.

Now, a decision needs to be made. Will I weave another tapestry diary this year? I rather liked the weather prompt, because I’m a bit of a weather junkie. It comes from being a farmer’s daughter. I spent last night re-reading Tommye Scanlin’s Marking Time with Fabric and Thread, which is a remarkable book for any fiber artist. My brain got scrambled with too many ideas! I’m leaning towards doing a much smaller format with the same weather coding, but she also suggests an exercise in which you roll dice to determine the colors and shape of the day’s entry. I like that too. The method for most people and definitely for me is to reduce decision making from the get-go on these, because the idea is to get you rolling on your other weaving projects. I made that mistake on my tapestry diary in 2018, which I finally abandoned.

Whatever I decide to do, I want to make it smaller and quicker and portable because I want to focus on designing and weaving other tapestries I have in my head. I’m also considering doing stitch meditations again and weaving strips of cloth.

On Monday, I start working for the robot overlords on a new part-time temp project. I never know exactly what it will be before I begin, but I think this might be a “test” test with a different grading scale. If that’s the case, I may not have to train and take the qualifying tests. Either way, it will be good to have the paycheck, because if I go to Ireland in mid July, I will have to pay for it upfront. I’ve already bought trip insurance that is for cancel for any reason. I learned that the hard way in 2020. I’ve also stocked up on eye drops and acetaminophen for the computer work. There will probably be more work for me in April.

Other than that, I am waiting to hear whether I get a residency at Wildacres to make other plans. I am not getting my hopes up like I did for the JCCFS scholarship. I’ve been encouraged to apply for scholarships so many times, but I’m disappointed enough with JCCFS that after three strikes I’m not sure I’ll try any more. And I saw that they were still taking applications after I was turned down, so…clearly either my work is not their cup of tea or they are looking for a different demographic group. I hope that I’ll get to go back there one day, but it won’t be this year. My friend who I’ve attended Focus on Book Arts with in Oregon several times in pre-pandemic days wants me to go back with her in June, which of course I’d love to do, but that’s a no. Maybe next time. I miss Oregon and at one time I really wanted to move there. I’ll probably do at least one of the fiber retreats at Big Lynn Lodge, and definitely Edwina’s fiber retreat at Wildacres if that happens, and I’ll consider the Nature Printing Society retreat which they are having at Wildacres for the second year in a row. I canceled that last year. We’ll just have to see how much money I can make for fun stuff in the first half of the year.

I joined Triangle Weavers’ Guild in Durham, so there is lots of activity going on with them, including a Fiber Explorations study group that I joined in November. Tapestry Weavers South, sadly, is disbanding and won’t have another TWS retreat.

In the meantime, I am loving being in my studio, and that’s a great thing. I fantasized for years about repairing that building and making it into my studio. Now I have it, and the home equity loan payment is the same as the rent I was paying in the downtown studio I tried last year.