• Actually, I’ve gotten about an inch farther than this, but I don’t have my camera with me.

    Really loving getting into this part of it. For the dark area on the right, I split the navy and dark teal yarns (each has five strands) and wove them together. I thought about twisting them but this is giving me exactly the effect I wanted.

    The plan is to go to Lake Waccamaw today and spend a couple of days boxing up my mother’s art supplies and art books and weaving tapestry on the back screened porch at my cousin’s house. Maybe trying out the indigo crystal dyeing kit if the midges aren’t bad at the lake. It has been a very stressful week and I could use a break before the construction begins on our new bathroom.

  • I’ve gotten about another inch done on the tapestry. The lower part will have more blocks of solid color, but as I get higher, there will be more color mixing such as in this detail:

    That is where the sacking needle comes in handy.

    I think that the solid chunks of color near the bottom will help balance the large dark areas that will be near the top.

    I’m taking Jude Hill‘s Considering Weave class online this summer. Jude has the only online art classes that I can actually get all the way through. I’ve subscribed to several of them, and I take lots of time to do them, which means I am normally way behind the others in the class and I don’t comment much. That’s okay because one of the reasons I do visual art is because I get tired of words.

    She asked us to consider different things that can be used as looms. I admired another artist, Linda, who posted photos of her birch bark weavings. On my way to work yesterday I found a piece of sycamore bark with three small holes in it. I carefully cut out another hole to match and poked a few needle holes and started playing with it. Oh, it was such a big old messy spider web of silk thread. Then it wanted to be an eye, so I let it.


    It’s sitting atop one of the cloth weavings I’ve been working on from an earlier class of Jude’s.

  • I’m calling it “98% Water” for now.

    The light green band at the bottom is meant to be turned back for a hem or stretched to the back if I decided to mount this on canvas stretchers. It was the color that I began with for the teal color and realized that it was entirely too light to contrast with the light pinkish color. The pink is actually a very light lavender but it looks pink when combined with the other colors.

    I couldn’t get my energy up for dyeing and my local yarn shop did not have all the colors I needed, so I found what I needed at Webs online. I’m using the 4-ply mercerized Tahki Cotton Classic that I love. So soft, and I can pull it apart for plying colors together or for smaller wefts.

    Of course, as soon as the order shipped I found the perfect color for the medium teal – some yarn I dyed umpteen years ago with that subtly mottled coloring that makes interesting streaks as I weave. I think that I have enough of it but if it looks like I will run out I’ll start working the commercially dyed medium teal in there to make a transition.

    Traditionally, tapestry is woven with wool but I love the sheen of mercerized cotton for this project.

    Here’s Pablocito being reasonably well behaved, and the design and cartoon that I posted a few weeks ago. As you can see I’m not using anything expensive or fancy, just four strips of wood with nails going across the top and bottom. I use a sacking needle instead of bobbins, and sometimes I only use my fingers. The taut warp sounds like bass guitar strings sometimes. I like that.

  • We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

    (In memory of Terrilynn, who posted this on her blog every July 4.)

  • This rainbow appeared at the end of a very rainy day and lasted for at least twenty minutes. I cried looking at it, hoping that it was a sign from Mama that everything would be okay. I had asked her for one.

    My brother and my “other brother” grilled hamburgers and hot dogs.

    My grand-nephew Jake has nearly tamed Bill the duck. Agnes is his mate and is usually on her nest. When she gets off her nest to flirt with other mallards, he chases her back to the nest. When someone feeds Agnes, Bill will stand back and let her eat her fill before he joins in. She will stand on Jake’s feet and jump up to eat out of his hand.

    These are the “Odd Ducks.” The black one appears to have a pearl necklace on when viewed from the other side. There is a Peking duck in another large group that mates with the mallards. I’m guessing that she might be the mother of the tan and white duck. I love it that these outsiders banned together. They are very shy with humans around.

    I became intrigued with the wiggly reflections of the pier and boathouse next door.

    Jake found an awesome piece of driftwood at the bottom of the lake.

  • I feel about as down today as I have yet. I’m alone in the office, with hardly anyone else in this wing of the building, playing upbeat music, trying to stay distracted. I’m not surprised but I hope to get back to numbness soon.

    Last night I was somewhat congested and woke up feeling like I couldn’t get enough oxygen. Even though I confirmed that one nostril was clogged and I could breathe just fine out of my other nostril and mouth, I started down the anxiety road. An allergy med soon cleared up my sinuses but by that time I was worrying over whether I had heart problems.

    This is typical of those of us who have panic/anxiety disorders. Panic attacks feel very much like heart attacks, beginning with chest tightness, breathing difficulty, dizziness, sweating and then get worse as we begin to worry about whether it is a heart attack this time. Even writing about it is about to set me off again.

    I was getting much better but now that my mother died of a heart attack (albeit at 90 years old) and my blood test earlier that week showed that my cholesterol is still on the high side and my glucose has reached the point that I have to cut down on sugar and I gained eight pounds this year and there are about a million things that I have to think about…well.

    Anyway, I’m not in a good mood. It’s pretty doggone bad, actually. Here’s hoping that I don’t have a heart attack while convincing myself that it is “only” a panic attack. Again.

    (Oh. And the heat index is 111F this afternoon. So there will be no gardening therapy. Tonight’s activities will feature laundry and Xanax, not particularly in that order.)

  • Somehow I left these out of my post yesterday and they were the best ones! The pair is printed from plum leaves.

  • I decided to try my hand at dyeing with natural indigo powder this weekend since I missed my weeklong workshop at Arrowmont where I would have dyed with a fresh (fermented) indigo vat. Following instructions on the Dharma Trading website, I soaked the natural indigo powder overnight and ground it in a blender. I added soda ash because I’m not interested in playing with lye. I used all the thiourea dioxide I had and tried my best to introduce as little oxygen as possible to the pot, but I still had a deep blue dyebath. I decided that I might as well try it anyway.

    It did not work at all – the dye oxidized in the pot and it all washed out of the skeins. There could have been several reasons I couldn’t keep the extra oxygen out of the pot, one is that our tap water has been cloudy for the past few days. However, I did learn from the experience. I won’t even try to dye in a deep blue indigo vat again – it was a waste of time having to wash out all the skeins and equipment. The good thing is that the skeins are ready to be mordanted and dyed in another dyepot.

    Because I am eager to start on my new tapestry, I’m going to use my Procion dyes. I know how to use them. Later I will try again with pre-reduced indigo crystals.

    Since I am not to let a hot pot of old dye go to waste, I boiled a bundle of glossy photo papers layered with leaves and bound between ceramic tiles at the bottom of what was left in the indigo solution and got some great results. I learned this method from Marilyn Stephens at Interlaced-Textile Arts. I would not have considered using this photo paper for plant prints, but it was bought long ago and gathering dust and probably would not have ever been used. These are all plants that I pass on my walk to work twice a day. I’m not sure whether the indigo will rub off the paper or not, but here are the photos.

  • As promised, here is the audio link to my friend JoJo Hammond’s ReverbNation page, which has the song that she played at my mother’s memorial service. She composed it on the morning of the service, inspired by my mother’s last words.

    I Hope You Have a Good Life by JoJo Hammond

  • My mother, Willye Kate Parham, passed away on June 15, 2014. She was 90 years young. I haven’t known how to post it but I’ve written about her so much here that I thought I should announce it. She left us quickly and peacefully in the hospital at Chapel Hill after a procedure the night before to drain some fluid from around her kidney. She seemed to be fine and the doctors were not overly concerned about the procedure being risky, but it had to be done. The next morning she told the nurses that she had chest pains, then as a nurse held her hand, she said, “I hope you have a good life,” and she passed away.

    Here is one of my favorite photos of her from just a few years ago, being a farmer:

    Being an award-winning artist:

    Being a goof:

    Being elegant:

    Being a bathing beauty:

    Being flat-out gorgeous:

    Being a daughter:

    Being a wife:

    Being a friend:

    Being a sister:

    Being an aunt:

    Being a cousin (and Grace is the other bathing beauty in the photo above):


    Being a Mama and Mom-mo:

    My childhood and adulthood friend, JoJo Hammond (aka Lisa Jo Spivey) sang this song that she composed for her the morning of her funeral at the memorial service. She is working on making a video, which I will post when it is available. Here are the lyrics:

    The thing I remember the most
    Is her pretty little smile.
    She’s been in my life
    since I was a child.
    She loved me just as I am
    She was a good wife, mother and friend
    someone told me the last words she said

    I hope you have a good life
    Sunny days, starry nights
    The one you love by your side
    Just have a good life
    Love your neighbor, be his friend
    Walk an extra mile with him
    I hope you have a good life.

    As long as I can remember
    Her daughter’s been my friend
    She’s been there for me
    Through thick and thin
    I can see her Mama’s eyes
    and that pretty little smile
    I know just like her
    She goes that extra mile

    I hope you have a good life
    Sunny days, starry nights
    The one you love by your side
    Just live a good life
    Love your neighbor
    Be his friend
    Walk an extra mile with him
    I hope you have a good life

    She lived one of the best lives I can possibly think of, and I have been privileged to be her daughter and inherit her genes.