Tapestry progress

The new tapestry is growing well now. I'm working in the tree and that gives me a great deal of pleasure to make color decisions with each change of value. Since I'm using 5 strands of wool, three thicker and two thin, I can create interesting variations with the yarns. I really like the effect of the thin in combination with the thicker Vevgarn since it doesn't show up in a consistent way--sometimes it's buried beneath the heavier yarn, other times it peeks out, and it can also seem to be the dominant effect in the bead of the weave.

It seems almost like drawing with Prismacolor pencils.

I tried out the movie feature on my digital camera the other day as I wove. I put the camera on the tripod and turned the camera on, sat down at the loom and started weaving. The still shot of me weaving here is the view of the movie. I wove to the end of the bobbin--which took me through the blue shape at the left and then turned off the camera. When I downloaded the file, it was quite large (600+M) so burned a DVD and deleted the file from my Mac's hard drive. This is only my second experience in using the movie feature of my camera and it was fun!

I realized, as I played back the video, that this was the first time I've seen myself weaving tapestry! Of course I'm watching what my hands are doing as I'm weaving but not really seeing an overview of the process. It was interesting to see that the movements of my hands are rhythmic, I am moving along at a steady (although not speedy) pace, I seem to be making corrections and decisions as I work...all of those things are done automatically as I weave but seeing them happen was just fascinating.

My husband and I watched me weave for the 10 minutes of the clip...about as much fun as watching grass grow for some folks, I know, but for us it was quite interesting. In fact, even though we've been married for 25 years this spring, he said he'd never really watched me weaving tapestry before! That was quite amazing to me but, then again...it's not really a spectator sport, is it?! Of course, he's seen me weaving--but usually at demonstrations where I'm also talking to folks, showing them what I'm doing. What he meant was that I was simply engaged in what I do for several hours daily...as if there was no one else around and I was just working (and, indeed, that's what was going on!).


He made a comment that someone purchasing a tapestry might like to have a copy of the weaving process... interesting concept and I'm going to think about that more.

Someone recently mentioned the YouTube of Ibolya Hegyi showing her weaving tapestry and discussing her work. It was quite a treat to see what she was doing...how quickly she was weaving and the scale of the tapestry--quite large, the warps were very small, the weft bundles of tiny yarns blended together.

Her work is very ethereal. Her tapestries have been in most (maybe all) of the ATB exhibits and I've had the opportunity to actually see several of them. Such beautiful tapestries!