Home a week today after wonderful retreat at Lillian Smith Center

I can hardly believe a week has passed since I left the retreat at the Lillian Smith Center!  The evening before I left, the directors invited Martha (who was also at the retreat and in the cottage next door to mine) and I over.  A couple of photos show just a little of the extensive library of Lillian Smith:

Earlier in the day before I left I worked quite a bit on the kudzu leaf and seedpod tapestry... then got the loom prepared to put into the car.  It gets placed between sheets of foam insulation board so that the rest of the things can be loaded on top.   You can see that quite a lot of things get loaded on top!  Here's the car on Saturday morning as I was just about finished with packing it up...

I got back home on Saturday afternoon, unloaded things both at the studio and the house.  Laundry was the first thing to do--that took up most of the rest of the day.  I spent the next day unpacking, arranging studio things, and catching up on the missing days of the tapestry diary.

  

I wove strips of poster board into the missing weeks, three strips per week with half-hitches and a bit of weaving of scrap wool at the top of each week's section.  These strips will be pulled out at the end of the year.

I also started another daily weaving while I was at the retreat.  I had a frame loom with me that was already warped so on July 1 I decided to begin a month-long weaving although doing it a bit differently than the one I did in May of 2008.  I'm tempted to take that small loom with me to New Mexico next week when I go for ATA events--but will resist.  I'll deal with the missing days when I return on the small loom, probably in a different way than I'm doing for the year-long piece.






Here's the month of July tapestry on the 16th.

Back at home this week I'm working on finishing the earlier kudzu tapestry--I want to have it ready to take to Penland with me when I go there for my teaching stint next month: 

And I'm also progressing well on the kudzu leaves and seedpod tapestry that will be my donation to the Blue Ridge Fiber Show raffle.  I'd like to also have it with me at Penland, either as a completed piece or one I can use to demonstrate a finishing procedure:

I'm 3" from the top at the highest point, about 7 " at the lowest.  I should be weaving right now!  However,  I wanted to make my final posting about the Lillian Smith Center experience within a week of my return home.  What a magical time!  I hope I'll be there again before too many more years pass.