Lots of loose ends

I'm in the winter stewing mode... meaning I don't have a tapestry underway (other than my tapestry diary and other assorted "ghosts" on small frame looms).  I've been thinking, writing about ideas, talking about possible directions with others, and generally feeling like the cartoon roadrunner when he was spinning his legs around about to go zooming forward.

When I'm stewing this way ideas are often under the surface.  Sometimes, if I'm lucky, they'll bubble up and a few began to break the surface this morning.  I grabbed out some sketchbooks that I knew held some of the images I believe I want to work with.  In one of them I found notes I'd made from Theo Moorman's book, Weaving as an Art Form.


One of the comments from page 53 of her book I noted near the bottom of the sketchbook page, having to do with limiting one's use of photographs:  "The impact of our eye can never be so strong as when we observe the actual object.... When we try to record the response in the form of a sketch, we instinctively select the salient points and omit others which have no place in our theme."


I'm keeping that in mind as I move though the next process of developing design options for the next large tapestry.  However, I have used photography to capture drawings from my sketch book and then, with Photoshop, I've begun a process of alteration from the originals.  When I'm further along I'll begin to post about these stages of the process.  I have two looms ready to go, one with a 24" wide width and the other with a width of 42" -- both have different setts.  The 24" width is sett at 8 epi and the 42" is at 6 epi.  Which loom I'll use for the weaving will partly be determined by how detailed the design will be.

In another direction--I picked up copies of Stonepile Writers' Anthology today.  It was recently published by the University Press of North Georgia.  A photograph I'd taken last summer was selected as the cover illustration.  A couple of my poems were also chosen for the publication.  I was quite thrilled to learn about the photo selection--I think that meant as much to me, if not more, than having the poems selected.  After all... the visual side of me is the real me; the writer side is my doppelganger.