Tapestry Diary for 2013--six months completed, six month to go!

I've been moving ahead, day by day, with my tapestry diary for this year.  It's the fifth full year that I've worked on this concept, one that I began by doing one month in 2008 to see if I had the discipline to do a discrete bit of tapestry weaving each and every day.

Other artists do daily work, usually small and possibly theme-related.  Most that I've been able to discover through web searching have been artists who work either in drawing or painting.  But there's at least one other weaver who's been doing daily weaving for quite a number of years:  Geri Forkner.  I didn't know that when I began my journey in this process but would someday like to be able to exhibit some of my year long pieces with her yearly works.

Several of the tapestry weavers who I know also began the process of keeping an ongoing tapestry with each day (or sometimes each week or each month) being given a separate bit of concentration.  Jan Austin and Janette Meetze are two of those who've also written about their work on their blogs.   It's interesting when I come across mention of "tapestry diary" work on someone's blog or in other web places... as far as I know, I first began to use that term around about 2010, maybe even in 2009 when I did the first full year.  Has this become a mini-meme??

So, here's where I am now--the whole year, so far, unrolled from the cloth beam to take a look at what's happened in the past six months.  The weft colors are selected from dye samples made several years ago.  The areas of tan sprinkled throughout are of 10/3 linen, same as I'm using for the warp.  I weave the linen when I return from being out of town, covering the same amount of area that I would have when weaving each day.

For those who don'e weave, a bit of explanation here:  the white canvas that you see called an apron, and that's attached to the loom's cloth beam.  There is a metal bar lashed to the apron that the warp ends are tied onto to in preparation for weaving to start.  As the cloth grows, the apron is rolled up onto the beam, then the tapestry rolls up and onto itself as it becomes longer.  Weavers typically don't unroll cloth from the beam before finishing but if one is careful when re-rolling, it can be done successfully without causing tension changes in the warp.  I wanted to have an idea of the overall look of this year's tapestry diary as it ended the 1/2 way mark.

Here's a detail showing all of June and a few days of May:

I've written about my past tapestry diaries in several posts.  Here are a few of the links to those, if you're curious:

http://tapestry13.blogspot.com/2011/12/tapestry-diary-year-three-is-completed.html

http://tapestry13.blogspot.com/2012/12/2012-tapestry-diary-is-nearing-end.html

I don't have a good photo of the entire 2012 tapestry diary so there is only a detail in the post.  Each year I've tried something different with the approach, making each day distinct and separate from other days and yet having some coherence in design.  It's a wonderful challenge and one I continue to enjoy, even five years into it.  I'm sure I could continue to find variations of ways to approach this forever!  And I hope I'll have at least a few more years to explore the variations.