A few more inches--but the end is near(er)

At this pace, I forecast another couple of weeks of weaving, followed by days of finishing detail work.

All in all it's just another stone in the wall...

... sorry, Pink Floyd, taking a little liberty there.

Moving right along...

The top of the photo is the top of the cartoon--13" to the top from the lowest point and 8.5" at the highest, the small stone that I wove today.

The end is near.  Well, relatively speaking.

Not for the impatient

"Tapestry weaves are not for impatient weavers."

So said Mary Black in Key to Weaving.  So says Tommye Scanlin as her tapestry continues to be on the loom.

A few inches more... any forward gear will do

More inches in place on the stones

So much is going in real life and I've been out of the studio for several days.  But I'm still putting in a few inches when I can on the stones.  My goal to finish it soon is within reach.  Maybe.  Because it's hard to weave with my fingers crossed.

Guests at the studio

Yesterday I had the pleasure of a visit from the Lillian Smith Center directors and the residency coordinators.  The tapestry I have underway now is based on a painting I did while at the Center last summer. Robert Fichter took this photo as Nancy Smith Fichter, John Templeton and John Siegel look on.





I'm adding a bit of gold thread into some of the stones now. Just a little. It won't show much, one will just notice it only if looking closely. This is before it's covered over with the wool:




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Day by Day, Stone by Stone (almost)

To say I've completed the weaving of a stone today would be, well... a lie?  A stretching of the truth?  An inaccurate assessment of the situation?  Something along those lines.  However, I have moved the tapestry along, pass by pass, cm by cm.  Take a look at yesterday's post photo and compare it to today's:

See the progress?  Look closely at the right side.  That's where I spent the day, sitting at the right side of the loom and weaving more on the stone there, making decisions about how much of the red-orange to include in new bobbins being introduced.

I also rolled the warp down a bit and now I can see the top of the design area on the cartoon.  There's about 23" remaining to the top now.  I have some changes to make in the cartoon as I now see it all once more and can compare to what's been done.  I can do that by drawing correction and or additions with Sharpie on the reverse side of the Mylar.  Not everyone works with this approach, making changes as the piece grows.  But I do.  It's the way I work on the designs, as well.  Steve Aimone, in his classes and books, talks about "flux" and I like to think of what I do with my tapestry cartoons is to keep an attitude of working in flux, from beginning to end.  Drives me crazy some of the times and gives me a great deal of pleasure and surprise at other times.  In the end, it usually works out OK.  

More stones and a big thank you!

Here's where I am today--just approaching the 3/4 mark on the tapestry.  Slowly, slowly, slowly it grows.

Look at the painting posted at the left side of the blog page to see the progress points.  I keep referring to the original to keep myself encouraged about progress even though it seems to be so slow.

Now... the big thank you goes to a very kind fellow participant from the recent Marcel Marois workshop in Rhode Island who sent me this book as a gift:

I've searched unsuccessfully for the book for about twenty years... and the other day, I opened up my mail box to find an unexpected and quite wonderful surprise!  THANK YOU, JENNY!  I am eternally grateful for your generosity.  I've just spent an hour or so with Google translation and find that I will indeed be able to figure out what I need to from the text even through I don't read French.  The illustrations are superb and I knew that I'd be able to learn so much from those alone.  Hooray!

More from the Rhode Island adventures soon, I promise.  It was a remarkable time.