Is this meta or what?
I want to link to a blog post that I recently wrote for Gist Yarn here. It was fun to explore the new tapestry yarn that Gist Yarn began offering last year. Having an opportunity to write the post for them gave me a chance to use the yarns as weft and also to try the cotton seine twine the company carries. If you read the blog post you'll see that I liked both the wool and the cotton seine twine quite a lot.
In the past year I've written and submitted several articles to fiber magazines, some that have been published and others to be in upcoming issues, and a blog post for another organization that's soon to released. Although each of these writing projects were challenging, especially the ones for which I'm also weaving examples to illustrate the articles, I've enjoyed it all.
My in-person teaching career has (mostly) wound down. But I still feel that I have a lot to share about what I've learned from wonderful teachers and mentors through the years. Finding ways to do that through writing, occasional zoom and webinar presentations, and even a couple of online classes keeps me connected to the teacher side of my life.
The artist part of me is ready, though, to get back to weaving a larger tapestry. I've gotten the warp ready, made the cartoon, and by this time tomorrow I hope to be putting in the first passes of weft! A trip up the warp for several months is ahead of me.
The next tapestry will be one with sweetshrub as the subject. I've been fascinated with this plant for some years. Last May when I was in residence at Lillian E. Smith Center, the sweetshrubs were in full bloom and I made lots of photos, drawings, and prints based on them. I did several with loose watercolors on the paper before printing and I'm using one of those as the cartoon for the tapestry.
Recently, a podcast interview on the In Defense of Plants podcast was with a botanist, Katie Horton, who's research is about sweetshrub! Her thoughts give me more to put in the stew of sweetshrub ideas while I'm immersed in this tapestry.
So... here are some photos of Sweetshrub from the north Georgia mountains and my versions. Or Calycanthus floridus, common names: Bubby Bush, Carolina Allspice; Common Sweetshrub; Spicebush; Sweet Betsy; Sweet Bubby Bush; Sweetshrub; Sweet Shrub.
