A New Year--A Fresh Start!

Happy New Year... several days weeks after its beginning!  I hope it's starting off quite well for everyone.  I've gotten the 2018 tapestry diary underway and once more this year I'm choosing to incorporate a pictorial image I spend a month's time on within the daily parts shown by squares or rectangles.

The warp is linen, sett 8 epi.  Wefts are the natural dyed wool, used two strands together.

My theme for this year's images will be sticks and stones.  I began with a pecan stick I picked up in the back yard early in January.  I made a painting of it and resized it for the cartoon.  I'm choosing to use only natural dyed colors in my 2018 tapestry diary because I still have a LOT of the black walnut and the henna dyed from last year.  I'm adding to the range of colors with other dyes.   So far, this month I've dyed with indigo, Osage Orange, and madder.  Some of the indigo dyed yarns made up parts of the shadows while black walnut was used for the stick, along with a little bit of indigo top dyed over very light black walnut to try to achieve a color similar to lichen.

Madder

Osage Orange

I'm also working on the tapestry I began back in late October thinking it would be one that was quickly woven... wrong!  November and December were both packed with activities, including the hand surgery I had on December 12 that slowed me down a bit.  Anyway, I'm back to it and hope I'll be finishing it soon.

The cartoon for this tapestry is from a block print of a feather I did a few years ago.  Interesting to interpret from one medium into another one, hoping to keep some of the spirit of both.

AND! Please join me and several other tapestry weavers this week as we participate in the American Tapestry Allicance blog tour.  Here are details--hope to see you back with me on Wednesday and take a look at the posts by everyone else, starting tomorrow!

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THE BLOG TOUR

January 22nd: Molly Elkind: Collage as research

January 23rd: Ellen Bruxvoort - Vlog on Instagram about her design process

January 24th:​ Tommye Scanlin: Literature as inspiration

January 25th: Debbie Herd: Digital design tools

January 26th: Barbara Burns: Documenting your design for promotion

WIN ONE OF 26 PRIZES!

Follow all the stops on the blog tour to increase your chance to win one of the following prizes: $50 towards a Mirrix Loom, a Hokett loom kit, a Hokett Tiny Turned Beater, a project bag from Halcyon Yarn containing rosewood bobbins and a voucher for their online shop, a voucher for Weaversbazaar’s online shop, a free entry into ATA’s 12th international, unjuried, small format exhibition and a free one-year membership to ATA.

Here’s how to enter to win. Comment on this blog post then go here to let ATA know that you commented. The more blog posts you comment on the more chances you have to win so be sure to follow along. Ellen Bruxvoort is doing an Instagram video for the tour and if you respond with a photo or video on social media describing how you design tapestry you get five extra entries in the giveaway. Let the sharing begin!

To win another 5 entries into the giveaway enter to exhibit in The Biggest Little Tapestries in the World, ATA’s 12th international, unjuried small format exhibition, and then let us know that you entered by going here by Sunday January 28th. For this exhibition all entries get accepted to exhibit as long as your tapestry fits within the size requirements!

ABOUT AMERICAN TAPESTRY ALLIANCE

The American Tapestry Alliance is a nonprofit organization that provides programming for tapestry weavers around the world, including exhibitions (like Tapestry Unlimited), both juried and unjuried, in museums, art centres and online, along with exhibition catalogues. They offer workshops, lectures, one-on-one mentoring and online educational articles as well as awards, including scholarships, membership grants, an international student award, and the Award of Excellence. They also put out a quarterly newsletter, monthly eNews & eKudos, an annual digest. Members benefit from personalized artists pages on the ATA website, online exhibitions, educational articles, access to scholarships and more.

You’re invited to exhibit! The Biggest Little Tapestries in the World, ATA’s 12th international, unjuried small format exhibition is open to all weavers. We invite entries which fit more traditional definitions of tapestry, and also entries that expand upon the core principles of the medium as they explore new techniques and processes. Multimedia work is welcome. The Biggest Little Tapestries in the World! will hang at the Northwest Reno Public Library, 2325 Robb Drive. The entry form (intent to participate) is due February 15, 2018. The tapestry, and an image of the tapestry is not due until March 31, 2018. Find more details here

Out with the Old! In with the New!

Happy, happy New Year to one and all.  I cut off my 2017 tapestry diary earlier today and here it is! 

The warp for my new one is on the loom shown at the right in the photo.  It's ready for me to begin anew tomorrow on another year-long adventure in tapestry, day by day.

2017 is ending in a few days... and so is my 2017 tapestry diary

I'll be finishing the ninth of the year-long adventures in what I call my tapestry diaries.  My husband happened to catch me and my cat as I finished weaving the day this gray morning (although the sun has now peeked out from behind the clouds).  I'll post the completed and cut off 2017 tapestry diary in a few short days!  Until then... here we are, Tommye Scanlin (in front of the loom) and Raymond Purr (behind the loom)--in case you didn't know who was who:

By the way, I recently wrote a post about my tapestry diary practice for my Tapestry Share blog.  Here's the link to that.

Handwork

The Merriam-Webster online dictionary has this to say about handwork.

I have the following:

I had hand surgery on December 12 to correct a trigger finger that has been giving me lots of problems when doing handwork.

For the next couple of days, my handwork with tapestry moved along a bit slowly...

The dressing was taken off on December 15 and the incision covered with a large bandaid.  I've had very little pains, a bit of slight bruising around my ring finger, the one the surgery has repaired.

Stitches will come out next week and I'll be back to full-speed ahead with my handwork (I hope!)