My Woodland Friends are Gone!

Howard took a large basket of pixies and fairies to work with him today and called me at 9:30 that they were all sold. I was hoping that some would sell before Christmas but I didn't think they would go that fast. They are so cute though, and when you see all those little faces looking at you, they are hard to resist. So I would like to make another basket load for him to take a couple weeks before Christmas. It was just a very happy surprise that they sold out so quickly!

Late yesterday afternoon, I finished the leaf curtain for Jess's door. Good thing because today is her birthday but it will still be late because I have to mail it. She'll take photos for me to post when she gets it hung and I really hope she likes it because I was so happy with how it turned out. It is just a good feeling when a whole idea comes together and works out as I envisioned it. Now it'll be perfect if I got it all measured right and it fits her door.

I have been drawing for my tapestry and have learned something about how I work best. I know that a lot of tapestry weavers plan out their tapestries very thoroughly and completely down to the last detail. I never did that. I like a rough outline and then make a lot of decisions while weaving. Sometimes the weaving just speaks differently to me on the loom than it did on paper and also, it is just plain boring to weave if everything is already decided. But I learned this week that I do better even when drawing for tapestry cartoons to just keep it very simple and not try to come up with a finished drawing. I don't need that to work from, it doesn't help me to accomplish anything better either and I put it off so end up with nothing. So now, if I see a great sky that I want to keep or a scene, I just jot it down on any old scrap paper quickly and make a note of colors and intensities. I am so much happier doing this and come up with more ideas because even if I'm busy with something else, I can take a few seconds to make a quick sketch. I like weaving from these also, because it allows a lot of freedom at the loom. Now I have several drawings and need to choose the format and size and get that loom warped. I want to put on enough warp for 3 tapestries at a time since these are small and I will use the others on purses.

My son-in-law, Cory, got a new piano and asked if I would weave a long scarf/mat to go across the top of it for Christmas. He likes the pattern in the larger square of Indian March (a 4H twill pattern) in the Davison book and wanted it in browns and blues. I have some brown 8/2 cotton and that same cotton in various blues which I dyed in a workshop a couple years ago. I have to pull them out and see if there is enough of the dyed cotton and hope that it looks good with the brown that I have. The blues that I dyed are really pretty so if it all goes together, that should work out very well. I hope I can get the small floor loom warped with that next week. I am pretty sure this is my last Christmas project and once I clear off the loom, I would like to get them ready for the move, push them against the wall and be able to use that room to stack packed boxes.

They are working on the roof of the condo all week but there were a couple days it was bad or snowed so they couldn't work all the time. Once the roof is on, they won't be so dependent on the weather to work so I hope they can get that done. But the roof is closed in over our unit and we are getting very excited.

Still drawing for the cartoon

Last week got really busy and this week I've been working on a door curtain that is full of appliqued leaves for my daughter's birthday present. But I have still found some time to draw for my cartoon and am hopefully generating enough ideas to keep me weaving for some time. My focus has changed some because last week I found out about the unjuried small format tapestry exhibit that will be hosted by the American Tapestry Alliance in conjunction with Convergence in Grand Rapids, MI, next summer. Because it is an unjuried show, there is a great deal of energy in the tapestries and participants are both established tapestry artists and those who are just beginning and everything in between. I've never seen the exhibit in person but have several of the catalogs and just really enjoy the vast array of tapestries. The size can be no larger than 10" x 10" or 100 square inches and the application to enter can be found at the ATA website, www.americantapestryalliance.com. The application is due Jan. 15, 2006 and the tapestry will have to be there in March or April sometime. So there is a good amount of time left to participate even if you are just hearing about this now for the first time. The more tapestries there are, the more interesting the exhibit so I hope that many of you are thinking about entering. I entered a tapestry in the Vancouver exhibit almost 4 years ago and it was a great experience. This is the tapestry shown here, On the Wind.

Yesterday they finally started back on working on our condo building. They had to finish the one ahead of ours for closings yesterday but now the workers are back on ours. They were putting on the roof trusses with a crane but had to quit because it got too windy and it was too windy to work at all on that today too. I can see what they are doing on our building from our upstairs window here so I can keep track of the progress. Once it is roofed and closed in, I won't know what is happening. It is hard to believe I have to be ready to move again in early February if the building stays on schedule.