Cover Girl

At my age? OK, it’s not me, but my tapestry in the spotlight.

“Chaotic Fragments Part 2” was selected for the American Tapestry Alliance’s newest juried show “Connections: Small Tapestry International.”

Then they decided to use a detail of it for the cover of the catalog, what a thrill!

It's a charming catalog, smaller than ATA’s Biennial catalogs, which makes perfect sense, since the tapestries are all 100 square inches or less.

We were asked to keep our artist statements to 50 words or under, which was a lot of fun.

Here is mine:

A 27 year old oil painting of my messy studio table. Color copies, scissors, black colored pencil, hours of gazing and tinkering. In a flash the fallen cone of wool morphed into a Black Hole; I had finally found Chaos.

My husband, Kim, and I flew out to California on Thursday, and stayed with our daughter and son-in-law, Zoe and Jason, near San Jose.

We hiked in the Sunol Regional Wilderness, and the weather was absolutely perfect. High 70s, slightly breezy and very dry. After we hiked a while, Zoe and Kim took a run, and I walked back to the gates alone. Then I read the information board, where I was informed that when walking alone, because of the Mountain Lions, I should have been talking and singing! YIKES!

We visited with Kim’s mother, his brothers, sisters-in-law, nephews, niece, dog, and our new grandkittens, Maia and Ewok. (Can you guess which one is Ewok?)

On Sunday I attended the opening reception at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, along with Zoe and Jason, but alas, not Kim, who had forgotten, when we planned the trip, that he was the keynote speaker at a meeting in Washington DC on Monday morning!

The reception was great. The museum is lovely, the exhibit is really inspiring, and I got to see old tapestry friends, and met some new ones too. Fellow tapestry blogger, and Connections Committee Chair Kathy Spoering was there to see the results of all her hard work. Great job Kathy! It was great to see you again in person.

Five of us made comments about our tapestries, which helped to provide insight into the artists, their creative processes and their work.

To top off the weekend, Zoe and Jason treated me to a delightful Mother’s Day dinner in Palo Alto on Sunday night. As a parting gift, here’s a link to their Cookie Blog. I can personally vouch for the deliciousness of the Pumpkin Muffin Tops with Butterscotch Chips. YUM!

Yearning for Yarn

I just discovered that one of my favorite yarns is being discontinued

This "Fine Tapestry Yarn" is a custom spun, one ply, lustrous wool that looks like handspun, and at 2944 yards per pound, it can be used in multiple strands for color blending.

It is from Weaving Southwest, and comes in 5 shades each of 20 delicious hand-dyed colors. Right now it is on sale for 50% off, because they have decided to carry it only in white.

I wonder if that's because so many of the tapestry weavers in the area are master dyers?

I used to dye, but gave it up. It's too much like cooking, standing there stirring the pot for hours, and unlike my New Mexico pals, I had to do my dying in the house.

I remember the time I was stirring a black dyepot on the kitchen stove next to the spaghetti sauce; I lifted a skein of wool to check the color, and it slipped off the stick; as it fell back into the dyepot a big blob of black dye flew into the spaghetti sauce. I just scooped it out with a spoon, and the sauce tasted just fine. This was before we knew about the toxicity of dyes.

I already have some of this yarn, but have not yet used it much in tapestries.

I did weave some small table runners with it, and they turned out pretty nice, but the yarn is so hairy that if I put a piece of jewelry down, it inevitably gets stuck!

Then I wove a tiny rug, and I do love the texture.

So, although I have tons of yarn, this is too good to resist. I called them up yesterday and ordered about 15 of the 4 ounce skeins.

Actually, I ordered more than that, but they were already out of many colors.

One word of warning, the palest shades are VERY pale.

When I bought this a few years ago, I ended up with 3 different colors that all look white, and I can't really tell them apart.