This week's progress, and more....

You will look at what I have done this week on the Nativity tapestries and think, "Well, she's not done much!" Part of that is because I am proceeding at tapestry speed, but part of it is that I didn't get as much done as I normally would have in a work week. I had to spend two of my work days going to-and-from the eastern slope to pick up work from an exhibit. The work I had there was several paintings, and the good news is that this one sold! I also took two days at the end of the week to go to our cabin with my husband. That left me just three good work days.

On the first of those work days, I wove pretty much what you see done here. The next morning I got up and looked at it. I had used a bright primary red for the lettering, because hanging between (and above) the two tapestries will be a stained glass window in bright primary colors. But when woven with the primary red, with the almost-white banner and the blue background, the symbolism of the colors was a bit too 'patriotic.' Don't get me wrong; I consider myself to be a very patriotic person, but that is not the symbolism I want in this particular set of tapestries.

So, on the second work day, I un-wove all I had done the day before. On the third day, I re-wove it all, using a less saturated red for the lettering. That is just how weaving goes, sometimes. It takes three days to do one day's work.

For those of you who are wondering, a tapestry is like a grid in that the warp and the weft are at right angles to each other. So the lettering, when seen up close like this, will look like lettering would look if you were to plot it out on grid paper. There are no real round edges in tapestries; just edges that we can 'fake' your eyes into believing are rounded. When seen from the proper distance, the letters will 'look right' to the viewer. I promise.

And to answer the next question (probably to be asked by new weavers): the needle you might see on the edge of the letter 'R' is what I am using to sew up the slits (or little holes) that are caused by having two colors side by side up two warps for a number of weft passes. I sew up all those slits that are longer than 1/4" long, and I prefer to sew them up as I weave, rather than to have to sew a billion of them up after I take the tapestry from the loom.



These photos represent my new obsession. You might remember that my obsession last summer, and into the fall and beyond, was cows. I took MANY photos of cows, and my obsessive interest in cows didn't clear up until I finally wove some. This summer, I am taking MANY photos of something else. Can you guess what my obsession is, based on these two photos?