Archive for December, 2016

Taste the Ocean

December 29th, 2016

Every year between Christmas and New Years I like to taste the ocean – sort of touching the rest of the world and reminding my self that there’s more to life than the day to day! Not that I mind my day to day—I love my work and I enjoy teaching but by the end of the year I need recharging and there’s nothing like an empty beach – or nearly empty beach with endless waves to do that.

Photographing down the shore Ocean waves
The light keep changing – sparkling off the waves. Almost every image I took had a different feeling.

Leaf in sand Broken shell Shells
Treasures!

At first it looked like the beach had very little on it but there are always treasures if you keep looking—this single leaf, a broken shell here, another there. My gift for the day was Orange, orange stones, orange shell bits, stripes and patterns of all sorts! These will show up in studies of stripes, of curves in my little tapestries, perhaps even paintings…they fill my dreams!

Beach textures
Sand fence mMrks in Sand
More textures and patterns.

It was a beautiful day—not too cold for late Dec. Sun in and out—always changing— clean, crisp fresh air—this will keep me working for a while!

Chili and Beer

And we like to end this yearly tradition with a crock of chili and a beer at Charlie’s in Somers Point, NJ. Oh, and the ocean tasted salty!

Step by Step Tapestry

December 19th, 2016

I was pleased with my first small loom tapestry project and got too cocky at attempting my second. Bit of beginners luck with the first I guess, the second was pulled in and crooked and while it might have a certain naivete and charm, that’s not I was looking for, so I decided to work through the workshop step by step and guess what—I’m learning a whole lot!
Here are my next two samples. The first is just dealing with meet and separate, a method of changing colors and it helps with my selvages… not pulled in and crooked! It was woven with yarn I had dyed with madder many years ago. The second builds on the first by concentrating on rectangles and blocks as it changes colors. This one uses Indigo dyed yarns.
Next is diagonals.

20ven with Madder Woven with Indigo

One of my plans with this little looms course is to create something with the bits of hand dyed yarns I have piled up. This is doing that, and it’s making me slow down and it’s keeping me sane as the world goes crazy.