More photos of the Weavebird Project

Finally managed some more photos of the 16s advancing twill project. I'm still not completely happy with how they came out (I'll be redoing them!) - purples are so hard to photograph sometimes and the natural light has *not* been cooperative lately.

The scarf shades from deep purple at the edges through blue, teal, a couple shades of green, to a yellow-ish green in the middle (and then back again). I'm thinking of doing a warm colorway next (reds and oranges and yellows)...

A bit more detail, here:



Hung up in the common area of the Fourth Floor at Western Avenue Studios, just for fun:


Yup, the color more or less disappeared on this shot, but you can get a sense of the repeat this way (212 ends! how fun!).

And, lest we forget that four shaft looms can be an awful lot of fun, too, here's the project that's currently on my little loom at home:



Some sampling to begin (just a little - the warp here is SeaSilk and is *insanely* expensive!) - I settled on a silvery 20/2 silk for the weft, and am combining these nice little waves with diamonds for the center 30" or so of the scarf.

I'm also completely dying to post photos of a fun collaborative project that Bella and I are working on for Ms. Daisy (my next-to-newest niece and Bella's next-to-newest cousin, lol) - but I can't because her Mom reads my blog sometimes and I don't want to give it away! Working on *another* project for brand-brand-new great-niece Ms. Kathryn (born on July 5!), too... I'll post photos of both once they're no longer surprises.

An Award from the Weavers' Guild!

Just a quick post - I'm up to my eyeballs in preparation for the SOWA Art Walk this weekend (gulp) (I'll take pictures)...

But I did manage to get to the Weavers' Guild of Boston Meeting today (I'm Yearbook Chair, I figured I should probably be there for the Board Meeting...) - and I got an award! I'm completely tickled!

From our yearbook:

"The Dorothy Glowacki Celebratory Award is given annually to a younger, newer member who exhibits steady progress and merits recognition for continuing his or her educational endeavors in the fiber arts field."

Hey, cool!

And, while I'm at it, I should plug the new and improved website for the Guild:

Weavers Guild of Boston (website).

Nancy Kronenberg, the Website guru for the Guild, has put a lot of hard work into the site, and I think it looks great. While you're at it, you can take a peek at Nancy's lovely weaving, too, at her website Rosepath Weaving.

A Colorful Weekend...

Our family bid farewell to a very beloved friend this weekend...

Mr. SkiingWeaver's purple car has gone to a new home! (That's little man Conall on his "bike" next to it...) The poor thing has been sitting in our garage for about three years, not working, until my brother Andy decided to adopt it and do the little fix-ups it needed to get back on the road.

I suppose it's a little silly to be sentimental about a car, but it was Carlos' first-ever car (bought when he graduated from college) and we drove it all over the Southwest when we lived in Austin. Many fond memories of road-tripping in the purple car to Taos to ski, or off to explore Mesa Verde and Telluride... But, it's good to see it out and about again instead of gathering dust (literally) in our garage.

I was obviously having a hard time concentrating on actually *weaving* at the studio this weekend....

But at least I finally painted my studio door! This is the inside view, looking out to the corridor - the door frame is a dark chocolate brown, the door itself is teal, and on the outside there's a border on the wall of the same purple as the pillar in the studio.

So, not particularly productive on the weaving front, but I still feel like I got something accomplished. We're having Open Studios the first two weekends of December (Saturday and Sunday both weekends), and I was really wanting to paint over the boring grey on my door, and get some color out in the hall, too... I have very little inventory for those Open Studios - eeks! - but I'm working on kind of letting go of the stress and just going with what I'll be able to get done before then... I've sold a whole heck of a lot of work already this fall, so it's ok if I don't sell much more... Or so I keep telling myself!

Convergence - Part One (Tampa)

I think I've been avoiding posting about Convergence. Probably because there is *so* much to talk about that I don't even really know where to begin...

So, I'll just begin with talking a little bit about Tampa. And then the classes I took. And, finally, some of the absolutely fantastic work (and some less than fantastic work - eeks) that I saw there. So, the easiest first - a bit about the little corner of Tampa that I was in for the Conference.

The Tampa Convention Center, where Convergence was held:


Palm tress are interesting beasties, aren't they?

Here's the view from my hotel room (I stayed at the Westin Harbor Island):

And, to get to the Conference Center, I took a short walk over the bridge...

One of the days, during lunch time, I poked around a bit in the business district of Tampa. It was sooooo HOT. Unbelievable, actually - mid-90s and crazy humid. I could never, ever live in a climate like that, I'd melt. (Made me remember one of the reasons why I was so gung-ho to move away from Texas all those years ago, Irish girls from New England literally cannot take the heat!)

Carlos (Mr. SkiingWeaver) says it sounds a lot like Puerto Rico in the summer, which makes sense.

Very neat fountain, reflected in a building. What completely cracked me up were these guys:

Check him out! Isn't he neat?? I kept seeing them meandering around downtown. I'm sure to Tampa/Florida people he's just like a pigeon, but I still thought he was pretty cool. Crazy tourist lady taking pictures of the pigeons. LOL (Is it an ibis? I'm not sure!) Hey, warm climate people take pictures of snow after all...

I took the trolley out to Ybor City (an older neighborhood, it used to be full of Cuban cigar factories), but didn't take any pictures - it's mostly restaurants and college bars now with just a few interesting shops thrown in, so it was a little disappointing. I was hoping for a little bit more of an ethnic vibe, but, no dice, rats. (To be fair, I am a tough customer - I lived in Mexico City for six weeks one summer, and we've spent a lot of time in Spain, too...)

OK, now that I've gotten started, I'll keep going. Stay tuned, I'll post about the classes that I took next (they were quite good - and now I wish I had signed up for more of them!).