Sea of Joy: Expanding Horizons

I ventured out to Open Fibre Night last night. My friend, Michele M-H, started this event a couple of years ago. OFN is held monthly; it's free, open to anyone with an interest in fibre work of any kind. I haven't attended for some time and there were many new faces among the group. (Then again, perhaps I was the new face. It's always a matter of perspective.) Another friend, Carla D, drove halfway across the city to transport me and most of my fibre room contents, or so it seemed. I'm moving away from using commercial yarns, so a few skeins for dispersal came with me and I decided to work on my tapestry, which meant packing my 16 inch Mirrix and a basket of singles weft yarns. This smaller Mirrix is designed for workshops, but compared to knitting or spinning on a spindle, taking it on tour is a big deal. (Getting everything back home is just as fun - Young Mr. DD found two balls of yarn beside the house this morning, escapees from my basket. Fortunately, he discovered them before Morris did.)

As it turned out, I didn't get much weaving done. There was visiting to catch up on, admiring of completed and new projects, demonstrations of unfamiliar techniques and snacks to keep us energized. I came home with two garden cucumbers, one for Mr. DD and the other for Morris, less yarn than I arrived with and a few passes completed on my weaving. I was out past ten o'clock, an outrageously late night for me and while I'm dragging my butt around at the moment, I'm feeling reconnected with my fibre world.

I warped the loom for a larger version of "Sea of Joy" earlier in the week and have been making steady, if slow progress. Here's the the basket of yarns I've chosen for the project. Behind it is the loom with the hem and a double row of twining in hand spun linen in place:

Here's the story so far:

Here she is on her side, as she will appear when completed:

At the moment, I'm not loving the larger version. It seems less spontaneous, joyful and free than the sample. I often have this reaction when I expand a small thought into a larger idea and it's really too early to judge what will happen. There may be a problem with the values; the images may need more contrast. Actually, they most certainly will require stronger value shifts, but since this piece will be approximately 12 inches x 24 inches or slightly longer and I have but a couple of inches completed, I have plenty of time and space to introduce what's needed. This is how the values appear now:

You can see by the ink on the cotton seine twine warp and the scribbling on the cartoon, that I'm revising the images as I go. I love this part of the process - never knowing whether my ideas will work, exploring the interactions of the colours in my weft, discovering what works in a cartoon and what does not.

In a recent blog post, Rebecca Mezoff says this about tapestry:

 "For me, it all comes down to this. I can't NOT do tapestry. I suspect the answer, for those of us who choose to spend our days making and teaching tapestry, is the same. It is what we do because we love it and we can't imagine using another art form."  ((Linked here. You should read it.),

Rebecca's words resonate with me. For me, it's always about the journey and never the end product. Even when I had a long stretch of non-weaving, tapestry informed my choices in spinning and design. I never lost sight of the road to returning to this process and I'm happy to be back on the path. Meditation and yoga influence my weaving, but for me, tapestry weaving is both meditation and yoga. When I'm in the process, time stops. I become one with the materials and the medium, a small speck of the universe united with all the other specks of our existence. I can think of no better place to be.

Namaste.