String Notes

And an interesting article on khipus. Too bad they don’t actually know anything.

It was a hot sweaty week at Pennsic. The new day-long artisan’s row setup was great for informal discussion and hands-on instruction. I spent a lot of time teaching, about 20 hours of weaving and dyeing and geomancy and plant identification. My vacations never seem to be restful and relaxing, but if they were I’d probably get bored.

The last bit was rather wet – we got about 3 inches of rain Saturday night, and it was a soggy pack-up on Sunday. Things are mostly dry and laundered now.

I may not have appreciated the heat and humidity, but the tomatoes certainly did.

I’ve been stuffing myself with red and yellow pear tomatoes for the past couple days, and this evening I headed out to harvest the big ones.

The prizewinner was this Great White, living up to its name in color and size.

The first purple Cherokee wasn’t quite ready for its premier, but the other two full-size tomatoes were ready for their dinner invitations.

Lime green, white, and red Brandywine, diced with two varieties of basil, oregano, parsley from the garden, CSA garlic, olive oil, and served over pasta. That’s what summer tastes like.

The purple African basil is lovely, but disappointing. It has a strong menthol flavor and just doesn’t taste good to me. I won’t be growing it again as an herb, though it makes a nice ornamental.

So much going on in the garden… tomatoes, flowers, herbs. Even the odd strawberry: when the nursery said “everbearing” apparently they meant it. The peppers turned out to be pleasingly hot. I briefly regretted eating one whole and raw at lunchtime, but they will be fabulous for cooking.

One of the wonderful things about my house is that it came with continuous flowers. From the time the snowdrops open in March until the snow settles in November I will have something blooming.

Complex Weavers was wonderful as always. I was very excited to be teaching this year for the first time. I didn’t finish my class until the night before (more on that later, but it’s a good thing I was teaching on the last day). I taught a “Tablet Weaving Tour,” a show-and-tell class with lots of images of bands from as many times and places as I could find, and associated maps, plus lots of speculation on origins and spread. There’s so little actual data that it was mostly guesswork, but guesswork supported by what little evidence is available. I wish I could make it available, but I don’t have rights to most of the photos. I’m still thinking about how to distribute the Google Earth files and updated bibliography. I’d kind of like to get credit for them in some way.

Laura and I shared a room, and we tried very hard to eat as much green chile and drink as many margaritas as possible while we were there. We did okay, though I’m already craving more chile. Photos will have to wait, as I left my camera card at the office.

Here’s the bad part, though. I got home from work Friday evening to discover that Nick had gotten the phone call that everyone with an ailing parent dreads: “not expected to live through the night.” We rushed downstate, arriving around midnight, and passed the night with his dying father and as many relations as were able to get there. Most of the family lives far away. This was not a surprise in anything except the exact timing, but that doesn’t make it a whole lot easier. We decided that I would head to Albuquerque anyway, and I drove home Saturday evening to do laundry and pack (having been out of town all the previous week, I wasn’t yet ready for my trip) for a 6am flight. Nick called as I was leaving for the airport with the final update.

The funeral was scheduled for Saturday, so I changed my airline tickets to get home Friday evening so I could drive down first thing Saturday morning after CW was over. That didn’t work so well, but that’s another post.

Since then I’ve been trying to catch up on sleep, on all the things that didn’t get done because I dashed out of the house so unexpectedly, on getting ready for Pennsic (something I am not at all excited about this year). Stringpage Supplies is on hiatus until after Pennsic, but I have something neat to show you then.

Anyway, I just wanted to reassure you all that I’d made it to and from Albuquerque, and was now home with the ferocious monster.

Some things people have sent me recently:

From Laura, this link to a report on textiles from Burgos Cathedral, Spain.

From Cori, a link to a creative use for embroidery: animation. If you browse the archives, there are some lovely skeleton animals too.

From Beth Matney on the MEDTC-DISCUSS e-list: Inlaid Patchwork in Europe from 1500 to the Present – Tuchintarsien in Europa vcon 1500 bis heute, Dagmar Neuland-Kitzerow / Joram Salwa / Erika Karasek (Hrsg), authors: Gisela Bruseberg, Mari-Louise Franzén, Regine Falkenberg, Ulrike Telek, Ines Anders, Martin Kügler, Clare Rose, Annette Gero, Lar Joye, Andreas Jakob, Ulrich Herr, Ursel Arndt . Bilingual edition German / English, 328 pages, 133 illustrations in color, 17 black and white, 21 x 27 cm, 1485 g, ISBN: 9783795422172 3795422175 Euro 49.90 (Amazon $42.24) “This is the first publication to document, introduce and discuss around 70 inlaid patchworks created from 1500 to the present day. The objects are held by various museums and private collections in Austria, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, Australia and the United States of America.”
(Look interesting, Carrie?)

The Carrot Museum’s history of carrots page. Carrot museum? What will they think of next?

THE THIRD SONG OF THE SPARKLINGASÖGUR

Enjoy!

Forgot one: Magazine article about the local SCA group. I took the first two photos.

How old is tablet weaving anyway? The earliest piece I know of is 9-8th c. BCE (Etruscan), and by the 5th c. BCE it was very well-established and complex (Hallstatt).

Why is there no tablet weaving in South America, or North America for that matter, even though there are other fabulously complex textiles?

How and when did tablet weaving get to India? Tibet?

How and when did tablet weaving get to Indonesia? It was well-established by the time western European textile collectors showed up in the 19th c.

I’m sitting outside in the finally-cooling courtyard with the last of the day’s cicadas and the first of the evening’s fireflies thinking about these sorts of things. I realize these are mostly-unanswerable questions, but I can’t help but think that much valuable evidence lies unrecognized in museum and private collections around the world.

Tablet weaving tour: time, space, structure.

I’m never going to have everything, but I’ve made a very good start.

Don’t you wish you were coming to Albuquerque?

PS. If you’re interested, there’s a roundup of recent non-textile publications here.

I’ve been notably absent, but I can finally tell you a bit about one of the things that’s been taking up the word quota. My first published piece of fiction appeared today at Crossed Genres, just in time for my fortieth birthday.

I managed to meet a ridiculous number of June deadlines, more of which you’ll be hearing about later, most notably two nonfiction and two fiction writing deadlines. Plus work, travel, houseguests, family emergencies… it’s been quite a month.

My mother was here for a week, and we finally got the flower baskets filled.

Adequate supervision is crucial.

I’ll be in Albuquerque for Complex Weavers very soon. Looking forward to seeing some blog readers and some old friends, and eating as much green chile as humanly possible. I do need to finish my class, but I have weeks. Right? Right.

These are the roses I want, adorning the old Stonington Point lighthouse. Anyone know what they might be?

Don’t you wish you were too?

Interweave’s annual book sale is upon us.

Their server seems a bit melty this morning.