String Notes

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.

I have little green tomatos! And strawberries! And the black raspberries are starting to shade into pink.

I’m also in the midst of a five-week string of houseguests, and a couple of very large deadlines. And Complex Weavers is Real Soon Now. (Yay, but yikes!)

I keep finding fun things to share with you all, making notes, and not posting them. Today at least I will get a few out there.

1. Kyle Cassidy says some astute things about becoming a professional artist. He’s a photographer, but most of what he says is more broadly applicable. Kyle says a lot of insightful things, and takes beatiful photos. His blog is well worth a browse. He’s on the list of people I’d like to meet some day.
2. A couple of Viking cooking resources popped up today. The Viking Food Guy blog looks more promising than its name would suggest, and the Eldrimner blog also looks interesting.
3. “Phiala” is both a brand of barstool and a genus of moth. I haven’t found any photos of the latter – any moth experts out there?

It’s never been such a year for roses: red, pink, lavender. Even the roses that never bloom are covered in flowers.

It may have snowed less than three weeks ago, but late May is the time for tomatoes – cross your fingers for me, okay? I went out to Tait Farm last week for my plants. I like the idea of starting my own seeds, but I’ve never had good luck with them, and the cat eats my seedlings. Tait Farm has excellent plants. I spent a long time walking up and down the row of heirloom tomato plants, reading all the descriptions and reminding myself that I do not have room for one of each. I settled on six heirloom tomatoes of all different sizes and shapes and colors: Brandywine, Great White, Yellow Pear, Red Pear, Cherokee Black, and Lime Green.

The World’s Smallest Pea Patch has grown quite a bit: it’s now about four times the size, with enough space to give all the new plants a comfortable home.

I couldn’t resist some other things while I was picking out plants. There are three hot pepper plants, and half a dozen herbs: two parsley and an oregano, a regular basil plant and two interesting ones: a Greek columnar basil visible at the back of the bed in the above photo, and this lovely African Blue Basil. I’m looking forward to pretty pesto with my rainbow of tomatoes.

I also forsee pie in my future.

Everything seems to be settling in nicely. I should even get a strawberry in the next day or two.

I was in New Hampshire most of last week for work [now the week before last!]. Work looks a lot like this:

We worked a couple of 13-hour days in torrential pollen and got home a day early.

Everyone was happy to see me.

After an intense week I was ready to relax a bit, and was very excited to return to a box of Elizabeth Bear books.

Writing the text and uploading the photos is not so useful without also posting them, it seems.

Today was filled with an all-day meeting, but the roomful of visiting and local scientists did manage to get outside for a while, to check out the local watershed from top…

… to bottom.

This is a nasty invasive – multiflora rose – but the bee didn’t care where it came from and had collected huge quantities of pollen.

We saw many educational and occasionally lovely things before returning to the second half of the meeting.