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Posts in ‘2010’

The odder side of fiber animals

It has been a long and insane week at work (crisis appears to have been averted, at least) and rather than the stuff I’d intended to post this week, you get video entertainment. I have bags and bags of dog fur saved up to spin. I’m just not going to shave Morgan though. If you […]

Piles of silk

I’ve been saving up tidbits for you, but didn’t get to them this weekend because I did this instead. That’s 5,400 yards of silk in ten colors. [No wait! I woke up in the middle of the night and realized that’s really 6,400 dyed yards, or 64 skeins.] At the beginning of the weekend it […]

Changing seasons

Everyone is preparing for autumn. Baking season has begun, with sourdough cinnamon bread. Next week is my last field trip of the season. The bees are frantically collecting every last drop of nectar. Knitting is starting to sound appealing again. Working with wool just isn’t much fun during a 90F summer like we’ve had this […]

Oddments

Busy, obviously. Work, and other work, and other other work. And I fried the power cord for my netbook. I’m not computerless, but not having the tiny portable thing cuts down on spontaneous blogging. But I’ve been saving things for you. My Little Cthulhu, by artist Spippo. And in the string world, you should definitely […]

The Vikings are coming!

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

Rainbow of tomatoes on the table

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 […]

Flowers

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 […]

Albuquerque

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 […]

Link roundup

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 […]

Pondering

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 […]