Big Ideas Take a Long Time to Develop

And so it has been with "Hallway Transitions", the working title of this idea.
Regular readers of this blog may think I've given up weaving entirely in favor of sketching. I'm the first to admit an obsession with drawing, but weaving has been bubbling away in the background.

these tapestry cartoons are 8 " high and meant to be woven side to side

In order to create a larger group of work for my Substitute Tales idea, I decided a year ago to work on a few tapestries with groups of students from my daily substitute teaching journals. I worked with those sketches, combining groups by cutting out crayon drawings and moving the pieces around, finally drawing three strips with a black crayon.

At a loss of how to continue, I decided last summer to do watercolors of the 3 drawings.

The only thing this did was create more confusion. Adding color didn't seem to help move this idea forward.

I spoke with a few people who's opinion I value greatly and two of them mentioned that they preferred the black and white approach. I filed the watercolors away and focused on the neutral.

I chose to do a 6" sample of the 8"  high drawing...I'm staying with the 8" /10 epi for the final piece

Fall 2018 began and I knew I was not ready to start weaving. I sorted through yarns I had dyed during the summer, organized them into value and realized I needed to weave a warp of samples. I put a 6 inch warp on my pipe loom and completed 4 samples by the first day of 2019.

I tried weaving on the horizontal for this final sample, but will stick with the vertical

I learned so much weaving those samples: yarn value choices, weaving with new types of fiber, leaving holes, horizontal vs vertical. I think I might be ready to start weaving the first piece.

So guess what I did this morning?

it's warped!

Hallway Transitions is moving forward...

Happy New Year Dear Readers

And what a wonderful calm and quiet start we have had here in Madison....snow quietly falling, weaving and sketching happening.

it appears that cupcake t just got a little snow icing on it

I'm participating in my traditional weaving of words in the new year; it's not a tapestry diary, but hey...it's a tradition.
I like to weave these word strips to provide fodder for my morning coffee routine. Weaving as I drink coffee for the first hour of the day is a tradition I started when my daughter was born. Time for myself.  My day really doesn't start right without it.

the front side of the loom, quite dramatic isn't it?

the flip side, two separate strips woven concurrently

This happens to be the end of a warp, a great opportunity for woven words and why not side by side? The piece on the left is a gift for a dear friend; the piece on the right was something that was spur of the moment (my favorite kind of idea), why not weave a piece for the deck posts?
I wonder what words I'm weaving...

I've been nailing tapestries to the deck posts for a few years now, ones that have languished in boxes, not living up to some standard or other. No one seemed to want them, but why shouldn't they be able to see the light of day?

this sad little landscape is much happier out on the deck post

And snow and rain and the attention of a few squirrels it seems.

So now here I am weaving a piece for the great outdoors. Who knows what other craziness will occur in 2019....

After all, you never know until you try, right?

Stay creative in 2019...please.
And don't forget to enjoy it.