Category: fiber art

Asheville, fiber art, Reading, tapestry, Tapestry Weavers South, weaving

Wednesday Waiting for Ted Lasso Post

Laurie

I went to Asheville with my sister this past weekend to the Tapestry Weavers South get-together at the Folk Art Center exhibition of “Follow the Thread.” She drove from Lake Waccamaw, we had lunch at Sushi Republic, then she drove us to Asheville. That’s a lot of driving in one day! That evening we had dinner at the Red Rocker Inn in Black Mountain, a place that held fond memories for her as in past trips with Tim. After seeing it I’d like to stay there with Sandy one weekend. We really love Black Mountain and I would love to be able to live there one day if I don’t emigrate to another country.

We relaxed on Saturday morning before driving to downtown Asheville where we did a bit of shopping before eating lunch at Tupelo Honey. The shrimp and grits were delicious, and those biscuits…wow. That evening we had dinner at Rendezvous, a French restaurant in a converted church, with April and Don. We were still stuffed from eating lunch and goodies at the TWS reception so we ordered small plates. I had smoked duck breast with a blueberry compote and Lisa had a stuffed portobello mushroom. Both dishes were divine.

Here’s a better photo of “A Place You’ve Never Been” which was sold.

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I forgot my phone so I don’t have photos, but Lisa took a lot of the exhibit. She was very impressed and we tried to recruit her into the tapestry weaving world but couldn’t lure her in. I broke my rule about buying new pottery at the Folk Art Center Southern Highland Craft Guild shop, which means I have to get rid of something, but come on, how was I supposed to resist this cup with Diego and Pablocito on it?

I was asked about what I am working on now, and I realized for the first time in many years I do not have a work in progress on a loom. But I have ideas!

Rascal and Sissy

While we were gone, Sandy sold one of our reenactment tents so the purging continues.

I finished “Lessons in Chemistry” and started “Here Be Dragons” by Sharon Penman. I’m related to many characters in the book. Now I want to go to Wales. A large branch of my family tree immigrated here from Wales around the turn of the 18th century. However, I was just given a copy of “Moon Witch, Spider King” by Marlon James for a book club discussion on March 29. I didn’t realize it was the second in a trilogy so I downloaded “Black Leopard, Red Wolf” and will switch over to that right away.

We’re halfway into the second season of “Picard,” which is great, and Sandy started watching “1883,” which I intend to do but I can’t watch but so much TV at a time. I’d rather read. Now we are eagerly waiting for the second episode of this season’s “Ted Lasso.” I really like having to wait a week for a new episode. I’ve never particularly cared for binging. Part of the enjoyment is in the anticipation.

art, coffee pot posts, fiber art, Slow cloth, Slow stitch

Sunday morning coffee pot post

Laurie

The latest stitchery:20230304_113105

I’m really enjoying stitching in this section. This piece has changed in my mind from purely abstract to ruminations about paths, choices, obstacles, and flow. What we do to stitch the fragments of our lives together while attempting to create balance. Sometimes you can, sometimes there is too much disruption in the fabric, but we still give it a try.

Now that I’m considering these aspects of it, it has become more meditative and much less frustrating. At the moment I’m thinking about mounting it on another piece of fabric and making it into a scroll. Next week I’ll probably have a different idea.

Last night I spent a lot of time looking through the different workshops that Stitch Club has to offer and making a list of which ones I’d like to do next. I’ll probably not stay subscribed to the service however. Not that it isn’t worth it but I need to mind my budget if I’m going to be able to travel and do the in-person workshops that I enjoy more.

I bought the program Deep Art Effects for my computer a while back and took a very simple photograph of water that I took during one of the last boat trips I took with my family at the lake through all the different filters. I loved so many of them and now considering – what if I warped up a long warp and wove the same design with all of my favorite versions. Separately or together? I think maybe separately, and hang them as a series. I’d weave them horizontally but hang them vertically.

This is a very good sign that I’m breaking free of my artist block.

Here’s the personal life stuff.

I pay attention here to the small cleaning tasks I get done around this house because after five years of serious depression and a spouse whose health concerns limits what he can do, it looked for a while as if it was too awful to ever catch up. Now that I’m feeling better mentally, I realize that we can do it in small chunks. So it’s a celebration when Sandy cleans out a closet, and when I clean a ceiling fan. When I look around and start to feel despair, I remind myself that it IS getting done, slowly, as is our style here. The deep kitchen cleaning is almost done.

Now our ants are invading the bathroom. Why? What do they find to eat? Honestly, it seems like they are just moving from one hole between the molding to another gap under the window. Sandy is going down to the basement to see if he can find clues. I finally got them out of the kitchen, and then the washing machine. ???

Here’s the thing. I am fascinated with ants. Especially when I go to the lake and there are still so many kinds hanging out on the beach. I can sit and watch them explore and maneuver around and over obstacles for a long time. I was about to write “hours” but I’m not that mindful. I do hate fire ants and now that they have finally made it to my street I hope that they don’t chase the other ants away.

Once I was stung by yellowjackets that had made a ground nest under a tree next to our driveway where we step out of the car. That simply won’t do, so I identified the hole, and waited until after dark when they had all returned to their nest. I put window screen over the hole and weighted it down all around with bricks. Then I poured a pot full of scalding water into the hole. That took care of that problem with no poison involved.

The next day, I witnessed the large ants who occupied the tree carrying boiled yellowjacket treats straight up the tree vertically. The yellowjacket bodies were more than twice the size of each ant.

I miss that tree, mainly for the ants and the woodpeckers.

If you read E.O. Wilson’s work about ants, you will discover an amazing world that no one ever notices.

Anyway, I had a busy workweek, and then I volunteered at the CVA gallery again yesterday morning. I noticed that now that my Achilles tendinitis is much, much better, my hips are protesting my lack of activity, so I’m going to get out for a long walk this afternoon.

coffee pot posts, fiber art, Rebel stitching, Slow stitch, tapestry, weaving

Sunday evening Smiddicks Post

Laurie

Can’t say that I’ve gotten much accomplished this weekend other than laundry. I looked over this stitching project and realized that life is too short to be compulsive about doing all this when I’m really not thrilled about most of the pieces. I whittled it down to the long piece and the mostly blue piece and spent several pleasant hours stitching while listening to Bonnie Raitt and Sheryl Crow, leaving most of my thoughts floating in the air somewhere, not a care in the world. It was good for me, because thinking about the world outside of this little house has been bringing me way, way down. When I didn’t like most of the stitching I did this afternoon, I looked at it as an applique opportunity. So maybe this will become a stitch practice, or a mood journal of sorts. One thing is for sure, it is SLOW.

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I had some amazing news on Friday after I posted my blog post – I sold “A Place You’ve Never Been” at the Tapestry Weavers South exhibition. Now, here’s the thing. I put a high price on it and “Cathedral” because I didn’t really want to sell them. I nearly called the curator to tell her to put NFS on both of them. But I thought, nobody is going to pay that price for either of them and if they do, I’ll put the money aside for something really nice for myself. The gallery commission was 50% so I put $1,000 on “A Place You’ve Never Been” and $10,000 on “Cathedral” (I REALLY don’t want to sell it.). So that’s $500 coming my way for the deposit on Laurie Doctor’s workshop in Italy in September 2024.

I’m not interested in making art for money. It sucks the joy out of it for me. You know, I just need something to do with my hands. I will never ever sell my art for cheap. It undercuts the value of my time and the value of other artists’ work. I’d rather give it away than sell it cheap.

However, I kind of fucked up, because I never thought I’d sell it, I didn’t get a good photograph of it in its final setting. I had wrapped it up to send it to another show in early May in which I was going to put NFS on it, and then I found out that I had to put it up for sale. So I never sent it, and I didn’t unwrap it. And guess what, I realize that I didn’t get good photos of the other two in their final form either. I finished getting them hemmed and backed and hanging devices on them at the last minute, and I didn’t stop to photograph them – just jumped in the car and drove with them to Asheville. I hope that I’ll be able to do it when I go to whatever kind of opening we have, whether it’s just a get-together or public. What’s funny is that for a while I was sharing so many photos of it in progress that I decided not to share another photo until it was framed and ready for display. Lesson learned.

Here’s a photo of it when I was testing out different color backgrounds, and a photo of it that my friend sent me when she was there and noticed the red “sold” dot on the card.

A Place You've Never Been

A Place You've Never Been at exhibit

I spent several frustrating hours searching for the best, most affordable way for us to go to Scotland in May or June, and it just ain’t gonna happen. Sandy and I went out to the used bookstore where I picked up a couple of travel books on Scotland and Great Britain, and when we went out to eat, I told him that he was going to have to pony up more money for this trip because I haven’t had time to save for it, and I keep my credit cards paid off. This isn’t like Portugal, when I had the airfare already paid from when I’d planned to go to Ireland in 2020, and the accommodations were inexpensive, and I had two extra years to save up for it. He is worried about his medical bills, so we decided to try to do it in September. I don’t know if we’ll be able to do it then either, but I’m glad to have made the decision not to try it in May or June, anyway.

This clears the way for me to go to Penland this summer IF and ONLY IF I can get a scholarship, which, since I am older, I figure is a long shot at best. But it’s only $5 to submit the application, so I’ve decided to put one together over the next week or two. The deadline is Feb. 15, just before my 62nd birthday. I will try not to be disappointed if I don’t get one. I’ll just need to find another way to have fun this summer. I’m sure some kind of workshop will pop up that I can do in person. Maybe I just need to knuckle down and actually get a body of work together – now there’s a thought. Actually doing art instead of dreaming about going to workshops to do art!

art, fiber art, Slow stitch

Stitching

Laurie

Half of Sandy’s thyroid was removed and the nodules tested. It is cancer-free. What a relief! He was in a fairly jolly mood yesterday prior to leaving the hospital – he had to spend a night there. Today he is hurting more, but all he needs is acetaminophen.

He was in the recovery room for hours waiting for a room, and he called me to tell me to go home. I packed up my and his stuff and headed to the door, where a deluge was coming down, then turned around and headed back to the waiting room. It was actually pleasant once I knew that he had come through the surgery okay. I was sitting in an area with three people who were quite entertaining and I had this stitching to do.

Yeah. There’s a couple of reasons I call my practice and my blog “Slow.” One is that I really am quite slow-paced in my artwork, and I tend to choose projects that take time. If I make something in an hour or so, it is a shock to my system, but I can say that very seldom ever happens.

Anyway, people in the online class have posted incredible work. I posted a couple of photos of my slow progress, mainly to encourage others whose work isn’t so wonderful or quick that they have company. I’m enjoying playing with the stitching.

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20230127_133619I was surprised how long it look me just to stitch the pieces together and get rid of those pins. I flipped a few pieces by the time I settled down and decided to accept the challenge of pulling this busy background together. My main intention is to treat this as a learning exercise and a creative jumpstart with rules to help me along. I have pieces of cloth and lots of buttons and beads to include as I feel appropriate.

One of the rules I made for myself was that I have to use up all the pieces. Hmmm. Considering how slow this is going, it might be a year-long project, but okay. I divided them up into smaller groupings, and two of the squares are going on the covers of my stained needle book.

Here are the other groupings:

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Will I continue with this? I don’t know, really. I’m not super enthusiastic about what I’ve done here. I might get a couple of interesting book covers out of this. The main thing is that I know that I will have little stitching projects in my bag everywhere I go, and doing that is better than whipping out my phone to play a game or check social media.

coffee pot posts, fiber art

Saturday morning coffee pot post

Laurie

20230121_103835This week I took a free online class with Gwen Hedley through textileartist.org – actually, I’m still taking it because I got started late. It’s a short class, designed to get you going with some simple instructions. I decided to do it precisely because it provides a creative jumping off point and I’m following the instructions as exactly as possible to give myself the limitations I need to get out of this creative rut. I bought Gwen’s book “Drawn to Stitch” years ago and her work is representative of the direction in which I’d like to go. So I have stitching on this project to look forward to during the next week.

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First was mark making with acrylic paints on fabric. We were to use three colors – a light color for the base fabric, and medium and dark colors for the paint. One piece was supposed to cover much of the fabric and the other was to be more lightly marked with lots of negative space showing. Each piece was supposed to have more of the dark color on one side and more of the medium color on the other. Then we cut it up and put it back together in ways that we could find links between the pieces to embellish with stitching and applique.

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I found that I liked the back sides of the fabric where the paint bled through as much as the front sides. It almost gave me too many choices and I started seeing the wisdom of her advice to keep it small. My pull was to make a larger piece and I was considering making a box shape – I still might do something like this but not now.

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Here’s where I have ended up. Now the embellishment will begin.

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I realized this week that I have spent nearly every other weekend away from home for over three months. We were at the lake in late September when the remnants of Hurricane Ian came through, and then I traveled for pleasant events, such as Leslie’s class and the weaving retreat and our train trip to Charlotte, and the last six weeks I have been to Lake Waccamaw four times. It is time for me to stay in Greensboro for a while, even though I love being at the lake and I was happy to spend time with Lisa and Tim. That’s been a lot of driving.

I have been so sick this week with sinus pain. Feeling much better today because I finally started taking Allegra D again. I did not want to take it because antihistamines trigger my restless leg syndrome, but finally the headaches got to be too much. I’ve also been using a neti pot several times a day. The other night I neti-ed at 3:30 in the morning! This all rapidly got worse after we stayed in that hotel room in Asheville that was saturated in fragrance. Hotels should realize that upon smelling that level of perfume, people wonder what they are trying to cover up. Anyway, I hope that I’m on the road to healing now. This afternoon I have a massage scheduled and that should help my aching neck and shoulder, which is a chronic problem.

Now I need to get hold of my growing desire not to leave the house. It’s funny how I can travel to other places with little problem but once I get in my house or office or the lake house, I do NOT want to leave for any reason. I need to get out and take walks.

My sister seems to be on her way to healing, although of course, the grief is very, very hard. Her shingles cleared up and she has gotten down to the business of learning to live alone. She just found her husband’s journal, last instructions, and three new poems on his phone yesterday. I’d love to make a book with Tim’s poetry.

This coming week Sandy is having surgery to remove half of his thyroid gland. He is quite nervous about it but seems to be more concerned about the bill than anything. My guess is that Medicare should take care of most of it. If he wasn’t on Medicare, then I would be very concerned. I watched my mother go through thyroid surgery and I feel as good as possible about this surgeon after we met with him. It’s not the worst cancer, if that ends up what it is. They couldn’t tell from the biopsy, so into his neck they will go. I worry about him going under anesthesia more than anything, but there is no good worrying about it since worry won’t change what has to be done.

art, dyeing, fiber art, tapestry, weaving

Saturday Morning Coffee Pot Post

Laurie

Oh my god, I can’t believe that WordPress just ate my entire post without saving it. I really have to reconsider using this platform. I’m paying for it and it can be such a pain. Maybe I will have to start writing it separately and pasting it in.

Anyway, hmmm. I was writing about the past week, which started in Lake Waccamaw at my sister’s house, traveled to Greensboro then Asheville mid-week, then back to Greensboro. I spent the last several days of 2022 finishing up my tapestries for display at the Tapestry Weavers South exhibition at the Folk Art Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway in Asheville. It’s called “Follow The Thread” and will be there from January 14 to May 3. After that, the show goes to Elkin to the Yadkin Valley Fiber Center as part of the Tapestry Weavers South retreat.

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This is a photo from just after cutting it off the loom. Originally I had planned to mount “Cathedral on a frame. So I planned ahead to hem it on all sides, and I did that. Since I waited too long to get someone to construct a canvas frame the exact size, I sewed the longer slits and backed it with fabric and a sleeve in which I inserted a wooden slat with a hanging wire attached. The way I did it means that I can go back to my idea of either mounting it on a canvas or frame, or hang it from a limb or piece of driftwood from the bald cypress tree it honors.

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^^^ “Cathedral” today

I forgot to bring the fabric to wrap the foam core boards that I wanted to mount “Mr. Blue Sky” on, so my sister came to the rescue with this perfect paper. The top board is wrapped with red, but you’d only see it if you looked at it very closely, which I’m diggin’. It’s like a little secret. Originally I was going to attach a blue jay feather to it, but it looked better without it. Now I’m thinking that when I get it back, I’ll attach a bottom fringe with beads and feathers.

MrBlueSky

The other one was blessedly ready for display – this was the “rain on the lake” tapestry that took a direction of its own. I renamed it “A Place You’ve Never Been” from a friend’s suggestion. It was woven with naturally dyed silk.

lake tapestry for web

Now I’m going to wrap up this post and hopefully save it before I lose it again.

art, fiber art, tapestry, weaving

Weaving update

Laurie

Finally cut two tapestries off their looms.

First up, the “O” postcard tapestry for the Tapestry Weavers South collaborative project for the “Follow The Thread” exhibition, scheduled in January 2023 at the Folk Art Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway near Asheville, NC.

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Secondly, I finally, reluctantly, cut a dog off the loom so that I could set “Mr. Blue Sky” free. I feel better now that I’ve done it.

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Here’s the dog. I’m going to recycle the yarn if I can stand unweaving it for very long. I think this would have been a good weaving, but it was clear that I wasn’t going to finish it.

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Now, I have to trim the backs, hem them, and design the “H” tapestry.

art, art retreats, dyeing, fiber art, tapestry, Tapestry Weavers South, weaving

Tapestry Weavers South Retreat 2022

Laurie

Playing a bit of catch-up here. I was in Elkin, NC at the Yadkin Valley Fiber Center for the 2022 Tapestry Weavers South retreat a couple of weekends ago. I drove up there on Saturday morning, stayed in a hotel, and left on Sunday afternoon after a very relaxing, fun time.

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^Beverly Walker’s work in progress

We welcomed a new member, Beverly Walker, whose tapestry includes mixed media. (She’s a teacher, also.) Betty and Terri shared some of what they learned in Fiona Hutchinson’s pulled warp workshop at Convergence. We all had little looms or projects to work on or show and tell.

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^Betty Hilton-Nash’s work.

On Saturday, lunch was from the Barking Coyote Kitchen, and I HIGHLY recommend their sandwiches. That night several of us went to Southern on Main even though we knew we were going there for brunch the next morning, because there are never too many times that you can go to Southern on Main. It is that good.

That afternoon, Leslie brought out the indigo buckets and we had a great time dyeing yarn, fabric, paper, and bamboo socks that Betty brought to share with us. I mostly overdyed some cotton yarns which I have way too much of but don’t particularly care for the colors. I also dipped some papers and found out which ones won’t stand up to dip dyeing (hint, it was the recycled ones that I had pulped in a blender).

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On Sunday morning we socialized, worked on our projects, then had a great brunch on the patio of Southern on Main. That afternoon we had our annual business meeting, but there was really very little business, mostly enjoying each other’s company.

Here’s my O postcard for the collaborative postcard tapestry project we are doing for our upcoming exhibition at the Folk Arts Center in January. I’ve almost finished it now and I’ve been given the letter H to weave.

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coffee pot posts, depression/anxiety, fiber art, tapestry, weaving

Sunday coffee pot post

Laurie

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Usually I write a post on New Year’s Day of what I hope will happen in the coming year, but I just couldn’t do it yesterday. If I have to choose a motto for 2022, it will be “I guess we’ll see.”

I spend a good bit of time between New Year’s Eve and New Year’s morning reading over past yearly wrap-ups, and although mentions of my chronic depression continued to pop up, they were much more positive in the earlier years of this blog. Even the years when I know that I was in a terrible, terrible mental state, my yearly wrap-ups didn’t mention or barely mentioned the events that drove me into the hole. I’m trying to decide if this is a good or bad thing. Or a gray thing. This is my journal, and I want to write honestly, even when it is public. I don’t have to, and I don’t, tell everything. All the writers that I admire let their vulnerability show. I suppose that I will continue to wing it, but I regret both the negativity I feel and the false positivity that I sometimes project.

Yesterday, I did move forward. I took a walk and looked for different oak leaves. Then I wove a lot on my tapestry throughout the day. Sandy and I did an exercise video and we ate vegetarian. Canned field peas and collards, with a big salad.

I succumbed to a Facebook ad and subscribed to Body Groove. I like the attitude of the instructor and the different videos. Dancing is one thing I can do standing or sitting.

Look at these oak Siamese twins, then some of the other leaves follow. I found at least a dozen different ones so far.

The reason that I decided to weave farther on Cathedral is because I wanted to include more of the blue skies peeking through the shadows on the north side of the tree. This was a particularly tough section to weave, but maybe the most gratifying. All those verticals! I used a lot of weft blending and crosshatching.

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I’m trying not to dwell on the fact that I have to return to the office tomorrow even though we are at a height of the pandemic. I am fortunate that I can isolate with my door closed, but it infuriates me that our administration will not let those who are high risk or have high risk family members work from home, especially since we proved that we could do it efficiently last year. I heard that an office worker with an excellent reputation in another department was terminated when she tried and failed to get permission to work from home because of health reasons. Yet our “leadership” is so proud of “getting back to normal.”

Anyway, I guess we’ll see if it all turns out okay.

So, for the coming year, here are my hopes and plans. In May, Sandy and I will adventure for 17 days in Portugal. He and I will be more physically fit by that time, with less pain, more stamina, and less fat to carry around. My brother-in-law will continue to improve. In early June, there is the Tapestry Weavers South retreat in Elkin. In mid-July, I have to choose between Convergence in Knoxville, Tennessee, a drive-able distance away, or across the country to Focus on Book Arts in Forest Grove, Oregon. Susanne and I plan to go to Focus on Book Arts. It’s a shame because Convergence doesn’t often happen within driving distance of Greensboro, and my tapestry guild will be involved, but that is how it shakes out. It would be nice to find a place to go in September – maybe check off another national park on our bucket list?

Other than that, lake trips, the usual purging, and a resolve to go to the print studio at least once a week, even though it might not be for printmaking or collage or painting. I’m going to have a tapestry to finish trimming, hemming, blocking, and mounting.

Coronavirus Chronicles, fiber art, Slow cloth, Upcycling

Boxing Day post

Laurie

What are you supposed to do on Boxing Day again? Knock out your family and friends?

Just so you know, I did get some creative stuff done yesterday. The photo of progress on my tapestry refused to turn out properly, so that is a sign that it does not want any more detail photos until it is done. I measured it at 19 inches with the hem at the bottom. This made me want to try to weave another inch of tapestry so that it will be about 18 inches wide. Maybe two inches if I can deal with the crazy tension problems that far.

And the old girl is performing well. I think it is one year older than me.

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It looks like we will be needing masks for a long time hence, maybe forever! I sewed until I had no more elastic. I’ll order black elastic for the next ones, if it is available. When I sewed the first wave of masks, elastic wasn’t available at all, so I used fabric strips that I sewed and hair bands.

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Here’s a pile of shirts cut apart with the seams trimmed off and stashed away for a rag weaving. The one on top was my favorite shirt of Sandy’s. I have a lot of photos from the 80s with him wearing this shirt. That is one of the reasons that I love weaving with old clothes. The memories.

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We got out and walked around the block twice yesterday and once again this morning. It doesn’t seem like much but it is what we both can handle right now. The weather is beautiful – 71 degrees F. I’m sitting on the front porch with the critters as I write this. Sandy is bringing me a very late brunch. We were up late and awake again early this morning. Pablocito was being a bad kitty around 4:30 this morning. It’s fortunate that I didn’t have to work.

More weaving on tap today and maybe some sewing.