Category: Tapestry Weavers South

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? Update: the artist is Ann Gleason of Tryon, NC.

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, 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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Tapestry Weavers South

Tapestry Weaver South Retreat 2021

Laurie

This past weekend was spent in Elkin, North Carolina, a sweet little town in the Appalachian foothills, mostly at the Yadkin Valley Fiber Center where Tapestry Weavers South held their annual retreat and member exhibition. This also was a celebration of Tapestry Weavers South’s 25th anniversary.

The Yadkin Valley Fiber Center relocated along with the Foothills Art Center to the old Chatham Mill building at 321 East Main St. It is a lovely historic space that is a work in progress. Leslie Fesperman’s fiber arts center is a light-filled, spacious room on the second floor, full of looms and sewing machines and resources for all kinds of fiber arts. She hosts workshops by leading artist/teachers in this welcoming space all year long.

After establishing that everyone present was vaccinated and unanimously felt comfortable without masks, we joyously shucked them and were treated to each other’s smiling faces. There was plenty of room to spread out in the YVFC.

On both Saturday and Sunday, we had an open studio and show and tell. Members bought books, equipment, and yarn to sell and donate. The opening for our “New Works by Tapestry Weavers South” exhibit was at 4 p.m. on Saturday in the gift shop on the first floor, and several tapestries were sold. After the opening, Tommye Scanlin signed copies of and talked about her recently published book The Nature of Things: Essays of a Tapestry Weaver and her upcoming Tapestry Design Basics and Beyond: Planning and Weaving with Confidence.

On Sunday, we had a delicious brunch that was included in the retreat, and an informal members’ meeting in which we discussed our goals and challenges moving forward as a guild.

Two classes were scheduled before and after the retreat: “Tapestry for Beginners” taught by Betty Hilton-Nash, and “Designing with Tapestry in Mind” taught by Tommye Scanlin. The guild plans to continue having an annual exhibit and classes for both beginning weavers and more advanced weavers in the future.

After our scheduled activities, members and their partners enjoyed meals and libations at several restaurants and brewpubs within walking distance of the center. It was good to see our creative friends in person again!

(Cross-posted with photos at Tapestry Weavers South.)

coffee pot posts, tapestry, Tapestry Weavers South, weaving

Sunday Morning Coffee Pot Post

Laurie

Wow. So much to write about. Guess I will do a bit of catch-up. I already wrote quite a bit on my personal Facebook page this morning and realized I should have been writing here.

I am on my phone on the front porch, where the weather is perfect. There are some clothes strung up on a line across one corner. Hopefully Diego won’t tear it down today like he did last night. I have started trying to reduce my dryer loads, and there isn’t a good place in the back yard to string a clothesline, but I am going to see if I can make one.

The Tapestry Weavers South retreat was wonderful, and it renewed my excitement in weaving again. The people in this group are such a pleasure to be around. I changed my mind at the last minute when a space came open in Connie Lippert’s wedge weave workshop and I am so glad that I did. Leslie Fesperman, the owner of the Yadkin Valley Fiber Center lent me a Schacht school loom and warp, since I did not come prepared. Leslie and Connie are AWESOME.

I ended up with a piece that I love, called “Mr. Blue Sky.” At first I was riffing off a blue jay feather that I have been using for inspiration in Jude Hill’s classes, and “Mr. Blue Sky” took over my head. I decided to let this earworm guide me. Now I have decided to do a series of work based on the earworms that, quite frankly, plague me terribly sometimes. Turning a problem into a plus.

After finishing “Mr. Blue Sky” at home, I have some warp leftover for a companion piece so I thought I would weave “Bad Moon on the Rise,” a frequent earworm for me. However it is the nature of earworms not to cooperate, so as I wove it changed to “Blackbird,” then “Moondance.” We’ll see. The earworms can influence, but once I get to a certain point they will have to step back.

Since the trip I was stung by a yellowjacket on the bottom of my foot and that misery lasted a week. Work has been busy. Butterbeans have been picked, shelled, blanched, and frozen.

I got to see BERNIE at the Greensboro Climate Strike event! I don’t talk a lot of politics here but I have wanted Bernie for president since before he ever decided to run the first time. This was a real thrill for me.

And then there is the Greensboro chapter of the Tiny Pricks Project. That will have to be another post, another time.

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

Tapestry Weavers South: “A Strand, A Shape, A Story”

Laurie

I broke all the rules and took photos at the closing reception of the Tapestry Weavers South exhibit, “A Strand, A Shape, A Story,” that ran in the upper gallery of the North Carolina Folk Art Center from January to April 2018.

Many of these tapestries have moved on to Yadkinville, where they will reappear in an exhibition at the Yadkin Arts Center in June.

You can see the rest of the photos in my Flickr album. (Update: Hopefully it will still be there.) Some photos were blurry or had reflections from glass, and they won’t be there. It is worth clicking through to see the album, because this is a very fine show and I finally stopped loading them on this page because it was so hard to pick.

art, book arts, fiber art, tapestry, Tapestry Weavers South, weaving, whining, Wonderfulness

Tapestry Weavers South Show, plus a general update

Laurie

It’s been a busy time, but after this week I should have more time to devote to this blog as well as my artistic pursuits. I work at a university and graduation is tomorrow.

Since I last wrote, I made a travel journal for a friend who is retiring from the University, I began weaving on “Cathedral” again, and the 20th Anniversary Show of Tapestry Weavers South opened Tuesday night at the Yadkin Cultural Arts Center.

It is incredibly impressive for an unjuried show. Member weavers from Florida to Virginia to Oklahoma participated. I submitted “Labyrinth at Healing Ground” and here are a few other photos – I will upload the rest to my Flickr account. It was hard to choose because there is so much goodness in this show. What an honor it is to share a gallery with the artists of Tapestry Weavers South!

Also since I last wrote, the anti-inflammatory meds have started to kick in and I am feeling better and sleeping a little more. One reason I am not happy about the meds is that this is a time of year when there is a lot of celebrating, not to mention STRESS, and I am supposed to limit my alcohol intake. People, I love a beer or two at the end of the day, and I love to try different brews. Yes, I am one of those beer hipsters. Untappd has become one of my favorite apps. Plus, hello, vacation time? It is coming soon! So it is good and bad. It is good that I should be able to walk without pain, not so good that I will have to go to a great craft brewery area and be careful about drinking. I will take lots of Tums, believe me, because I can’t see me having this kind of self-control.

With less than two weeks to go until our big trip out West, I am not actually present in the moment most of the time. Anticipation is coursing through my veins.

The nice thing is that I will have a house-sitter who the cats are used to and they love her. There will be no worry over my critters, except for what the little hellions might do to Susanne. She set up a lot of her studio here last month and has been hosting a few classes here until she gets moved to her new place.

I have a very busy day on Saturday. First the Deep Roots Market annual owners’ meeting (which I feel obligated to attend after the Julia Sugarbaker style rant I delivered to the Board of Directors nearly a year ago), then LEE SMITH, one of my very favorite authors will be at Scuppernong Books in Greensboro, and then I have an appointment with my massage therapist late that afternoon. In between I’ll be getting the kitchen ready for the guy who Sandy hired to paint on Sunday. I have a feeling that I will disappear to my studio space at the church that day.

augggghhhh, Back Forty, butterbeans, coffee pot posts, depression/anxiety, fiber art, Marietta, Reading, tapestry, Tapestry Weavers South, weaving, whining

Sunday Morning Coffee Pot Post

Laurie

First, THIS article is helping me get back on track after a rather hellish month: 12 Little Known Laws of Mindfulness That Will Change Your Life.

I came back from Arrowmont with steadily worsening anxiety and physical problems, which peaked about three days ago. My pain level has gone from about an 8 to a 3 after two visits to my chiropractor and two visits to my massage therapist. I did resort to taking some pain meds left over from my mother’s stash on Thursday, but they were a kind that I’ve taken before and I cut them way down to the smallest level that still helped. Thank God the addict that worked in my house did not steal all of them. Also I made a DIY cervical collar out of a scarf.

Making all this worse was that I spent a week of clearing out my community garden plots and reduced my fall allotment to one 4×8 foot plot. They were so overgrown with cardinal climber vines over tall sunflowers and other monster mystery plants that others in the garden had staked them up and an email went out to all the gardeners (I was not the only offender, but I was one of the worst) and I got embarrassed. Sandy helped me dig up some plants to transplant into pots and the Back Forty at home, and some of the huge plants and roots. I was going to give it all up but I want to harvest my green cotton, and the director of the garden encouraged me to stay on now that I’ve gotten it down to a manageable size and state. I am very prone to being ashamed and none of this helped my mental or physical state!

However, now I feel very good about it and I planted peas and lettuce in the area that we cleared out. I have not tried planting these in late August before and it may be too hot for them to germinate. I guess that I will find out. The black compost that I mulched the bed with looks beautiful against the green plants. I didn’t do anything that strenuous and it did a lot for my soul.

I’ve gotten a great yield of butterbeans and field peas this year, enough to freeze some for this winter and Thanksgiving dinner.

Today I am taking it easy and I’ve been advised not to weave yet. I want to weave! I’m reading “All the Light We Cannot See” by Anthony Doerr on my Kindle through my local library on Overdrive. If you haven’t tried this app and you like to read, I recommend it highly. I made an account with my Greensboro Public Library card number and it is great for travel. I can get new audiobooks too, and a lot of popular audiobooks are available right away. You usually have to get in a hold line for bestsellers. My time on this one runs out today and I’ll have to get in line again to finish it.

I just finished reading Man in Profile, Joseph Mitchell of the New Yorker. I probably have written about this before, but Joseph Mitchell and I share a great-great grandfather, whatever cousin that makes us, and I did not know about his talent and international fame until after his death. None of my family did, as far as I can tell. I was told by my mother that “Cousin Joe” wrote for “some magazine up north” and that my great aunt thought that he hung the moon. When I found out that “some magazine” was the New Yorker, I started investigating and then obsessively tracked down all I could about him. His writing is brilliant and he is a native of Fairmont! Why wasn’t I taught about him in school? Why didn’t he have more publicity in his own home state, or county, or town, or even family? I feel cheated that I never got to meet him. Evidently he made many prolonged visits to Fairmont and he felt caught between the two worlds, such as I do most of the time.

We have signed a purchase contract with a buyer for Mama’s house in Marietta and Sandy and I will rent a UHaul cargo van to go down there and take some furniture to Lisa’s lake house and some back here to Greensboro. I purposely chose one that will be just big enough to hold a double bed and mattresses, a small chest of drawers, and my mother’s sewing machine. My house is too small to bring in more of her stuff, and part of the deal with the buyer is that she will finish dealing with what we leave, whether to use it or give it away or trash it. It needs to be done even though it breaks my heart. My mother spent 70 years in that house. I can’t do my part in helping to maintain it.

Work is pretty good. We have three new administrators in our department, all of whom I think that I can work well with.

I rallied enough to drive to Hickory (about 100 miles away) and back on Friday to attend the Carolinas subgroup of the Tapestry Weavers South meeting and potluck. We went to a tapestry exhibit at the Hickory Art Museum that was a collaboration between American artists and Yoruba weavers. Very, very good.

Pam has mounted my “98% Water” tapestry and I should have it in time to photograph and enter it into the American Tapestry Alliance biennial show. I really like the teal background we chose for it. I am nervous about it because I feel like I am jumping into the deep end. If it doesn’t get accepted I will have to get over it and keep working on my technique.

Two weeks from now I will be in Colorado, visiting my aunt and cousin and exploring a bit on our own. So there will be another travel blog post coming up after that.

I’ll post a few photos to this post at a later time – need to go rest my neck!