Where oh where has October gone?

 Somehow the month of October has evaporated... 

We spent a week in New Mexico seeing the Balloon Fiesta (AMAZING!), an annular eclipse, and a whole mess of family... then spent a few days in Santa Fe...  Atrisco at the DeVargas Mall had by far the best red chili we had all trip... 

We did see Meow Wolf and my first reaction is that they must have had a 6 figure epoxy budget! I think it could be interesting to revisit with some time to try to solve the mystery, find all the rats, all without the kid traffic that was there on a weekend afternoon. 

But back to work... 

• I've been knitting away at Shiny, it's slow going (super thin yarn, and it doesn't get a lot of time, so I'm good with that!)
• I skeined up the rest of the goat yarn I'd plied and am looking forward to finishing the plying.
• I got back into the mosaic studio (it needs a good cleaning) and promptly bled all over the place while I finished the border on the table, set in the two already cut poppies, and cut 3 more.  I think the number of poppies will be 7? or 9? I had a plan for the non-poppy part of the table but I'm rethinking it...  Next step is to finish the poppies and to design the next project. Stepping stones or table top? Hmmm.... I can design while I finish the table. I do want to set some of the crash glass into a piece with regular stained glass and grout to see what it looks like. That might inform some of the design decisions.
• I started making the sheep shirt. The double gauze is fussy and unpleasant to work with. I tried once more to do Ronda's method of not using a back collar facing and after doing it a few times, I just don't like it; mine always looks messy. So IF I make another camp shirt, I'll do a back facing. 
• I started threading the ikat but have not progressed on it.
• I'm still weaving the rugs but having a hard time with too little vs too much weft... So the first rug is unpleasantly either too sparse or bumpy. The second rug (I'm 1/3 through) is better and I think I'm finally getting it. I suspect after steaming and some use they'll be fine as next to the bed rugs but I'm currently not pleased.
• I had done a drawing for a lino block; I need new cards; I think I mentioned the "linked figures" on the 6000 year old Persian vase that I'd seen in a museum in Boston; today I carved two of the figures (I call them dancing women) on lino and should be doing some test prints and cards later this week. I invested in a new setup for registration so that should be fun to play with.

I love this vessel

I realize I'll be heading out on vacation in about 6 weeks so will need to figure out what I can take with me, what I can finish before I go, what I can leave for when I get back. More on that later.

What I'm not doing is spending anytime with the images I capture when I'm traveling, and no time on analysis of the things that I see that intrigue me. That drove me to decide I need to do 3 pieces of art from the photos I capture this year; and I need to create a space for inspirations (photos and discussion). Kind of like an artists diary.

I spent some time with a lovely book of samples from the Complex Weavers "Cross Country Weavers group" and was awed at what they produced... I dutifully sent the binder off to it's next destination but realized as it left that I learned almost nothing from it. I would think that I could come up with a one pager detailing what I saw and learned... That would also be something to add to the inspirations space.

So there will be a few posts named or tagged inspirations where I mention some of the things that I see that intrigue or delight me! I'll start on the first one now.

Inspiration Post #1

 Here are some of the things that have delighted me recently...

This table runner at a AirB&B in Santa Fe. Yarn was relative thin, maybe 16/2, warp dominant to warp faced, thicker (red) weft, with bands of supplemental warp. It has a hand similar to rep but the yarns were much finer than I'm used to. The color progression is so happy.

I was/am inspired by the Cross Country Weavers notebook; the instructions that came with the notebook mentioned it was okay to take a couple of photos but I feel it would be wrong to post those to a public blog. Sometime in the future I'll talk about what I did photo and what it's meant to me as inspiration.

Kelly Mondola Koza talked to our Guild this month on textiles from Sardinia; it was a fascinating discussion. I captured a couple of images. from samples she passed around.  I like way these bursts of color are inserted, and the color combos are fantastic.

This was also from Sardinia... I didn't identify the weave but thought it would be an interesting block structure.

I saw this at Farm and Table in Albuquerque, and then saw a shy bird that looked just like it. I'd like to try to lino block this. I feel bad about copying someone else's image... but I'm not doing it commercially, just doing it for practice. I'd put this on the list of copying someone else's work to learn the technique. I'm betting it's a screen print, not a block print... I like the way the lines from the plant seem to flow effortlessly into the lines of the bird feathers.