Oh, so close.

It is exciting when you see the finish line on a project.  It is also hard to keep from being impatient to be done. This is the time when it is easy to get sloppy, to say, “oh, that’s good enough.”  But now it the time to be even more careful.  Now is the time to make sure it is finished well. 

I am about 5” from the end of this long, long project.  I anticipate that I will finish it before classes start so I can switch my concentration to other thing.  This has been a good, creative summer, one that I have enjoyed.  Yes, I am still teaching both online and face to face but it doesn’t seem as onerous as last summer.  Perhaps I am getting the hang of using my time well and enjoying the slow pace of the season. It is not necessary to have whole swaths of time to myself, it is enough that I know I will have time almost every day to weave.  Sometimes it is a few hours, sometimes I am lucky to get one hour.  But whatever time I have I take it for what it is, time. 

As I work on my samples for City Life I see that I have set a whole new group of challenges.  I am sooo not satisfied with my first attempt at faces but I have a plan to help me improve.  I will be on holiday with my mother for the next couple of weeks and in anticipation of a lot of time on a bus I put together a small (10” X 14”) loom that I am warping to the specs of the large tapestry.  I plan to use it to practice faces, necks and hair.  I think I can work on quite a few small faces while we are traveling from one place to another.  It will be small enough to put in my backpack and work on in the tight space of the bus.  It certainly is better than reading, that’s for sure.

Summertime and the weaving in easy

There is nothing better than having time to do some real weaving and the summertime is the best time for that.  Being in academia I am lucky to have three months to kick back and really concentrate on my tapestry.  Which is just what I have been doing. 

It is really starting to look like a parking lot as you can see.  I am starting to work on the linear perspective of the wall and trying to get those bricks integrated.  It is not really visible in this image but I am using the flying shuttle approach on the vertical lines of the individual bricks while working out the diagonals between the rows.  Hopefully they will be more visible in the next go round. 

As you can see the dark element of the asphalt has lightened up quite a bit and is trailing off into the lighter surroundings.  I think I will continue the line all the way up the piece wandering back and forth just to give it a visual continuity.  I think it makes more sense than just letting it disappear. 

What I am pleased with is the shadowing between and below the cars, especially on the left hand side.  In this image they scan quite nicely.  The cars themselves are starting to come together and the whiter windows (although hard to see here) are showing up well using the highly polished DMC. 

In the meantime I am trying to work out how to do figures for the City Life tapestry that is next up.  I expect to get to it by the fall so I am continuing to sample.   

I am working on this image of my nephew Shawn posing with a street performer and boy is it difficult!  Not only is is very small but it has a lot of detail, especially in the performers costume (I am losing the flag, I don’t like it).  But the hardest parts have got to be the faces which are proving to be quite a challenge.  I had the performers face and chest done but the weft was too thick and it was way too ribby.  So I spent my Tuesday study group time ripping it back out.  Right now I have an arm and chest back in place and I think it looks better.  I want to get a bit farther before I publish it so stay tuned…

So I am working hard weaving, unweaving, weaving, unweaving etc, etc.  By the time I am ready to do the real tapestry I will be much more confident about the different elements. I think if I had not done the sampling I might have given it up as too difficult. But now I think I will be ready for it when the time comes.  So until the next update don’t let work get in the way of life.  Find time to do what you love.  For me is weaving, what is it for you?