Saturday, March 10, 2012

Tales of a Traveling Weaver, Alamosa

... the next adventure...



Here I am living between Alamosa and Monte Vista Colorado. Again.
I didn't think I'd come back to the SLV (San Luis Valley), not because it isn't a beautiful place with great people, but because I really expected my trails to lead me other places.  But the way was clear for 6 months living near my sister, brother-in-law, and new niece. I moved here two days before she was born and already everything is changing before my eyes. Kids grow fast. And it seems my life does lately too.




I live in the midst of center pivot farms. There are cranes and skunks and sheep here. The neighbors behind me have a herd of some kind of big sheep which occasionally wanders toward my back yard. And the sheep dog made friends with my labrador Cassy the other day...



I'm moved into the new house. I started a new job "moonlighting" as an occupational therapist. I'm working hard on the weaving. I finished the commission this week, "finished" being a relative term as I just mean it came off the loom and all the tapestry weavers out there know how much more work is needed to get the piece to the new owner. 

I pulled out the LeClerc tapestry loom that was my grandmothers and stared at it puzzled for quite awhile as I realized I had never warped a large vertical loom like this one and I didn't know how to do it! Oh, I had some ideas, but none of them seemed quite right. I was looking for a way to put on a continuous warp like I do on the smaller vertical tapestry looms, but couldn't come up with something that would work well for a long warp. I unrolled the old linen warp my grandmother had on the loom and found that the top beam had gotten wet at some point when she had the loom as the warp was molded to the apron. This was minor damage and will be remedied fairly easily.  As for the warping, Tommye Scanlin came to my rescue and I think I now have a warping plan. All I have to do is dig a long enough reed out from under piles of book boxes in my storage locker 90 miles from here. If you don't hear from me soon, look under the books and loom parts.


Thanks to my father for putting the LeClerc back together when I was busy with other things, to my Uncle Carl for good suggestions of how to get the rust off the rods where they got wet, and to Tommye for warping suggestions. 





3 comments:

  1. What a beautiful view to have while weaving, Rebecca! Lucky you!

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  2. Your windows are wonderful! This so much remindes me of how Silvia Heyden's studio room at her home looks, with glorious natural light coming in.

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  3. How wonderful to have your grandmother's loom! It's good to know another tapestry weaver is her in Colorado, even if just for awhile again.

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