What's Up Tigerlily?

Rugs and flowers everywhere.  The mad weaver is back again with a vengeance.  This weekend 3 rugs off the loom and I already have 1 inch of tapestry started on my new tapestry weaving.  I am using a New Mexico sky color from Rose Vigil in Chimayo and my hands are turning bluer with every pass of the shuttle.  That must be because of the indigo.  I can't wait to  see the effect of the sky turning color with this wool.

Here is one of the new rugs. I seem to have a thing for terra cottas and oranges in the past few week.  Not usually my colors, but these rugs just seem to kind of emerge out of my mind and finger tips.  Sounds strange, I know, but I never know what it is going to turn out like. That's why weaving is exciting to me.  Actually all craft is.  Fiber has a life of it's own.  No two people will follow the same pattern or use the same colors and have their work turn out identical.  It's fun.  And we all need more fun.

Counting the Days

We are headed to New Mexico at the end of this coming week for our summer vacation.   I love living where I live now in the Northwest corner of Arkansas, but I actually long to live near Taos, New Mexico, an area that claimed my heart just 3 years ago.  We purchased 10 acres out west of the Rio Grande Gorge near Taos last year and we can dream on from there with some ground under our feet.

West of Taos lies the Carson National Forest and the wonders it hold as the highway winds toward the west and north.

This is one  of the prettiest places I have ever been.  Between Snowbird and Alta in the Wasatch Mountains north of Salt Lake City.  A tapestry project is definitely in order for this Wasatch Mountains shot.  I had better get to work...

Off the Loom

Here is a scarf I made about a year ago in Koigu.  I had never used the yarn before, but always admired the colorways and the wonderful scarves and shawl I had seen in magazines and on blogs.  This is my first attempt at any kind of lace pattern.  My fiber twin sister adapted the pattern and I have two more scarves on the needles.

A busy weekend it was here in weaving wonderland.  I finished off five rugs and looped loopers for two more rugs before I start my Southwestern weave tapestry in wool.  Yes that's right wool in 90+ degree weather in July in Arkansas!

Here are two of the rugs.  I am using the deck to see how they look in natural light as opposed to inside.

I am also finishing up a third shawl in a different color palette than I normally use...I am trying to diversify.

Independence

Another 4th of July has passed.   

Hopefully the fireworks are gone and I can sleep with the windows open tonight and my dogs can quit shaking and walking under my feet because they don't like the  sounds that the neighbors are making to show their independence.  This photo courtesy of my friend Ricardo.

Have you ever really thought about the word, or what the freedoms we have really mean?  I found a lot in the online dictionary.  Here is my favorite.

In`de*pend"ence\, n. [Cf. F. ind['e]pendance.]

1. The state or quality of being independent; freedom from dependence; exemption from reliance on, or control by, others; self-subsistence or maintenance; direction of one's own affairs without interference.

Let fortune do her worst, . . . as long as she never makes us lose our honesty and our independence. --Pope.

2. Sufficient means for a comfortable livelihood.

Declaration of Independence (Amer. Hist.), the declaration of the Congress of the Thirteen United States of America, on the 4th of July, 1776, by which they formally declared that these colonies were free and independent States, not subject to the government of Great Britain.

A Break in the Weather

Afternoon thunderstorm aftermath.

Everything steaming from the heat and rain.

Weekend oasis.

Let's take more pictures of wool in 98 degree weather!

I am on a roll. The colors look so good outside and it is so green here it just makes everything pop including the top of the thermometer.  Record 105 heat index here earlier this week and the trend continues.  What am I doing dragging all this wool around?

Well, I guess because it is fun.  And I love color!  Can you tell?  I could live my whole life from here on out just doing fiber things. Too bad we have to work for a living, eh?

This is the first afghan I knitted I used the same wool/silk blend from 

Noro in it that I did the shawls in.  Iro, my favorite yarn for a long time until I discovered the joys of all those other yarns and handspuns and roving and fleeces and then it all went to

 he** in a handbasket after that I wa

s on a fiber rollercoaster.  I could not get enough and I don't know when it is ever going to stop.

Truthfully, I don't want it to ever stop.  I have found more joy playing with wool and silk and alpaca and angora and  all the other things one can make yarn out of than I ever had doing all the other things I did for 40 years to amuse myself. 

 Now I might be going a little too far because the other thing that really brings me joy is flying my little plane in and out of our backyard airstrip.

  I wonder if I can weave , knit or crochet something for my sweet little 16juliet?  A cowl cover perhaps?

and they said I was a child of the 60's?

I don't think the 60's were really my time, I mean I was only in my early teens in 67.  OOps!  Don't mean to tell too much.  Now the 70's I really grooved in the 70's.

Proof positive here I would say in the pictures of my 2 new shawls.  I can't figure out which to use.  I will probably just start over.  It is sad when the only place you have enough room to take a photo is on the floor  because you have got stash piled up everywhere else.   OK.  I have an idea I will take them outside like my friends who have blogs and etsy sites do.

Here is the mistake shawl in close up.  I put double the stitches in that were called for in the pattern.  I will be really warm this winter in it.

Oh my!! Why did I go outside to shoot pictures of wool/silk shawls when it is 89 degrees with 98% humidity?  No one wants to look at shawls now, except me...