Welcome!
Welcome to my first blog post ever! This is not something that I had ever even thought of doing before, but life is very different now and it’s clear that I need to adapt to the times and have other ways of connecting with you.
In early March I flew to Washington DC to attend an annual board meeting for Andean Textile Arts, and followed that with a three-day workshop in rural Virginia. When I flew back home on Friday the 13th the mood at the airport was quite different since it had just been announced that flights into the U.S. would be suspended after midnight the next day. Normally I would be preparing notebooks for my next teaching trip and I would be flying to Chicago tomorrow for two workshops. Instead I have been watching emails roll in with news of decisions to cancel or postpone workshops until an uncertain time in the future.
Every time this happens I am filled with a profound sense of sadness because I so love being on the road teaching weaving, seeing old weaving friends, and meeting new ones. Weavers are such nice people! They pick me up at the airport, take me home, show me their studio, feed me wonderful food. Then the next morning they drive me to the workshop, where I meet a roomful of more wonderful weavers who are excited to learn about doubleweave, color and design. What an amazing life! What could be better?
Yet here I am - and I also feel incredibly fortunate that I am here. I’ve always wished that there could be two of me - one to be out there traveling and sharing what I do with other weavers, and one to stay at home and enjoy the beauty and tranquility of this place on the outskirts of Santa Fe. And now I get to find out what that is like.
I see a bit of what other weavers’ lives are like when I teach a workshop where you live, stay with one of you in your guild, meet some great dogs (Hi Waldo! Hi Guinness! Hi Vince!), get shown the highlights of your part of the country, hear your stories. I feel privileged that I get to get to experience slices of life that I wouldn’t have otherwise. Now it’s my turn. I have never been a natural journal keeper, but I do like to tell stories. Now I will share with you a bit about where I live, what my life is like, stories from my travels, stories from my past lives.
Welcome to my home. I know that the desert southwest isn’t for everyone, with it’s subtle coloration and sparse vegetation. But something about it connects straight to my soul, and has ever since the first time my parents took us on a road trip here when I was nine years old. Yes, it’s dry here, but when I look out at the endless expanse of blue sky I get the same feeling that I used to get looking out over the ocean when I lived on the west coast. I’ve lived in a number of wonderful places, both in this country and in different parts of the world, but this is where I feel most at home. Once I moved here, a little over twenty years ago, I stopped thinking about where I might want to live next.
That’s Ella Bella, our wonderful, recently rescued dog under the piñon pine. I live here with her and my partner, Nelson. I won’t say that I bought this house for the hallway lined with built-in bookshelves, but they were definitely one of the reasons that I knew it was where I was meant to be. I had previously always lived in very small houses and never had enough room for my yarn. As soon as I saw these shelves I imagined having all my cones of yarn lined up on them in chromatic order where I could see them every day.
My weaving studio is a room in our house, which is especially nice now that we need to shelter at home. It’s not a huge studio, but it’s big enough to hold my trusty 8-shaft Gilmore loom and my 32-shaft Louet Megado compudobby. My Mountain table loom lives in the garage most of the time, but gets brought to the window seat (banco in southwest lingo) in the living room when I want to work on it. Warping and designing happen at the kitchen counter. It’s a pretty organic flow through the house from one activity to another. Not a bad place to be quarantined. I hope that you are all staying healthy and enjoying some quiet weaving time at home too!
