Reflections............ September

That time of the year has come when one can become quite reflective. This seems a good opportunity to look back over the past four months when I have been a neglectful blogger!

September was a very eventful month. Three weeks of this month were dominated by my relatively new-found passion - tapestry weaving. I took part in a four-day course organised by my teacher Elaine Duncan, with Jean-Pierre Larochette and Yael Lurie as the instructors. Please go to this website to see some of their work. http://www.americantapestryalliance.org/Exhibitions/jplyl/Welcome.html

The other participants were mostly the local ladies that I see and weave with a couple of times a month. Two good friends from Washington State also came and so much time was also spent catching up with them.

Apart from learning many techniques to improve my tapestry weaving, Yael was also extremely inspirational regarding the design process. It takes as long, if not longer, for her to design the tapestry as it does for JP to weave it! This was a revelation for me ...... I want to design my tapestry in a couple of hours, or I make it up as I go along. In September I resolved to spend more time on my designing - this has yet to happen!

The photos above show Elaine, JP & Yael in the classroom and Yael's design process from the incredibly detailed cartoon, to a painting and then the final tapestry. This design is called Yosemite and it is from their Water Songs series. It was my least favourite of this collection, but after Yael talked us through her process, I came to understand and therefore appreciate/like it more.

While we were taking the class, their Water Songs tapestries were being exhibited in the gallery next door, along with various tapestries of their students on the theme of corn. Following the course, our local group also exhibited in the same gallery. Soon I will post about these events on my other blog http://www.discontinuousweft.blogspot.com