Stuff and the not so exciting stuff

By Kathe Todd-Hooker | January 6, 2010

Not as far as I would like to be, but with the studio cleaning and all of the other things i have had to do i at least have the hachures set up and the lace begun. if one looks really closely in some of the squares you can see the long jump diagonal soumack i am using to create the x’s in the lace. i am still deciding if i like it. Many of the diagonal crossbars are a little over .5 inches. the float of the soumack rides on the surface of the tapestry and adds a raised effect. it looks very much like embroidered cross stitch, but isn’t.

The Kona orange tapestry is a little further. i think it is the tapestry that i am going to send into the ATA unjuried show. Good thing i only have to send in the entry form and not the piece.

It’s that time of the year when I do resolutions, goal/ guilt setting stuff, and scrunge out the studio. It’s been a little harder this last week or so because I seem to have an inflamed nerve in a new place-my ear and scalp. O, well-could be worse-maybe. At least I am not dead and still have the energy to complain work and shake my fist at fate…Talk about trite sounding. I really don’t like woe is me, but it seems to be my mood.
For the year I am doing a photo journal-one picture a day and a couple of comments about design. I really wanted to do a daily weaving journal, but realized how impossible that might be when I take off and travel days to weeks at a time several times a year. I really didn’t want to set myself up for failure. I do enough of that accidentally with out planning it into a project. AND, doing a weaving journal entry ever day that I weave. I hate loosing the ideas that come unbidden and leave when not honoured. The photo journal is something i have wanted to do for a long time. I like the discipline of deadlines. Since it seems I have discipline only if i set a deadline to finish something. I think I have the personality of a grasshopper rather then the ant in the fable. Which would I rather be-ant grasshopper or butterfly? It is an endless debate as I get older. I know there is no butterfly in the fable, but I think there should be-look at the Monarch butterfly they get vacation in the mountains of Mexico-let alone flit around from flower to flower or idea to idea with no real responsibility. I wonder how long it would take before I was to bored to function?


Please note the reaction i sometimes get from the guys in the peanut gallery before i get my shots in for the day. Fortunately, they are usually in the mood to humour me as i try for one last perfect shot. Love you guys for your patience.

The good news is that the tapestry studio is just about scrunged out and reorganized. I look at some of the things that we have liberated from the corners. The ubiquitous plastic boxes I put everything into in hopes that by hiding it in a plastic box I can deal with it later-an unidentified later, of course. Seems i might be a closet hoarder, but in denial. My logic seems to be that if I put it into something I am really not hoarding. There once was a TV show called Weird, Indiana that had the lady next door storing everything including her children in “foreverware” with whom I tend to identify with. The same town that had a secret department for lost things–in “the loser” episode that all sock pairs missing one sock go to. You know the one sock that is always missing from a pair. The same department that hangers go to breed and take over or disappear into to every time you need one in a hurry. Another stash I wonder about is the cord saving place that we save all cords in because we might need the cord someday, but really have no clue to its relationship to any piece of equipment that is now in the studio or may be in the studio in the future. The cords last longer then the equipment it was meant to be used on. Or the stacks of magazines and papers I might need someday that just gets taller and forgotten because that time hasn’t been yet, but when you do need it you have either forgotten you have it or has mysteriously hidden between something. Something and cannot be found for love or money. Added a resolution that I will date all strange pieces of paper and put names by all phone numbers that I write on slips of paper for future reference. ( (ASIDE) Sorry I decided I wanted to look it up and it is Eerie, Indiana not Weird Indiana even though there is one.) Also, Chene’ seems to have found a new dessert wrapped electrical cords, but the cord has to be wrapped in a neat coil. He doesn’t touch attached cords. He chews through the coils so it ends up in thousands of little pieces waiting to disintegrate when least expected or wanted.

I am slowly weaving on my two pieces. The large format piece isn’t difficult. It just seems so large in scale. I keep wondering if I am really comfortable weaving this size-10 epi. I look at the maquette which is exactly half the size of the large format piece and wonder if it would really have been too much to weave a 2 foot tall needle thread tapestry at 20 epi. Then I think what and where would I use it? It wouldn’t fit the criteria of any show or exhibit that I enter. Probably not true, but it would be a hassle to find where it belongs. Sometimes weaving the lace feels so coarse, but it is exactly twice the size in warp sett-10 epi. Everything is twice the size of a 20 epi piece. but it feels odd. i will be interesting to see if it still feels over sized in a square foot or two.

Guess there is till no place like home even if you have to scrunge it out and reorganize it very occasionally.

Cheers for now!

HOME! Small format tapestry-20 epi-sewing thread. This is actually my backyard from a hill not to far from here.