The oak trees are turning in my yard. The nights are getting cooler and the wind is blowing, bringing in change with the turning of the year. Tomorrow is All Hallows Eve and the change from the light to the dark part of the year. I have always enjoyed the fall and winter most. In weaving terms we would say that the warp is advancing with the turning of the leaves. I am making warm cozy scarves in colors of autumn. They will leave me with hopes that they will keep others warm as they walk their paths through the world. As the year begins to turn may the Holy Goddess hold you close in the palm of her hand and wrap you warmly to keep out the chill.

Weaving as metaphor is on my mind a lot lately. The warp of life is the intention, focus and belief. The weft is the actions we take daily. The cloth we come out with depends greatly on how closely we adhere to the warp. Weaving as an activity slows us down and takes our pace in life to a more sane level. It is hard to hurry in weaving and all the steps have to be completed in order or the whole thing falls apart. But then when you get all of it threaded and ready to weave there is a nice rhythm in the throwing of the shuttle back and forth and it frees the mind to wander down other roads. It is too bad in our culture that most things are not done by hand any longer because I think the mind benefits from life being slowed down to a more humane pace. As I throw the shuttle I like to think about the person who may wear my scarf or shawl. I enjoy the sense that this piece of cloth may keep them warm or provide some kind of comfort. I always hope that they realize that each piece is made by hand with the intention and focus of bringing something useful and beautiful into the world. That is the great gift of handmade craft that a machine lacks. May your warp be straight and true.

Fall gets me all jazzed up and ready to go. This picture is of the ruby red scarf I wove last week. The color made me want to wallow in RED for days! Chenille is so soft it hardly seems possible. I am weaving scarves two at at time on the loom now to get ready for the Christmas Gallery our art association has. It is a great way to interact with the community every year.

The next scarves are deep dark chocolate!

This weekend was cold and rainy. It inspired me to get busy for the upcoming holiday galleries that I participate in. Red seemed a good color on a gray day to chase away the winter blahs. This is part of a series of four scarves in red chenille.

The rain has cleared away this morning and the dog and I set out on our usual walk enjoying the wet and sunshine. Lots of scattered leaves on the ground. The birds moving through the area seem to be different that the summer ones, maybe these are migrating through.

Summer is my least favorite season. Now that fall is officially here I feel ready to tackle all kinds of projects and find that there are rarely enough hours in the day for all I want to do. Now my energy is divided between weaving and painting, when I'm doing one I'm often thinking of the other.

This white shawl is one I wove in the late summer. It has a kind of long eyelash yarn that sticks out all over giving it a furry soft feel. I entered it in our local art show last week and was pleased to win a second place with it. Unless it sells at the show it is probably destined for an auction to aide our local Humane Society. What good is art if it does not allow us to contribute to our favorite causes?

It is gray and rainy here this morning. On my smaller loom is a warp for two red scarves that will go to the Christmas gallery later in the year. I like to think of someone getting one of my pieces as a present and always hope they are as entranced with the colors and textures as I am. www.quillinfiberarts.com

The shawl that took so much time to put up on the loom wove up quickly. The colors are like a twilight and there is more blue than shows in this picture.

Fall is on its way today, it is cool and windy out. A good day for art because the colors are crisp and clear. I've been out in the painting studio getting things in order there to begin painting again. Autumn never lasts long enough.

An alpaca from the Wool Festival. They are smaller than Llamas and have finer grade fiber. This little guy has blue eyes. He was not sure about all the strange people wanting to touch him and he watched them carefully.

I can't decide if it really takes longer to thread a straight draw on eight harness than four or if it only seems longer. Today I will be finishing the threading for the next shawl on the Herald loom, it does seem to take a long time. For some reason yesterday all that threading of heddles made me want to get back to the oil painting. I have been struggling with a large canvas of iris for several months and finally made some good progress yesterday afternoon. Maybe oil painting and weaving go well together because they are so different, yet both are so reliant on color. Now that it is fall the colors around me seem so much more vibrant. Wherever you are I hope you are able to get out and enjoy your day!

Since my weather is cold and foggy I thought I would share another image of the wool festival. All the beautiful things I saw have inspired me to work on new ideas here at home. Yesterday I measured a warp that will use some new hand dyed yarn as a weft. This will be the first shawl on the Herald loom. I am still trying to get the rods the correct length. It had short rods when it came to me and I had new ones cut but they are a little too long and will have to be trimmed to size. One of my errands this morning is having the front rod trimmed down about three inches.

One thing northern New Mexico does is inspire you to try new color combinations. There are so many beautiful browns, golds and blues up there in the landscape that it is great inspiration for weaving. The chamisa was in bloom.

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Some scenes for you from the Wool Festival in Taos. It was in a beautiful setting, Kit Carson park with the tents all arranged in a huge circle. There were lots of fiber animals on hand and sheltered from the rain that came on and off all day. Lots of beautiful yarn and raw fibers. The entertainment was folk music and there were some food vendors making sure everyone was fed. One of the interesting things about Taos is that everyone seems to take their dogs everywhere. So there were all kinds of dogs and almost more animals than people at this faire. The black and white guy at the top in the red halter is a very sweet llama, next to him are two merino sheep wearing coats to protect their coats and the bunny at the bottom is an angora. While I was tempted to bring the llama and the bunny home I settled for great yarn from Brooks Farm instead www.brooksfarmyarn.com in silk and merino. There were spinners with wheels and rovings that outnumbered the yarn merchants. There were not many people selling finished handwoven goods and I'm guessing that was because most of the people at the faire were weavers. It was a great event and now time to get back to the weaving at hand!

Today I am heading off to the Wool Festival in Taos. If I were a quilter this would be like going to the quilt show in Houston. Kind of a holy grail for this genre. So the blog will be quiet until next week unless I am lucky and am able to get internet access on the trip.

Until then, happy weaving to you.

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Summer has made a return here in October. The flowers in my garden are still beautiful and the days warm but not too hot to enjoy being outside. The mornings are cool and that is a great relief.

It has been a quiet week here for weaving. Instead of working on the looms I have been mostly finishing up a couple of projects to enter into the local art show. It was the only weaving entered and so was put in with misc. This small town has never had enough weavers to form a guild or even a group. Token weaver! www.quillinfiberarts.com

This picture looks so promising. Actually when I took this particular shawl off the loom it had a bad case of ugly. The variegated chenille looked so much like a 1970's reject that I was amazed. Even with the best of intentions it is hard to predict how something will turn out until you have done it at least once.

The Herald loom has a scarf on it that I plan to finish today. It is in the twill stars pattern in black and gold. It is about time to start something new.

Today it seems as though summer is having a last fling. These roses from my garden have loved the cooler weather and are lasting a long time. Finally finished the two shawls from last week and will get them washed and dried today so they can be sewn together. Perhaps one of them will be entered in the local art show later this week. Time to get busy with the scarves for the holiday season.

The dog and I had a good long walk this quiet Sunday morning. There was one else out on the trail so we shared the silence with the birds and bunnies. Some of the trees are beginning to turn which took me by surprise as I had not noticed that earlier in the week.

Spent most of yesterday working on setting up my website. It took quite a while as the software used by register.com doesn't work well with AOL. The great part is that it is up and working and now the shawls I have been working on are pictured. Hope you enjoy looking.

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