Last day of my misspent youth!

My friends, I come to you on birthday Eve, the last day of my youth....tomorrow I'll be.....um, 71, definitely starting to be ancient, heh.

In fact inside I feel very young indeed, full of ideas and verve and loopiness, and it's quite a surprise to see this clean, respectable old lady looking at me in the mirror! I have a ton of blessings to count, so that will keep me busy for a while.

Meanwhile, back at the loom...weaving on the last panel of the three part tapestry, and now I'm finally learning a thing or two about weaving tapestry. I am very happy that I spun and dyed and am now weaving quite a bit of yarn for this project, and mixing it with other stuff that's lying around and works in with the color family.



I am still using the picture frame, hand organized loom, just warped with stout string (they won't let you put it on parcels any more so you have to find SOME use for it), with no nails or tension adjustments or any fancy stuff like that.

With any luck, this three part piece will grace the opening exhibit of our posh new gallery in the posh new library, which is still being built, and I will credit my co-conspirators in this venture: Carol Q,, who gave me the spindle on which the spinning was done, plus lovely roving to learn on, and Paula L. who donated the fleece which taught me a ton of stuff in the process of washing and combing and carding and dyeing and spinning it.

One reason I am anxious to get this done in good time to exhibit is that one of the principles of the new gallery, agreed to heartily by Jinny B, the director and co-conspirator of hundreds of projects with me, too many to keep count and blame her for, anyway, where was I, oh yes, one of the principles of this gallery is that we plan to break down the artificial boundaries between Art and Craft, by honoring it all as art, no matter what the materials used, and my tapestry is my first shot in this effort.

The Dick Blick catalog just came, the big fat annual one, of art supplies you never heard of and suddenly NEED, and there's a new section on weaving, including a couple of tempting little tapestry looms. But after admiring the pictures for a while, I once again conclude that I'm doing just fine with my own version,and have all kinds of big plans for the big stretchers S. gave me recently, anyway. I may knock a few nails into them, since they're a bit big for free warping with no supports, but other than that I think I'm technically up to speed.

Speaking of which I finally mastered the art of cropping with my digi, took a while, it just didn't work with my old slow laptop, so I think it was a memory issue, but with this little fast netbook, it does. I am a purist in taking pix, believing you crop with your eye before you snap the shutter, so what you have seen in this blog up to now is exactly what I've taken, no artificial aids, other than sharpening up the light a bit to compensate for low winter natural light.

However, when it comes to trying to show you details of artwork, I think that cropping is okay. Now this may be a function of my finally having learned how to do it, but we'll pass quickly over that thought and I can show you the current state of the tapestry, panel three, blue family.



What I've put up is about a quarter of the length of what will be the finished work, but I've closed in on the actually completed part, to see how it looks. Once again stuff is happening that I never realized while I was working on it.

I often think that art is a picture of the inside of the artist's mind, whether she knows it or not. It certainly is an illustration for any artist, of coming face to face with yourself.

And, on a more frivolous note, Saturday's dessert, my first try at a crumble, is here for your viewing pleasure.



Plum crumble, please pronounce this Yorkshire style: Ploom Croomble, made with a bunch of Italian plums I froze in August, because they were so good this year. This went over just fine as the conclusion of a meal of homemade soup and garlic bread, for HS and HP and me last Saturday.

Since HS puts in hours with us each Saturday, including personal care for HP, I figured he ought to start out with a decent lunch before I vanish out to play for the afternoon.

Okay, folks, see you when I get old, um that will be after midnight or soon thereafter...exit trailing filmy robes with heavenly music in the background...litle clink of champagne glasses off stage...