Textiles and Tea was a great meeting with
who has long lived in New Mexico, and reveres the work and designs of the early people there, the Mimbres people. Though their pottery is known, no weaving remains, but she's sure they were weavers.
Her own designs echo their pottery and the petroglyphs she's studied where she lives.
Also a shepherd and natural dyer, she raises the sheep whose fleece she uses in her work, for both warp and weft, though she no longer spins it herself. She gets it machine spun for consistency.
And she's written on the natural dyes of her region.
You can see the influence of native peoples on her designs. She's worth following. And the Mimbres are worth studying.
From there downhill a bit to yesterday's library movie, another in the Katharine Hepburn celebration.
Her first movie, with Adolphe Menjou, Douglas Fairbanks and other stars of the time. Maybe it was the lighting, but they all looked very overlookable.
And after an hour of Hepburn (over)acting the gamut from A to B, to quote a critic of a live theater performance, I was nodding off and went home. She won an Academy award for this, why?
Anyway if you were thinking of checking this one out, I'd suggest, unless you're a serious student of the history of Hollywood movies, you do something more interesting instead! I'll be back next week in the hope of a better movie. though.
Happy day everyone, keep looking for a better option. There's a chance Ukraine might retrieve Crimea, let's hope.
Donna Foley gets gorgeous colours with her natural dyes!
ReplyDeleteWonderful minerals in New Mexico, as well as cochineal and madder. They're a far cry from the muted plant dyes you often see.
DeleteThose are big sheep Ms Foley has!
ReplyDeleteIt's a breed with a very long staple wool, really good for hand spinning.
DeleteI will be sure to miss that movie, Boud. I usually like Katherine’s work.
ReplyDeleteI think it's probably not easy to find anyway. She's done so many better things.
DeleteI was inspired by your meal yesterday and tried to do something similar for dinner using a mix of wheat flour and buckwheat flour with carrot, sweet peppers, onion, and fine chopped cauliflower. Seasoned with a little garam masala. Although my batter was too thick and I should have a used more wheat and less buckwheat, it turned out pretty good! Will definitely make adjustments and try again.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you tried it. And that you'll continue. Cooking is often an experiment.
DeleteI do believe it was Dorothy Parker who wrote that review of Hepburn's performance in Little Women. Dorothy Parker was one of a kind, wasn't she?
ReplyDeleteThank you, I'd forgotten who said it. Credit where due.
DeleteI love all the colours and the natural fibres. It would be so interesting to be able to take fleece from your animal, clean it and spin it. Eventually making something useful with it.
ReplyDeleteBut seriously it’s so much easier just to buy the yarn you need these days
I've taken a fleece from filthy, just off the sheep, washed, skirted, combed, carded, spun and dyed it and I wove tapestries with it. Total learning experience! Wonderful closeness to the fiber.
DeleteShe does beautiful weaving and the colors are vibrant. I really like the photo with her sheep. I know I can miss that film.
ReplyDeleteIf it suddenly shows up you might want to watch a bit, in case I'm just too demanding, though.
DeleteFabulous colors and designs. Nice to know we have female shepherds here. The only other with which I am familiar is Amanda Owen in Yorkshire.
ReplyDeleteI follow half a dozen women shepherds on Twitter. And that cream wool I made socks of recently is from the flock of Shepherd Susie! They're alive and well, just too busy with their flocks to do pr. Amanda is a writer and tv personality, so she does a lot of promotion. She's also a six foot tall former model! I love following her enormous, eight kids, family, all working on the farm when they're not at school, and even the littlest very adept with animals.
DeleteThat is really interesting about the female shepherds!
DeleteYou made me think and I realized i know to three women shepherds locally. One has sheep, two have alpacas. They all run the flocks solo. Two are you knitters and spinners.
DeleteA couple of extra words got in there, phone is trigger happy.
DeleteI think it took the old stage actors a while to realise they didn't have to exaggerate everything when they switched to screen. There are some very strange performances in those early movies.
ReplyDeleteYes! They were all throwing themselves in and out of rooms instead of just walking. And the number of times big arm movements narrowly missed the side of another actor's head! It would have been funny but it was so earnest it was embarrassing.
DeleteI do like her weaving and I especially like the bones, sticks, beads, etc. she incorporates into her weavings.
ReplyDeleteshe commented that a lot of the art happens after it's off the loom and she's working with meaningful objects to add
DeleteI can't say that I've seen a lot of Katherine Hepburn movies but my favourite was 'On Golden Pond' and her 'you old poop' quotes throughout. Would love to see that one again.
ReplyDeleteThe weavings are spectacular with such an amazing use of colour.
I haven't seen any of her movies, so the library presentations are all new to me.
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