Dec 30

Dec 30 Woven Walks

The overloaded postal system this year made me decide to hand-make one of the biggest presents I gave this year. My cheap loom is still holding a work-in-progress that’s large and a bit complicated and taking quite a while, so I bought a second cheap Ikea children’s loom and got started on a landscape that’s sort of similar to the first ever tapestry I made.

The trouble is, I got worried about attempting to replicate that first tapestry too much, because I like it and I liked making it, and then there was the worry about not having the same beginner’s mind. So, I dug around in my pictures from walks this year, and chose different elements (colours, objects, structures) from various scenic views.

The first picture was the main inspiration. It’s a view from near the stone circle at Hordron Edge. I kept the rock in the foreground, the dry stone wall that cuts across the hill, Ladybower Reservoir in the centre of the picture, and Win Hill looming over it. Then, I used the other pictures to transform the Autumnal scene into something brighter and sketched in out in coloured pens on paper. That became my plan, and the weaving was easy after that!

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