work in progress

Last time I updated you on my work in progress, there were five projects underway.  Now there are four.

The tapestry diary continues, of course, with a little bit of weaving done each day, except for days I am travelling.  We are in the midst of the six-month-long "green season" of Ordinary Time, and I am weaving a different leaf each day.  On the Sunday we learned of the horrible mass shooting in Orlando, it seemed right to weave a dark brown leaf rather than a green one.  Since then, mass murders and terror attacks in various locations at home and abroad have followed at a sickening pace. The brown leaves have multiplied.  Yesterday's recognizes those 19 disabled residents killed in a knife attack near Tokyo.  As I was weaving today's gold-green leaf, top center, I heard of a new attack and so the right half of the leaf is brown.  At this rate I wonder if at some point the green leaves will become the exception and the rest of the diary will be mostly dark.

Molly Elkind Tapestry Diary 7-27-16

I have ripped out and rewoven part of the small WTF tapestry. This is another piece originally inspired by my grief over the murders in Orlando.  Below the weaving you can see the original watercolor.

Molly Elkind, WTF in progress

On a brighter note, I am finally done with dithering, tweaking, sampling and just plain procrastinating on my next big Mary tapestry.  Yesterday I wound the warp for it and today I am going to begin to warp the loom.  Finally!  I'm very excited to start weaving.  Here's the sample weaving I've done for colors, values and shapes.  I'm leaving this sample on the loom in case I need to do more as I weave, but I think I know now what I need to know to begin.

Molly Elkind, sample for next Mary piece

And I treated myself to these cute fabric bins to organize the yarn for this project.  Since I work in our family room I thought something nicer than shoeboxes was called for.

Now that class preparation for Convergence is wrapped up (yay!), this morning I returned to my daily collage practice.  The assignment (from Randel Plowman's book The Collage Workbook) was to be inspired by your horoscope.  I'm not a huge believer in horoscopes but this one, about being in tune with the physical world and creatively inspired by it, seemed OK.

I hope that wherever you are, you're finding time for your own creative explorations!