Wooly weekend

My weekend was spent surrounded by fiber, which was very good because it was a chilly but beautiful one in Kit Carson Park.  For everyone involved in the 29th annual Wool Festival in Taos, life revolves around the animals and fibers they produce.  Sheep fleeces represent the largest part, but alpaca, llama, and rabbit also provide lustrous additions to the mix.  The vendors are incredibly dedicated to their animals, and to the exactness of the arts and crafts they produce. 

My husband, Fred, a real Renaissance Man, who has been both an architect and commercial airline pilot, is a weaver of Rio Grande and architectural style rugs.  He uses 100% Navajo churro wool from Connie Taylor, the national registrar for churro sheep in the United States.  She hand-dyes all the wool in the most amazing palette of colors.

When Fred is working on a rug, using a Rio Grande style walking loom, he generally does a combination of one color lines, shooting a shuttle across the width of the loom.  When tapestry is used to create a specific shape, it requires feeding pieces of wool under every other strand of warp (the vertical strands you see on the loom below that become the fringe at the end of the rug).  This process is reversed going the opposite direction after the using the beater bar to tightly pack the previous run of wool.

Here is a photograph of Fred and his loom with a rug in progress.  The turquoise designs at the end of the rug are considered tapestry.

One of his Frank Lloyd Wright/Charles Rennie Mackintosh-inspired pieces that was on display at the Taos Fall Arts Festival.

until next Monday

DB

a passion for the image