Luminosity and color

Besides being a weekend of truly spectacular fall color in northern New Mexico, the first weekend of October brings vendors of fiber and fiber products from Colorado, Texas, and New Mexico to Kit Carson Park in Taos for the annual Taos Wool Festival.  In addition to vendors, people hailing from nearly every state of the union and countries around the world, plan their holidays around this festival.

I spent the weekend of the 30th Wool Festival in my husband, Fred's, booth showing his Navajo churro rugs, preaching the gospel of churro wool, watching other vendors, and greeting all the dogs that made their way into the park with their owners.

Here is one of those churro sheep now.

In an odd way, Wool Festival is a bit like Las Vegas.  Although there are no neon signs flashing, the masses of color jolts the senses.  Here are a few examples.

Some of the colors and designs in Fred's rugs

For me, other than lusciousness, the words that describes much of the fiber on display are luminosity and luster.

Thanks to all the truly amazing vendors involved in the festival - to Lisa Shell, owner of Kai Ranch, and Donna Coates, owner of White Rabbit Handspun - for allowing me to hang around their booths and photograph their work.  Of course, Connie Taylor, registrar for churro sheep in the United States, has and remains the energy behind churro sheep, and provides Fred with the lovely wool with which he produces his rugs. 

until next Monday,

DB

a passion for the image

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