Here are the first two small tapestries of a series of four. This is "Earth" and "Fire." Guess what the other two will be!

I took a piece of the cardboard box that I used for my tapestry bag and decided to work that part of the design in different colors. The loom is just string wrapped around a piece of cardboard with slits cut across the top and bottom - nothing expensive or complicated about that! I used some of the multitudes of leftover scraps of wool yarn that I have hoarded over the years.

These are 4 x 6 inches each and could be used for fabric postcards if I wanted to go that way...I think that I will mount them together as a wall piece though. The challenge is getting them mounted and maybe framed. Once I'm done weaving, it is very hard for me to follow through on presentation. Maybe I'll do a simple one-color quilted square to mount them on.

I still need to sew together some of the slits from the back and probably will fuse a backing to them.

I wanted to show you my little seascape tapestries, but I can't seem to get a good photo of them. I'll keep trying.

I am totally overwhelmed with the books I've bought in the last few weeks. It's like a book fiend has taken over my body. Yesterday Sandy and I did a big purge of books to take to Ed McKay's today, so I could get my new stacks of books off the floor and onto shelves.

Some of these new stacks are of old books. For example, when I visited Mama a few weeks ago, I snagged the 1952 set of World Book encyclopedias, which I'm sure made me the geography trivia whiz that I am today. If today was in 1952. I always had my nose in these encyclopedias, and they meant nothing to anyone but me. I also brought back my much beloved copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, spine well creased from obsessive re-reading, and a copy of Treasure Island, which I never read but I found a piece of paper in it where I had made as many words as I could out of the words Treasure Island. I made up a lot of word games as a child out of these books and encyclopedias. I found my old stamp collection and a list I had made of "My Library," which included such diversity as Huckleberry Finn, Flip Wilson Close-up, Steppenwolf, How to Write Codes and Send Secret Messages, and Gardening Indoors Under Lights. I doubt that I actually read Steppenwolf, but I may have given it a try. The librarians on the county bookmobile had a very hard time keeping up with me - I'd have finished my stack of books they picked out for me long before they came back in two weeks.

There was a real treasure trove of old books in the free section of Ed McKay's, a used bookstore in Greensboro, NC, for a few weeks. I've picked up a lot of old school books and other interesting books from the turn of the century up through the fifties. I have enough novels from the free section to last me two years. And, believe it or not, I had been hitting the library on a regular basis, but I'm going to give it a rest until I read some of what I have at home. I started reading Wendell Berry's novels from the beginning, and that felt like going back in time to talk to relatives long gone.

Yesterday, Sandy and I went to Empire Books, another small used bookstore in Greensboro, where I never made it past the cookbook and arts and crafts section. Sandy found a perfect copy of my favorite artist Andy Goldsworthy's Time for $18. I picked up a $4 copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, three wonderful craft books: Art Stamping Workshop, Beaded Crazy Quilting, and Paper into Pots, and a 1950 half autobiography/half cookbook called Love and Dishes, by Niccolo de Quattrociocchi, an Italian restauranteur in New York City. It has recipes from all the famous NYC restaurants of the time. I'm really looking forward to digging into this one.

It is a good thing that I don't live closer to Empire Books. I might go broke. I really, really need new clothes but I spend all my money on books, art supplies, and good food. My priorities are pretty good but I might need to get a little more practical.

So, what started this post was a question from Moomin Light: What creativity books have I been reading? I mentioned Living the Creative Life, by Ricë Freeman-Zachery, which I highly recommend for anyone interested in unleashing creativity. I'm also reading her book Stamp Artistry.

I was already into The Artist's Way, by Julia Cameron, which I like but I'm going to wait until summer if I do the lessons.

Danny Gregory's The Creative License is so incredible that I nearly have a panic attack each time I open it, but it's next. I read his Everyday Matters last year, and I'm a lurker in the Everyday Matters Yahoo group.

In addition, I'm feeding my inner child and dreamer with Dan Price's illustrated journal Radical Simplicity: Creating an Authentic Life. Because I spent a good part of my childhood winters building hide-outs and lean-tos and treehouses to read my books in.

I have Amazon links to these books in my pretend bookstore, if you're interested in learning more or buying them. I'll update it with my newest books later today.

Yes, I've been a book hound since I graduated from graduate school in December. It is delicious.

My goal today was to complete a woven artist trading card, and I achieved that goal! Well, almost. I have to put a backing on it, but I think that I'm going to wait until I get about half a dozen woven and back all of them at the same time.

Earlier this month, I wove two other little tapestries which I meant to be artist trading cards, but the size was not quite right. The only two restrictions for an artist trading card is that it can't be sold and it must be 2 1/2 by 3 1/2 inches. Think baseball card. So those two will be pins. When I hit the size right, it will be an ATC, and when I don't, it will be a pin.

The theme of Art & Soul is "By the Sea." From what I understand, most of the attendees carry with them lots of little handcrafted goodies to trade. I'm weaving these tapesties on little cardboard squares, and they are doing double duty - they will be trades and they are studies for my next tapestry bag.

Weaving these little tapestries is one of the most relaxing things I've done for a long time, and it is so easy. Taking photos of the little weavings, not!!!!! Also, I planned to do a lot of beading on my collages and art quilts and fabric journals and weavings. I might need to get my bifocals first - it is definitely ten times harder than it used to be to thread a needle and poke it through those tiny little holes. So, to recap, weaving = fun! Photography and beading = frustration.

I started a project that's been on my mind ever since I received the book Artist Trading Card Workshop.  I want to make my ATCs out of fiber and recycled materials when possible.  The section that appealed to me most made nests of fibers on the card and melted them together with embossing powders and fusible webbing tape. 

So I have been weaving tapestries from thrums and discarded warps and dyeing mistakes, and now I have a way to re-use the thrums from the thrums.  It feels like, I don't know, like I just found the last piece to a jigsaw puzzle.  Ahhhh.  It drove me crazy to throw those thrums away.  Usually I give them to the birds or toss them in the compost heap when there gets to be too many.

Anyway, here's what I came up with.  Backgrounds for four sets of two cards each. 

I had no freakin idee whut I wuz doing.  I just played.  If you were around in September when I began to have my meltdown, you know that this was a major goal for me.  I'm a planner.  It's my personality.  Weavers generally have to be planners.  I needed to learn how to play. Squirt had a lot to teach me about that in his last year.  He became more playful than he ever had been in his middle age. (Squirt was the sweetest cat of my life, who passed away after Christmas.)

I was so afraid that I had lost my mojo for good.  Now I'm in the middle of four projects!  Whee!