I listened to a talk with Dine/Navajo weaver Kevin Aspaas while I wove today. Aspaas is a weaver, spinner, dyer and designer of his own work, in addition to keeping his own small flock of Churro sheep. He focuses on wedge weaving—his favored method—and weaving commissioned rug dresses. His instagram page does a great job of showing all the different parts of his life and how the actual practice of sitting at the loom and weaving is just one small part of the process. I’m appreciating that as we roll into the last week of the Arts Marathon. I typically am not keeping track of time in the same way that I have been this week—noticing how long each part of the process takes when I commit to doing one piece from start to finish. Typically, I am simultaneously spinning and dying to have materials ready for a future project while weaving a current project at one of my floor looms. I’m also usually throwing pots in the early mornings or after bedtime. It’s been pretty interesting to spend a month with a single start-to-finish blanket project, while writing. I can tell that my hands are feeling pretty antsy to get back in some clay. Here’s today’s progress on the Receiving Blanket.

This middle third of the blanket is the slowest going—I knew it would be. In between each full pass of the white weft yarn, the pattern yarns are placed and hand manipulated to ensure that the edges are clean. At this point in the weaving, there are six separate supplemental weft sections that need to be placed by hand in between every pass of the shuttle, then checked and measured every few rows to be sure everything is placed correctly (and unwoven if it’s not!) I’ve got about five more inches with this level of complexity and then the final seven inches will only have one or two areas of hand manipulation and will weave up much more quickly. The end is actually in sight! At the beginning, I had wondered if I might complete two blankets during this marathon. It looks like I’ll comfortably complete one blanket and have all the materials ready for the next one.