Tapestry

Each night, after work, when I'm too wound up for sleeping and too brain-weary for curriculum planning and too physically worn out for painting and too distractable for TV, I have a hard time knowing what to do with myself. Voila! Weaving! Stringy good.

What do you think... tassel? No tassel?

I've begun a weaving unit at school with my fourth grade art students. For practice and for patience, every night for weeks now I've been working on this big 'tapestry'. The loom is a large piece of chipboard with notches cut by hand and there's no drawn plan or pattern: just mental picture of a rad, red hipster dinosaur-dragon with a tshirt and a happy roar.

The manipulated weft is clumsy, since I've been figuring out how to do it as I go along. I may go back and clean it up at the end. Presently, though, I'm really enjoying it! It feels like a personal avatar or mascot or a giant hand towel or a medieval flag.