Rhythm of the Blues

"I miss Odysseus; my heart is melting. / The suitors want to push me into marriage, but I spin schemes... By day I wove the web, / and in the night by torchlight, I unwove it."

I made this feverish, unwinding loom for @youremysunshine8 's bday, since she is reading Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey.

It's made from an old painting frame with the canvas removed. I painted the wood a darker color and hammered in a couple hundred tacks, which I strung with white yarn.

The weaving itself took a long time, since I've never done that before and wasn't using a real loom, though I did make a make-shift heddle from a ruler. The meander is woven in soumak, which means you wrap the weft around each warp instead of just going over-under; this takes a long time but gives it a really cool dimension.

My recent trip to Polish/Czech mountains reminded me of working on this series of illustrations for the Carved in Stone book 🖤 while our countries are far away, all the beautiful heathers, ferns and mossy rocks reminded me of making the reasearch for these! I'm still so, so happy and thankful I had a chance to work on them.