May signals not only the opening of summer, but the art and studio tour season.  The New Mexico Fiber Crawl begins this Friday 18 May and runs through Sunday, 20 May 2018, at a wide variety of locations around northern New Mexico.  Organizers of the Crawl have creatively divided participating artists and businesses into "threads" - Albuquerque, Española, Los Alamos, Mora, Santa Fe, Taos, and Tierra Amarilla.  The Fiber Crawl website is below where you can check out the wide variety of artisans and shops represented. Also listed here are the direct websites of several of the participants.

http://www.nmfibercrawl.org/sites-and-events

natashasantafe.com/

http://renatazknitwear.com/

All of this means that our house is currently packed with product created by my husband and weaver Fred Black, and fiber is literally everywhere.  Here is a shot of his latest, Rug # 313.  He had originally planned to incorporate a design in the middle of the rug, but was enjoying the variegations of the Ganado red wool he had measured and worked into the body of the rug that he decided to leave it plain.  The result is a generous span of juicy red.

Rug 313

Here is a detail from Rug 313.  The blue is a Tierra Wools turquoise, and the black is dyed black.  Both the Ganado red and black are dyed by Connie Taylor, registrar of the Navajo-Churro Sheep Association and artist extraordinaire.  

http://www.navajo-churrosheep.com/breeders-nm.html

Rug 313 detail

A shot of another skein of Ganado red wool from Connie Taylor

Ganado red skein

Finally, some of Fred's Navajo-Churro wool rugs and rifle scabbards that will be on display and for sale at Española Valley Fiber Arts Center

https://www.evfac.org/

Fiber Crawl product

Fred will have work at both Tierra Wools https://www.handweavers.com/ and at the EVFAC.  You can find his work at http://bigsageartisans.com/index.html

If your weekend has open time, I would encourage you to find a member of the Fiber Crawl near you and feast your eyes on some truly exquisite art, and enjoy the beautiful New Mexico landscape.

until next Monday,

DB

a passion for the [email protected]