how to finish a tapestry

in which Sarah and Beryl contemplate endings and beginnings.

There is something deliciously unsettling about weaving the last few inches of a tapestry. Filled with eager curiosity, I’m also madly nostalgic and find myself hurrying and savoring at the same time.

But how can that be a thing? Is it possible to quietly relish the moment even as hands are flying along? And especially with this tapestry, since one of its satisfying attributes has been its calm and unhurried companionship—

a calm unhurriedness determined in part by the materials since the weft appeared a filter at a time, each the result of one morning’s grinding, pouring, dripping, sipping, rinsing—all before paper preparation and spinning—¹ and weaving said filters in a particular direction, for that led to the almost-but-not-quite-even stripes from the staining of the paper that held the grounds. (You can tell the days I waited longer to dump the grounds or had other coffee drinkers to stay, for those stripes are darker and/or wider).

But what happens over the months of weaving and what happens at the end are rarely the same, and with just enough yarn prepared for the last few inches I could simultaneously revel in the moment by taking photos, and give into the excitement by weaving on into the evening without pausing for supper—

—until suddenly it was half hitch and scissors time and I no longer thought to take pictures.

Not that there was much to see. Twining the warp ends² and pressing were all it needed (grateful to past Sarah who tucked all the tails as she wove³ ), and neither took long.

It was not until I had put away my leftover materials, dismantled the loom, returned the pieces of pipe to their box and pinned the tapestry to the wall that I opened my phone app and took a pic of the tapestry to see how it felt.

114 DAYS #2; Handwoven Tapestry; cotton warp; used coffee filter weft; natural dyes; 38” x 12”

Naturally, I had no idea.

For that is another of the weird things about finishing —that I often don’t feel much of anything. Well, in rare instances I’ve been delighted, and sometimes I recoil in horror and instantly put a new tapestry away until I’m immersed in something else), but generally there is a sort of low key “Hmph. Well there it is.”

Happily I had no negative feelings this time as I find these geometric coffee filter tapestries as soothing to live with as they are to create. But given that I’m not going to begin another one⁴ (it always helps these moments if I am), and don't quite feel like sitting and staring at this one for hours, I did move right into that almost inevitable slightly antsy phase where I can only imagine that eventually I’ll imagine another biggish thing to which I’m ready to commit.

And until I can see whatever it is out of the corner of my eye (and I don’t want to “quick do something—anything” to make the antsy feeling go away)—

—I decided this time to use the energy to do a thing I’ve been avoiding, which is bring Dan’s ashes to our cabin in the canyon —the place he loved to be above all others and where I haven’t gone on my own since well before he died.

But with Beryl at my side and a few essential supplies for the hot drive, we headed off.

Of course it was absolutely lovely.

Also intense.

And interesting.

Beryl was fabulous off leash when we took a walk, and though she mostly sniffed things and ate deer poop and tried to figure out how to drink running water from a moss-covered pipe, she kept me company as I cleared sticks and rocks and Nettles from around spring—

—and helped me stay put long enough to twist the bark from three of the fresh stems into cordage, which in turn gave me time to smell the rose scented air, listen to the warm breeze make its way through the Ponderosa Pines, and realize that another time I could maybe stay a little longer.

But not this time. For when all the green sticky strands had been twisted into place⁵ I cabled the arm-span-and-a-half of cordage back on itself (adding more Z twist then folding in half to S ply), wrapped it around my wrist, knotted it in place to remember the day—

and headed home—

to kibbles, fresh lettuce—

a calming pair of tapestries (which may or may not need to be a diptych—any thoughts on this?)—

and some poetry.⁶

1. I’ve talked about it a fair bit here and there (including a video on my Instagram feed), but in case you missed those or want more, Of Coffee Filters and Rabbit Holes is a step by step guide to my coffee filter preparation.

2. When not weaving a Fringeless tapestry, I almost always twine the warp ends as per instructions I found decades ago in Peter Collingwood’s book The Techniques of Rug Weaving — a book I don’t own so I can’t tell you what page it is on — though there are other great resources for finishing tapestry edges, including Rebecca Mezoff’s The Art of Tapestry Weaving in which she describes a similar finish on pages 270/271, though she calls hers a Braided Edge.

3. Tucking The Tails

4. I thought I’d try a new kind of coffee filter and it turns out that though they make fine coffee I don’t like spinning them. So—into the compost for a while (cuz I have to use them don’t cha know, and the worms will appreciate them too), while I turn my hands to other kinds of yarn.

5. Casual green cordage that is — nothing fine or elegant or even all that flexible as yet. Indeed you can see in the image on the right that the plies have stiffened away from each other— this because I neglected to dry and re-dampen the strands. But give it a few months around my wrist and the green bits will gradually flake fall away and I’ll be left with another a bracelet of undistinguished white string like the other two already there: Autumn Nettles from last October on Marrowstone, and Milkweed from my Mothers memorial.

6. Dog Songs by Mary Oliver. Thanks to Ellen Stoune for reminding me about this book in the comments to last week’s Gusset, to Carly Robinson who also wants to read aloud to her corgis, and to all of you for the delicious reminders of places Beryl and I can go together without leaving our own back yard: The Lake Isle of Innisfree, Australia, Jane Austin’s England, Oz (or not), Middle Earth, and even Canterbury once again.