Mendocino has a magical feeling like no other place on earth. Situated past the Anderson Valley wine country, surrounded on three sides by old growth redwoods, the beautiful cypress studded coast is the place to weave.
My blankets were woven either at the Mendocino Art Center or on my loom in my seaside home. I spend about 40 hours making each blanket. Each blanket takes 3000 yards of yarn.30
When I was in Ireland I bought a machine made afghan of approximately 70x90 inches. I have tried to recreate my blankets as close to this size as possible. These blankets are for cuddling, napping, reading, or just to feel special. My goal for the yarn was to make them as soft and sensual as possible.
The yarns of each blanket are natural combinations of mohair and other soft yarns of silk, cashmere, alpaca, mohair boucle, and merino wool. Some have edges or stripes of hand painted or kettle dyed yarns. All but one is one of a kind. Each blanket is made double weave, one side woven on top of another to get the width, every effort has been made to minimize the mark where the two sides meet.
The blanket’s color has been inspired by the pictures my artist husband Ted has taken of dawn over the ocean, moss under the cypress tree outside our window, rainstorms over Mendocino, and Big River beach among many other special views. Also views of Laguna Beach.
I hope you enjoy the blankets as much as I have enjoyed weaving them.
MENDO WEAVER
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am very grateful to my wonderful weaving teachers Lollie Jacobsen, who didn’t laugh when I told her I was going to weave blankets when I didn’t have a loom or know how to weave; and Janice Sullivan who inherited me and taught me to double weave, order my first yarns, and also taught me to dye yarns and weave several methods. They are both so talented I wish I were younger to have more time to learn more from them. I also am so grateful to all the fun weaver friends I have made in my many classes with Lollie, Janice, and other great teachers, especially Mina Lev, who wound warps with me and helped untangle wads of mohair that were stuck coming through the reed.
I also am grateful to Arnelle Karlstad at the Mendocino Yarn Shop and John Dixon at the Glendeven Wine Bar(n) Gallery who allowed me to display my blankets in the beginning. Also to Bliss in Corona del Mar who is displaying one now.
Most of all to Ted who never let me give up so the memory of his grandmother Mutti who wove could live on. She was a very brave lady who in 1923 brought 5 children under 7 by ship from Germany through Ellis Island and across the United States by train to Los Angeles where her husband, a set designer and architect of Bullocks Wilshire’s interior, was waiting. All without speaking English. I know my daughters Holly and Robin are that brave, but not their mom.
