brace & bit is woodworking at it's best!

extraordinary tapestries by the extremely talented terry olson.

A beautiful bunch of bojagi at the Bonte Museum.

Weaving cartoon, freshly woven backstrap for the loom, Jeju postcard and photo strip from home. This is a glimpse of my apartment wall a couple of weeks ago. I try to keep it decorated, but the humidity wins out over the red tape every time. Really and truly I’ve taken so many pictures during my time on Jeju Island. Many of them have made their way into my stories and many more will find their way here and there eventually. I’m trying to get my work done and enjoy my brief/extended visit to the other side of the world. Which means I’m weaving like a maniac and leaving most of the photo editing for later. And besides, I’m pretty excited about the tapestry I’m weaving about Jeju for @sja_jeju, but I kind of want the finished piece to be a surprise. So prepare to delay your gratification, that’s the name of the weaving game anyway, right?

I’m still weaving on Jeju Island. Everything here seems to have a magical story which, if you know me at all, you know is right up my alley: sacred mountains, benevolent wizards, shamanic villages, mystical white deer, poetic tea, exiled artists, healing forests and stone guardians. Did I mention there are approximately 18,000 site specific gods and goddesses just for Jeju? Basically they’ve got it covered. I’ve mostly been teaching the children and working on one special tapestry, but I’ve also been exploring, making new friends and getting inspired for future work. I’m feeling the pull to weave more magical objects 👆after learning so much about the hyper local natural dyes, textiles, foods and rituals. How can I translate that to my surroundings when I get home? How I wish I could translate Korean and English so I could better understand what’s happening here!

Greetings from the future! Greetings from the yarn desert! Progress report on the Jeju tapestry: There is progress. There is still quite a ways to go. I feel like I’m in the future here because I’m 16 hours ahead of my usual time zone. I am a time traveler now (and always). I’m also starting to believe that Jeju Island is a designated yarn free zone. There have been a few balls of yarn spotted here and there, but it’s mostly been acrylic. I did find some small hanks of what I believe was naturally dyed ramie at a hanbok shop in the city, but the language barrier prevented me confirming my suspicions. What was clear is that they were not for sale. My Korean language skills do include saying hello, thank you, two ways of saying good bye and asking the cost of things and asking if things were dyed with persimmons. There is a dyeing technique here that uses a mash of unripe astringent persimmons and does some pretty cool stuff to fabric. Unfortunately it’s seasonal and now is not the season, but I’ve enjoyed seeing the outcome at some of the markets. That’s all for now, I’ll keep posting random pictures of South Korean things to my stories so look there if that’s what floats your boat.

Oh hey friends! Just in case you really miss me while I’m on the other side of the world, there’s still a little piece of me back home to go visit. Temple of the Sun & Temple of the Moon along with a few other tapestries are up at @thehoxtonhotel in downtown Portland, OR right now. If you need a little piece of me while I’m away, please go there to get it. I’m currently doing an artist residency on Jeju Island @sja_jeju where I’m weaving magic stuff and reliving the k-12 experience, but as an art teacher this time. Oh how the tables have turned! Well, to be honest I was a really lucky kid who had awesome art teachers throughout my childhood at public schools, so I can only hope I’m doing just as good of a job for these kids!

Does this count as a shelfie? I wove a new backstrap last week and experimented with weaving local branches through rep weave while using the new backstrap. And then taped them to the wall. I’m 8 days into South Korea and I know I haven’t posted any pictures of it at all, but it’ll happen soon enough. Last week I ate strange and delicious things at the market and went to some beautiful volcanic beaches. This week I’m helping to teach middle school art and working on a the cartoon for a bigger tapestry. All you need to know today is that the people here are wonderful and there’s kimchi in the cafeteria.

Wove a rainbow of love to wrap myself up in while I’m far away from home. Pulled it off the loom just in time and now I’ll have some finishing work to do on the airplane!

Feeling a little excited. Feeling a little nervous. Feeling a little anxious. Using weaving as a coping mechanism. Using weaving as a means of procrastination. Using weaving as weaving. Only four days until I leave for a five week residency on Jeju Island, South Korea! Better start packing. I’ve got my outfits picked out, but really I need to decide what yarn to bring?!

This one’s like the last bits of winter slowly fading away. Spring is officially here, all the flowers tell me so, and sometimes the sun shows up long enough to fully warm our bones. Only one more week until I leave this home and hemisphere to weave on Jeju Island. Looking forward to an unfamiliar landscape with a somewhat familiar climate so I can experience this magical season of transition in a different place. Excited to eat new flavors, meet new people and share weaving with them. Curious to see how a change of scenery will change my perspective.

In case your morning isn’t sexy enough, here’s some slightly messy poncho on poncho action for you. You’re welcome! I wove a second correctly sized poncho for @braceandbit since I got the measurements of the first one so hilariously wrong. We’re currently using it as a blanket and I plan to carry it around with me while camping this summer in case I meet a rich Bigfoot who’s in the market for a handwoven poncho. It could happen! Still reading? Great, now I can tell you that there is still one spot open in my weaving workshop on Sunday and you should sign up so you too can eventually weave oversized ponchos for arguably mythical beasts.

Hey Portland Friends! Right now I have some tapestries hanging at @thehoxtonhotel in downtown Portland including this one, Alchemy, from 2016. If you’re going to @stockpiler’s Textiles in the Marketplace event on April 11th for @designweekpdx you’ll definitely see them. Or if you’re just feeling fancy and treating yourself to a couple of cocktails at the hotel bar you’ll probably see them too. While they may not be hung in the most glamorous location, they are definitely in a very highly trafficked area... 😮

The two of these together make me think of strange blooming flowers. Or maybe a message sent up by the giant network of mushrooms living beneath our feet. Unrelated question for you: Have you been to Jeju Island? If yes, what are your favorite things there? I’m heading that direction soon and while I have my own wishlist of things to see and do, I’d love to hear your recommendations. Thanks friends!

Tomorrow. Wednesday. Sometime in the afternoon. That’s when these woven antlers will be available to the world. When I started this project I didn’t know exactly where it was going. Visions of weaving on antlers and bones had been living in my imagination for a long time and it seemed like the right time to make it a reality. I didn’t know how I was going to make these, there isn’t a convenient guidebook. Sometimes my creative process is to invent something for myself and be willing to try and to experiment and to fail and to start all over again until I get it right, whatever that means. I spent hours with each antler learning it’s curves and nuances, learning how to fit the thread to the body. Often it took several days working with the bones and the fiber to find out what they had to say to each other. And each time it was a little different. I’m still not exactly sure what they mean or where they might ultimately lead to. For now there are only these five to serve as guides. It feels like enough for the time being. So tomorrow. Wednesday. Sometime in the afternoon I’ll be sending out an email with the link to the magical world of woven antlers. And then on Thursday (most likely in the afternoon) I’ll put them on ye olde website for those of you who aren’t on the mailing list.

It has come to my attention that this rug never got a post of her own, only ever showing up here on the all important Instagram as a back up dancer. I wove this rug quite a while ago and then overdyed her with indigo at the end of last summer. Can we call it shibori? Perhaps. What I do know is that she never got her 15 minutes of fame as prescribed by Andy Warhol. And she’s on sale right now as prescribed by me. Sale ends at midnight tonight in my time zone. All the info and links @combedthunder 🌿

Sometimes I pretend that the rugs I weave live in fancy places living luxurious lives. I imagine them dipping their fringe into flutes of champagne to amuse themselves. I envision cats wearing satin slippers walking over them, massaging the yarn with dainty paws. For all I know that’s actually happening somewhere in the world. For those of you still reading, this is a reminder that I’m running a SALE on my website through Sunday and you should take advantage of that, because you’re fancy, I know it. All the info and all the links in my profile @combedthunder

Ghosts with ghosts of ghosts. Clearly not thinking clearly. Or I am, but words are limiting today so I’m using this other language you can look at. Basically I’m thinking about ghosts and communication and trying to communicate with you about ghosts. The first time I wove some of these little dead friends in January of last year you all had insightful and amazing things to say about what you thought these ghosts were all about. Today I used this time machine to scroll way back to that post and reread what you wrote. And now I’m wondering, what is a ghost anyway? 👻

Birds eye view of the poncho I wove for my husband. From an objective point of view this thing turned out beautifully. From a practical standpoint, WTF?! It’s huge. Like, this might work for Andre the Giant or a yeti, but never in a million years for a regular sized human being. It’s so big I had to climb up a ladder to even take a photo of it. What happened? I looked at my original plan and it turns out I did actually weave it to spec. The draw-in on the weaving is about as much as I thought it would be for both length and width. One side is a few inches longer than I planned, but pulling out the purple/pink stripe would have fixed that. I have no idea why (or how?) I came up with such outsized original measurements. It’s a mystery. It’s bigger than it needs to be in every direction by almost a foot. Except for the slot in the middle, that’s right on point. The good news is that it makes an excellent blanket. It’s so big that we can both cuddle up under it on the couch without having to try and steal a little more blanket to our side in order to get cozy. You can tell by the wrinkles that it’s seen a lot of snuggling already. The other good news is that I over ordered the yarn I used to weave it so I should have enough to make another poncho, especially since the next one will be about 25% smaller. And hopefully 25% faster.

I’m almost finished weaving this poncho for my sweetheart @braceandbit . I think it’s been at least four years in the promising-to-make-it phase and on the loom for about two months. I hope to finish by the end of the week though! I’m using up most of my stash of precious @weavingsouthwest churro yarn on this behemoth, I wish there was an endless supply of this beautiful yarn! Stay tuned for the finished piece, it’s been difficult to photograph the process (dark days, small spaces, general forgetfulness) but once it’s off the loom this weaving will dance for the camera!

Good morning! I want to let you know that I just added one more beginning weaving workshop for April 14th in Portland. After that I’ll be taking a little break from teaching in Portland while I go on a couple of weaving adventures that will take me out of town for a spell. (More about that later, but if you’ve been wanting to take a weaving class you should probably sign up now! Link @combedthunder). Anyhow, this photo is from a couple of months ago at my workshop with the always fabulous @themakeandmary. The woven work in this photo is even older though. The piece on the top is from about a year ago and the piece on the bottom is probably about three or four years old. Sometimes I weave things and then I don’t want to let them go, so I use them as samples at workshops or hang them on the wall at home. Sometimes they end up living in a box in a dark corner only coming out to see the light of day every once in a great while. But it’s still I hard to let them go. The piece on top is heading to Minnesota soon for a long term loan, but I’ll get to visit it every few years if I’m lucky! 📷credit to the talented @whirlybird

“It looks like the Eye of Sauron,” was one of the first things my husband said when I showed him this piece. I had also been thinking that while weaving it, although it wasn’t my intent when designing it. And besides, I’ll gladly take any LOTR comparisons that come my way. Middle Earth forever! On a separate note, I’m running a little sale on the Combed Thunder website right now. Use code SPRING2019 to get 25% off all woven goods! Good through the end of the month. Link in profile —> @combedthunder And because I know someone will ask, the antlers aren’t for sale just yet! There are still more to come.

follow me on instagram @combedthunder

"The Ladies" A Beautiful collection of tapestries by the remarkable Audrey Moore.

damascus fiber arts school in damascus, oregon. my amazing local weaving school!

Andrew walsh productions took many of the photographs for this website, but only the good ones.