This beautiful batik frame from India was given to me for weaving by a fellow traveller fifty years ago. As long as the frame can lean on something, I can place it on my lap and then weave just about anywhere.  On the taller frames, I weave four tapestries on top of each other. I use stools of various sizes to adjust the work level.
 

Small in size for a loom, it is portable. I can even take it apart, roll it up, put it in a backpack, and hitchhike - which I did for a year in Europe when I was twenty-one. 

 

I hammer nails into the top bar to separate the gray, linen warp (horizontal threads), which I mostly measure to be three loops per two centimeters. Most of my frames, however, are constructed with regular stretcher bars.

 

One of my most precious tools is my grandmother's silver fork with her engraved initials. I use it for pushing down the colored weft threads. As a child, I was always told that I inherited my patience from her. 

Tight-fitting shoes (or, in summer, barefoot - strangely) help my mind stay focused. My way of weaving tapestries by not using detailed sketches behind the warp threads (not commonly done), is not a free-flowing process inspired by whatever I feel, but rather a demanding and often unsettling endeavour in which I always have my thoughts on the imagined finished tapestry.

 

I need the nuances of warm and cold, light and dark yarns in every color. These are just a few of the 200+ spools and skeins that I keep in my yarn inventory. Since a color changes according to which other colors it is surrounded by, I have, in reality, far more hues. thugh i have my favorite colors, its the endless combination of colors that truly inspire me. 
 

Shortest in my class (and nicknamed "the mouse"), as a child, I was afraid of all animals except for my grandfather's sheep. Their wool gave us warm blankets and cozy hides. Norway produces superb wool yarn from a unique breed of sheep for tapestry weaving, 
https://craftsmanship.net/sidebar/old-norwegian-sheep-and-their-durable-wool/, but from the onset of my tapestry weaving at age 21, I felt drawn to the Swedish linen (flax) yarn (Bockens and Vavlin) with its shine and long fibres. I find high-quality yarn deeply inspiring, and the light-reflecting linen yarn quickly became my preferred medium and essential to my expressions. Mysteriously, it is as if the shiny linen fibers add another dimension to the tapestries.  




 

(Photo: Rivkah Gevinson)

My studiospace is wherever I am: mostly the sunroom in our house and the porch in our summer cottage. They are spaces that give me what I need the most to work with my yarns and tools and to execute my ideas, namely daylight. Though I use smaller, portable frames, I am not a pleine air weaver. I love roofs and shelters. It took me a while to get used to screend in spaces (not common in Norway),  but now I cannot imagine a better space for working i summertime.