Esther Etcitty bases her designs on the rock art near her home. Hover your mouse over the picture to see a closer view.

Tempe, AZ I’m starting a feature that’s imaginatively called The Rug of the Day.  In teaching the online classes and doing this site for 15 years, I’ve found that people like to see pictures of the rugs.  Through the miracle of digital photography and a two terabyte hard drive, I now have a catalog of almost (gulp) 50,000 pictures.  They’re not all pictures of rugs, but a lot of them are.  Here’s the deal. When I’m taking my coffee break, I will pick out a picture of a rug, but I won’t spend more than about 15 minutes doing it.  I’ll try to make sure it’s never been on the site, but don’t be too hard on me if you find it somewhere else.  Then, later in the day, I’ll write up a paragraph on it and post it.   If I know the weaver, I’ll name her or him.  If I don’t know and you’re the weaver, you tell me.   If you get tired of getting messages about them, unsubscribe from the updates or write me an email and tell me to quit posting them.  Look at it this way; there’s an election year coming up and you might be really glad to get a notice that has nothing to do with it.  Who knows, we may all get so tired of it after two weeks that I’ll quit.  I’ll also set up a page where you can see past Rug of the Day entries.  I may miss a day here or there, so don’t worry if that happens!

Today’s rug:  Esther Etcitty is the weaver of this distinctively designed rug.  She lives in a canyon in the Toadlena/Two Grey Hills area that is literally covered with rock act and that is the inspiration behind the design.  Some more traditional Navajos believe that this design is culturally inappropriate and avoid close contact with any associations with the Anasazi culture out of concern over contact with people who are now deceased.  Esther believes that she has addressed these issues in terms of her own beliefs and other members of her family now also weave the design, which is very popular.

This weaving is about 3’x4′ in size.  The picture was taken at the Toadlena Trading Post on August 21, 2008 using a Canon G7 digital camera.  The yarn used is handspun and handcarded in all natural colors except for aniline overdyed black.  Contact Toadlena Trading Post for Esther’s current weavings.

Hagoshíí (so long for now)

Mary Walker