This afternoon, I put the finishing touches on the Weaving in Beauty calendar for 2009.  Every year, I take umm, ah, about 2000 pictures of weavers, rugs, sheep and, yes, dyepots.  Now, I suppose it can be argued that one dyepot looks about like another dyepot, but in the Navajo way of looking at things, everything has a spirit that will go on as long as there’s anyone to remember it, so at least some people will think that dyepot shot is justified.  As for the sheep, there wouldn’t be any rugs without them, so I think they fit right in.   The hard part is getting down to only 12 pictures plus the cover.  I usually can narrow it down to about 100 candidates, but it’s difficult after that.

I’ve put together a composite of all of the pictures, and the calendar is available at lulu.com for 14.99 plus postage   Sales of the calendar help to pay the costs of the web site and allows me to keep it editorially independent and free of advertising.  The calendar includes the dates of major weaving events and Navajo Nation holidays.

Here’s a preview of the photographs for each of the months.

And here (drumroll) is the cover image.