How Wonderful to Have New Weavers in the Making

The summer has been a busy one. It began by teaching a beginner weaving course in Olds, Alberta. They were a fantastic group, worked hard on their samples and headed off with very nice projects. It is always interesting to see how varied the interests are and how different the projects and even the samples end up.

Towards the end of the summer we headed off to Vancouver Island and bought, hopefully, our future retirement home. Right across from the ocean, one section of the house can be used for a studio and business and the other part will be for our personal use. It has certainly been a busy and exciting time.

The fall is always busy in my day job and I ended up teaching the beginner weaving course at our local guild as the scheduled instructor could not. With all this and the fall guild sale coming I will not have time to put very much in the sale if anything. Our guild will also host the 2010 provincial conference here and I am working on instructor contracts. Certainly hope I get time to weave for that one!

Unknown tools

A friend of mine bought a loom and gave me a few things that came with it. I cannot figure out what they are or how they are used. I am thinking that they may have been rug hooking tools but could very well be wrong.

Tool 1 is made in Denmark and when the handle is turned the needle moves forward and backward or I guess could be up and down depending on how you are holding it.

Tool 2 has 3 patents marked on it Great Britain March 20 192?, United States Nov 2, 19??, Canada Nov 30, 192?. A piece of metal on the bottom moves back and forth pushing the needle part forwards and backwards. On top there is a tensioning device. Below are pictures of the needle extended and pulled back.

Does anyone know what these are?

Painted Warp Bookmarks

I just completed some painted warp bookmarks as samples! As you weave the colours just magically change and you never do get any 2 that are the same. I bore really easily and I learnt a long time ago, if I want to weave a series of something all the same I put on enough warp so that I can switch from series to series. For example, if I need 6 placemats, I will weave one in one colour combination and then the next one in a different colour combination. I repeat this series until all 6 mats of each colour combination are completed. The nice thing about using a painted warp is that this is not necessary, even using the same weave structure will produce different bookmarks.

I wanted the warp to be fairly strong and one that beginners could easily handle so I decided on 8/2 cotton. The selvedges for the bookmarks are either navy or black, depending upon the colour way. I like the look of a border along the edge and if you use a dark weft your edges look better and the colours in the painted warp are enhanced.

Although one of my favourite weaves is a 1/3 twill, so that each side of the bookmark is totally different, I also sampled using plain weave, basket weave, and 2/2 twill. For the basket weave sample I used a double weft.

Conferences and Studio Clean Up

Well I guess spring makes us think about all the summer activities to come and of course clean up. This year DH will be working for both of our vendor events. The first one is the end of May in Olds for our provincial guild - Handweavers, Spinners & Dyers of Alberta. We have acquired new stock and that means packaging and pricing to get ready. Getting to spend time with all those wonderful fiber people always makes it worth it.

In June I will be teaching a beginning weaving course and looking after our vendor table after hours at Fibre Week (again in Olds). There seems to be a renewed interest in weaving both at the local level and the provincial level. Great because we have not seen this in a long time. Our local guild moved to a different location and that maybe part of it. The beginner course is a prerequisite for the new Master Weaver Program. All of this is so exciting!

I have reworked my beginner information so that it is more educationally focused rather than a course for fun. Now I just have to decide what some good projects are for beginning weavers - taking into account that the table looms are only so wide. I will still have the students make samples in the beginning and then do a separate project. The classes run all week so this should not be too ambitious.

I have also stop procrastinating and put some of my Loom Music issues up for sale on our website under Used Equipment. Last year I was able to purchase the entire set bound on Ebay. Prior to buying the entire collection, I had accumulated a few single copies. Even I do not need 2 copies of the same information. Although there are all those beginner weaving books I keep - just for my classes of course - ha. I just hate to give them up.

When I was up in Fort McMurray, I often borrowed books from the Canadian Guild and I thoroughly love to look through historic weaving literature. There is always something new to learn or rethink. Mary Sandin who was one of the weavers involved in the Loom Music project, also started up our local guild. I have browsed through the books and need to take the time to create an index and then read them thoroughly.

Well for now I am off to weave!

More on Fibre Arts in South America

When we arrived in Punta Arenas, the port entry had a building set up selling crafts. You can imagine our delight to find a woman setting up her rigid heddle loom. They weave mostly the shawl type items you see in the picture and scarves. Later that day when we were returning to the ship the woman above had already been weaving and was taking a break. Another woman sitting next to her was taking her turn.

The second to last port was Puerto Montt. However at this point in the cruise I was quarantined to my quarters due to a virus I picked up. All the women I talked to onboard said this was the best place for a handicraft market. When DH went ashore I asked that he take as many pictures as he could. The following picture is a picture of handspun yarn they were selling.

The cruise ended in Valparaiso, Chile. What a beautiful seaside town! We ended up waiting a long time for our transfer that never showed up. Fortunately another guide was there to meet his transfer and they were not there, so went on a tour of the town for a day with him.

At the end of the day we travelled to our hotel in Santiago. Immediately I started looking for some craft markets and so the last day we went to what I thought was a craft store. Imagine my surprise when I saw it was an entire little village in an area within Santiago.

The village itself was absolutely beautiful with lots of greenery. With temperatures of 38 celuis, I certainly appreciated the shade of the trees as we walked around. Each vendor had their own tiny shop and there were a few stands where you could buy food. We bought the camera strap in one of the shops. DH bought a small leather stool to use for spinning - it took awhile to decide on the pattern of the leather tooling. I also bought some jewellry and gifts. Oh what a trip - now if I could only get to Peru and Guatamala.

Pieces Purchased on our South American Cruise

The bracelet on the left was purchased at a craft market in Montivideo, Uruguay. The multi coloured cotton was used as the wrapping around the bracelet and a flat straw like fibre was used to make the patterns.

The camera strap was purchased in a small craft village in Santiago, Chili. Here they also had wonderful large blankets and carpets. The camera strap is warp faced and we just love the colours. There were many other patterns to choose from and it was really hard to decide which ones to purchase.

DH also managed to get some raw Merino fleece (about 10 ounces) from the Falklands. Apparently there is more weaving done outside of Santiago but I did not learn about this until I had returned. Maybe next time :-).

Wow Llama By the Box

DH and I arrived back home from our South American cruise mid Thursday afternoon to cold weather and a snowy driveway. Considering I had not slept since Tuesday night and Alberta time was 4 hours behind Chilean time, I knew it would be a quick dinner and an early night.

We had picked up the mail from the post office and noticed there was a final notice on a parcel. It would be returned if we did not pick it up that afternoon. Thank goodness DH went over to pick it up. Turns out my daughter had managed to find a llama fleece for us. The locals told her they consider this to be better than alpaca and it it certainly soft and oh so clean. I guess we know what DH will be doing for the next little while.