Weaving, spinning and Historical Interpretation
I’m thrilled (and honored) to be presenting 3 sessions at HGA’s Convergence next summer in New Orleans!
Over the next couple weeks, I’ll be presenting short infomercials for my sessions.
Update: All sessions are available on YouTube.
This summer has been full of Life Events with family and friends, but I did have time to take some great classes and spend quality time with my weaving peeps at NEWS, the New England Weavers’ Seminar. As a bonus, a lace stroller blanket that I submitted to the Gallery Show, won a couple awards.
Duncan joined me in the Fiber Tent at the Bolton Fair as usual. He enjoyed some extra attention while I was spinning on my Ashford e-spinner. I have a cute little Amtom battery that I use to power it. It would last for days of spinning!
My kitchen renovation is pretty much complete, so I’ve been weaving for that. A bunch of T-shirts (not being worn anymore, but too full of memories to throw out) are being turned into rag rugs in my kitchen color scheme.
And fall classes at A Place to Weave and The Unruly Stitch have been scheduled!
It was with great sadness that we said good-bye to the Fiber Loft last week. My “Happy Place” and primary teaching center is closed. The Fiber Loft is where I took my first weaving class back in 2001 with Reba Maisel. It’s where the Nashoba Valley Weavers’ Guild met for many years (until we outgrew the space.) And it’s where the Weavers’ Study Group met on Tuesday mornings for over 2 decades to talk about our latest projects, share ideas, and socialize. I keep thinking of that song from Les Mis, “Empty chairs and empty tables, where my friend will meet no more.”
But I still have yarn left, so what’s next? Definitely more weaving! And a ramping up of classes at A Place to Weave and The Unruly Stitch.
A Place to Weave is now carrying spinning wheels and fiber! So in addition to my usual classes there, I’m adding Beginning Spinning, Drop Spindle, Color Palettes, and a new Beginning Weaving class. More will be coming in the fall. I’m excited about all the new offerings there!
At The Unruly Stitch, I’m continuing with the 2nd and 4th Mondays. On 12 May, I’m offering Creating Color Palettes twice – once in the afternoon and once in the evening. Other Mondays I’m offering private spinning lessons by appointment. Contact me to schedule something.
And what about in my personal weaving life? Oh, so much! There are a couple scarves in the works and some twill fabric to be used for a surprise coming next spring.
Also, as my kitchen is undergoing a complete redo, I’m making new potholders. I purchased 5 bags of loopers for my son’s Pro potholder loom, enough to make 10 potholders, and have been trying out all sorts of patterns – color and weave, twill, split-loop, clasped-weft and more. Now if the Fairy Godmother of Kitchen Renovations would just wave her wand in the vicinity of my house, we’d be all set!
With closure comes opportunity. I’m onboard.
This winter I’ll be continuing classes at The Fiber Loft, A Place to Weave and The Unruly Stitch.
At The Fiber Loft, I’ll be adding a color palette class and a tablet weaving class to my usual weaving and spinning lineup. The Color Palette class is appropriate for all fiber creators – weavers, spinners, knitters, crocheters, quilters, and felters. One session will be offered during February school vacation week, when students aged 8-12 are welcome to join the class with an adult.
At A Place to Weave, I’ll be teaching some select specialized classes, including a new class on documenting weaving designs.
I’ll be back at The Unruly Stitch on the 2nd and 4th Mondays of the month, and am adding an advanced beginner spinning class to the basic wheel spinning and drop spindle classes.
Lineup at The Fiber Loft
*These classes are offered during February vacation week. People ages 8-12 are welcome to come with an adult companion at a discounted rate.
Lineup at A Place to Weave
Lineup at The Unruly Stitch (2nd and 4th Mondays)
For individual class details, go here.
*To ensure that I am available, it’s recommended that private lessons be pre-booked.
At The Fiber Loft in Harvard MA
Classes haven’t been posted yet, but I will be teaching a wide variety of classes. To sign up, call the shop directly. If there’s something in particular you are looking for, please let me know! I also offer private lessons at the Fiber Loft.
At A Place to Weave in Leominster MA
Sunday afternoons in September, 3 classes have been scheduled – Intro to drop spindle, Triangle loom weaving, and Yarn explorations. Sign up through the website.
At The Unruly Stitch in Weston MA – NEW this fall!
New this fall, I’ll be offering private lessons and group spinning classes at this cozy new shop in Weston! For details on individual classes, go here. If you would like sign up for a class or schedule a private spinning lesson at the Unruly Stitch (on a Monday or another time), please contact me directly.
Upcoming Presentations to Guilds
My business model focuses on teaching. But I also like to do a few markets during the year. It helps me to connect with people in a different way than teaching does. (Plus it helps me reduce my inventory a bit!)
Coming up this year I’m planning to be at the Thread & Press Marketplace at Mill No. 5 in Lowell, the Strawberry Festival in Westford, and the New England Alpaca Owners & Breeders Association (NEAOBA) at the 4H Fairgrounds in Westford. I’m also planning to enter items at the Weavers’ Guild of Boston Annual Sale in Weston in the fall.
This year I have wool bump rugs, dish towels, scarves and some new baby blankets. I love visiting with shoppers, so if you’re local, come visit! If you’re not local, you can see a sampling of my products in my shop. If you’re looking for something in particular, please contact me before ordering.
Life is good!
As demonstrated in the past year, I am not a great blogger. However, I can be found on Instagram, where I post about my fiber arts activities and important things in life, most of which circle back to fiber arts in one way or another. Here are a few highlights.
The single outstanding highlight of my year was that I became a granny! Friends have told me how life-changing this is. Now I know. Of course, I wove a blanket. Preparing for a Guild workshop on lace, I spent many hours playing with designs and sampling. In the end, I decided on a lace name draft in organic cotton. The number of lace blocks is the letter’s place in the alphabet: E had 5 blocks, L had 12, I had 9, S had 19, and then back to 5 for E. It was mirrored and then woven as drawn in. Of course Baby Elise is getting plenty of fiber exposure already!
On our trip to Scotland last fall, we visited The Weaver’s Cottage in Kilbarchan, and I had the pleasure of meeting two weaving friends. I had pre-arranged to visit Cally Booker in her studio in Dundee – we had tea and talked (of course) about weaving! Plus, in a totally random encounter, I bumped into tapestry weaver Louise Abbott (who lives two towns away from me!) on the street in Edinburgh – such an unexpected highlight of our trip!
On a roadtrip to my dad’s house in Colorado, I hemmed a bunch of towels I’d woven in the spring. Plus, I found several textiles that I had woven over the years and gave to my dad. I think it’s so awesome that my parents still keep things that I make for them! While there, we stumbled into a gallery exhibit that was a knitted life-size replica of the room in the children’s book “Goodnight, Moon”. To help with the scale, the rocking chair is big enough for a human to sit in!
A couple weeks ago, I got a suspicious contact through my website, someone wanting to come interview me about weaving and take some videos in my studio to be used on a morning television show. In today’s world (and maybe because I watch too many crime shows), we have to be careful about things like this, right? But I checked it out anyway.
It turns out that Levan Reid is a real person, and he really does collect “happy news” stories for WBZ Boston (a CBS affiliate). My first impression of him was his radio announcer’s voice! He told me what he was looking for and about the process. It sounded like a unique opportunity for me, so we got the ball rolling.
The next week, he came to my house with a cameraman, Richie Lourenco, and we spent 45 minutes up in my studio talking about weaving, looking at my looms, and chatting. Levan was so professional and so friendly. He made the whole experience seem easy.
Since he had put the idea of “happy news” in my head, my thoughts went immediately to one of my current projects. The Weavers’ Guild of Boston’s challenge this year is to weave something for a child that is inspired by a book. The products (a pillow, blanket or bag, for example) will be given to children afterward. I had gone to The Silver Unicorn in Acton MA and found a cute book by Jory John called “The Sour Grape”. Besides having an appropriate life lesson moral, I loved the colors used by illustrator Pete Oswald!
I decided on some 8/2 Valley Cotton yarn and a warp long enough to make several projects. First off (after sampling, of course!) was a book bag for my 21-month old nephew Sebastian, which was sent along with a copy of the book. In addition to another book bag that will be submitted for the WGB challenge, there will be some dish towels in these very fun colors.
Back to the WBZ news story. The video was featured several times through the day on Friday 20 January 2023. They had decided to run it as a break in the snowstorm coverage that was otherwise dominating the day’s news. I was so pleased with how Levan and his team condensed the whole story to just 2 minutes. They captured the vibe of my studio, my “happy place”. To me, my engineering career seems like a different lifetime (ending 22 years ago!) but looking at this I recognize what an impact in had on current thinking.
The winter/spring classes at the Fiber Loft have been posted! Here’s a shortened version with just the spinning and weaving classes that I’m teaching.
I’m also teach a drop spindle class at the 5 March Fiber Day at the Wayland Farmer’s Market. If you’d like to sign up for that, you can do so here.
Private lessons are always available, either in person or on Zoom! Contact me if you’re interested.
What better way to enjoy heavier handwovens than as throw pillows?! These two were added to my spaces this winter. Here are their stories.
The Irish Wool Seat Cushion
A long time ago (probably 2018, before Covid anyway), my daughter took a trip to Ireland. Knowing I love fiber, she brought me some lovely Irish wool yarn as a gift. It was heavier and coarser than yarns I usually work with, so it entered my stash pile to wait for inspiration.
Fast forward to the fall of 2020 when my local weavers’ guild announced a challenge to make something with something from our stash. To facilitate the process, the first meeting of the year was devoted to brainstorming ideas for our projects and inspiring each other. Everyone had uploaded photos of their yarn to a common folder so we could look at them during a Guild meeting on Zoom. We each provided as much information as we could on our yarns, and then opened it up to ideas from the floor.
So many inspiring ideas came out of this meeting! Many were the usual things like a scarves and towels, but people also suggest creative weave structures and finishing techniques that would be appropriate for the specific yarns. I remember being very impressed by our conglomerate creativity!
For my yarn, among the suggestions was a seat cushion. I had never thought of that – what an idea! So that’s what I ran with. I found an interesting 8-shaft pattern on handweaving.net that I thought would be fun to weave on my 8S LeClerc floor loom. I found another contrasting but similar weight yarn in my stash (double points there!) to use in the warp. Having so little of this precious Irish yarn though, I needed to sample. The most important information would come after washing and fulling the sample. So I simplified the structure and wove a small sample on a 4-shaft loom. The shrinkage was much less than I had anticipated, which was really good news. My 775 yards of pink wool would be enough for the weft for 2 pillows! I used every last yard of the Irish wool and the darker burgundy wool warp.
During the spring of 2021, I finished weaving the 8S fabric and fulled it in time for our annual end-of-year supper (alas not “pot luck” this year), which we gleefully held outdoors in person! The weather was threatening, but we were eager to see each other and share our projects, and the outdoor gathering was a success.
Then the fabric sat for awhile longer, waiting for another burst of inspiration on how to make the seat cushion. The original plan had been complex, comprising a trapezoidal shape with 1-2″ side panels and high density cushion foam inside. But that was intimidating, so it was put off. Then I ran across a blog post on Gist Yarn’s website on how to make an envelope pillow using handwoven fabric. Looking around my studio, I saw no fewer than 3 pillow forms sitting unused. So the plan was hatched.
With the size defined, the pillows came together with a pretty multi-colored cording around the edges made from mercerized cotton (also from my stash!) One was stuffed with a feather pillow and is on my chair now. The other became an 18″ couch pillow that I’m thinking of giving to my daughter, who was kind enough to purchase the yarn in the first place. What goes around, comes around.
In 2021, my husband and I became beekeepers. We love our bees! (The queen is named “Bee 39.” Hehe!) It was my idea really, but I was more than pleasantly surprised when Dan took the lead with them. He spent hours watching YouTube videos and reading books and just going out to the garden to observe our industrious hive of black and yellow honeybees. So, most of his Christmas gifts this year had a bee theme. (Men are so hard to shop for. It pleases me to no end when I can give him something he’s not expecting and he loves it!)
True confessions: We usually eat dinner sitting on the couch watching Jeopardy! Hubby Dan props his plate conveniently on an old couch pillow that is dedicated to this function. However, dedicated or not, the old one was getting pretty ratty looking. He didn’t know it, but he needed a new “dining pillow.”
Last fall I was playing with crackle. One of the variations was to treadle it as honeycomb. As I looked at the structure, the wheels were turning, and I knew that his new dining pillow was going to be a honeycomb structure. Back to my stash I went. I found some pale yellow and taupe Tencel and some novelty yarn that would work perfectly for little honeycomb cells outlined in black. I decided to keep it very traditional, with 8-end/8-pick cells for the entire width, as evenly structured as the comb in our hive.
I jumped right in with a 20″ wide warp with enough length to sample some weft colors and wash it to make sure that the cells would behave as expected. I’m glad I did that because I was debating about single or double stranding the black outline yarn. Although I was leaning toward the double, the single ply looked best. In the end, that was a really good choice, as I would have run out of the doubled yarn.
The pillow wasn’t finished in time for Christmas, but that was OK, because the loom attachment he was building for me in his workshop wasn’t done either. We’re a good pair!
One of the holdups was waiting for a 6-treadle retrofit for my little Harrisville floor loom. After treadling the crackle sampler with a 4-treadle direct tie-up, I knew I didn’t want to weave a whole length of honeycomb fabric dancing on 1, 2 and 3 treadles through the whole thing. So it was worth the wait for the convenience. It wove up quickly, finishing off one cone of the Tencel and all the novelty yarn.
The fabric done and vigorously washed and dried, I decided to use the same envelope pillow cover structure for this one. I added a black and yellow twisted cording on the edges and stuffed it with the pillow form from Dan’s now-retired dining pillow. Since the honeycomb structure is so elastic, the cover did require a couple snaps on the back.
If anyone walked into my studio today, they wouldn’t notice that I am down several cones of yarn and some pillow forms, but I know, and that makes me happy.
