A Great Conference

I just returned from a fabulous week at the Hand Weavers Spinners and Dyers of Alberta Conference. The truth of their vision statement was demonstrated in every way.

"A community that supports, promotes, educates and inspires Fibre Arts."



We started off the week with a 3-day Color Horoscope Weaving Workshop. This workshop just keeps getting better.


I have to remember to take group shots--next time.

The Intentional Design Class ---image below should be vertical, so turn your head to the side.

This is close to a group shot---the many shades of peace.

And below is the Woven Paper Collage class. I hope to have some virtual quilts as soon as I receive scans of all the woven collages.


Now pretend you are seeing a short film of everybody at the Conference waving to you.....

DANCES WITH CLOTH

---BONNIE TARSES—

DANCES WITH CLOTH

Weaving Magic into a Living Rainbow of Color

First Friday Gallery Night—June 1, 2012, 5:00 to 8:00 PM (and running through June)

Prudential Montana Real Estate

Downtown Missoula

314 No. Higgins

A Plain Weaver Takes a Holiday

Once every ten years or so I like to crank up all 8 harnesses and all 10 treadles just for the fun of it. (and also to see if I really can do it)(grin)

This is an harness block twill, inspired by Coby Johnson, current president of the Missoula Weavers Guild. She presented a program on block twill over a year ago, and I decided I would like to give it a try. Unfortunately the draft is in Gary's loom bench across town, so if you want to draft, you will have to let me know.

I hate to admit that the square is the only part of the warp that I wove as I had to cut this off to make way for the Blessing Blanket. I removed the remaining warp and retained the cross, so I could put it back on the loom at a later date. The plaid (notice the twill) in the background will be the long awaited towels I owe for the towel exchange.

Sue and Sandra don't faint! I haven't finished them off yet. I messed up the sett and had to re-sley, so the really will be more of a square napkin than a towel.


Who said after weaving 52 years, one would stop making these silly gaffs.

Below is the wrapping I made for this warp---spells out the word "peace". There will be more about this in the weeks to come.

There is really much to tell, but since I will be heading off to teach in Alberta in a couple of days, the best I could do is to give you a taste of what I have been up to.

A word about the color choices for the towel/napkin/table mat. A while back I talked about achieving ZYG (zero yarn growth) by alternating projects featuring "stash reduction" followed by "stash expansion". Above is stash reduction.

WEAVING RETREAT

Perhaps Weaving Marathon would have been a better name for this event. After months of playing around with color wrappings, a palette was settled upon and I began winding a warp for a Blessing Blanket for a, soon to be, six year old.
I thought, perhaps, the girl was old enough to participate in the color selection. I gathered up a couple dozen samples of cashmere, placed them in a plastic bag and send them off to Seattle.


I anxiously awaited their return. As soon as I got the samples, I packed a suitcase and the yarn and went across town to Gary, my Fireside Loom. It is a long story, but Gary and I have been trying a trial separation. On Sunday, I warped the loom. I wove all day Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday afternoon.......

I cut the blanket off the loom! Wednesday night I tied the fringe. Thursday morning I tossed it in the wash and dryer.


At midday, a friend came by and snapped a couple of pictures, and then off to FedEx and overnight express to Seattle. It was picked up on Friday just in time for the birthday party on Saturday. It was perfect!!

Everything was perfect except for my back which did not appreciate being worked so hard. I think I will not push myself quite so hard in the future, but it sure was exciting.

PS: Gary and I have reconciled, but that is another story for another day

Problem Solved

The secret to posting with images is to use Explorer rather than FireFox.

I am trying out various colors and formats to see what I like. I am running into a problem I will soon figure out is how to move the images around. The usual cut and paste doesn't seem to work.

I don't know if anyone recalls that I was working on the chenille Color Horoscope Weaving. Well, I cut it off the loom and draped it around myself (as I love to do)

This looks so different from my own horoscope weaving! I love it.

One of the things I do differently than most people working with chenille is that I braid my fringe. I figure this step takes me close to 16 hours, but I generally put on a good trashy audio book and braid away.

Here is the happy recipient who made me promise to cut her head out of the picture.
I know you can see the difference in the luster and drape of the chenille after laundering.

How I launder: I toss into a cold water wash, let the machine agitate 5 times, turn off and let sit for a half hour. Drain out the wash water, fill with rinse (add softener if desired), let agitate 5 times, turn off and let sit for another half hour, drain, and spin. Remove from the washer and toss in the dryer with 3 tennis balls. Dry on gentle, checking from time to time between biting finger nails. The chenille looks really bad when it comes out of the wash, but something magical happens in the dryer.

Thanks to Fans

Well, I got rid of the dots, but the way new post box that I am writing in now is set up, I cannot add pictures. My blog is all about the images. I have spent far to much time trying to get back my old set up, to no avail. I am sure that I am not the only one who can't upload pictures. I have someone who is going to help me set up wordpress, but that won't happen until the fall.

Sandra told me there was a way to get the old template back, but I sure can't figure it out. Everything that I have read leads me to think that Google has decided to fix what wasn't broken, but now it is broken. 

The End

I am not happy with the new look, and don't know how to change it. So until I can figure out how to get my blog to resemble what it was before, consider this my last post.