SOWA - Pictures, Finally

Finally, a couple pictures from SOWA! The South End of Boston is a really cool, vibrant neighborhood, the South of Washington area is undergoing a rebirth of sorts, and I love that they have an open air market there every week over the summer now. The Art Walk coincided with the market's opening weekend.

We set up on Friday, in the midst of normal Boston workday traffic, it was a little crazy, but there was temporary parking for us, hooray!

The buildings where we set up - we were to the left a little bit of this picture, I just like the old brick smokestack here...

Here's my little set-up. Photographing indoors sucks, in a word. That flash just sucks all the color out of everything, doesn't it? The set-up worked out pretty well in the end, though. I'm not sure whether I'll continue to use hangers (like on the right in this photo), things do tend to slide off of them... And I like how the ladder display look. But the benefit of the hangers is that you can see more of the pieces that are to the rear. Hmmm. Must think on this more. The baskets hung on the gridwall worked really well for my eco-felt pillows.

I didn't do a very good job of getting around to take photos of other WAS people - but my friend Peter did! Check out his blog entry! (There's even a picture of me, eeks.)

I did manage a picture of my neighbor, though, the fabulous Ms. Vicky of Art by Verde:


Her work is just gorgeous. Love it. I came home with some of it. :) (One of the small landscapes to her left in this photo.) Vicky has a studio at Western Avenue Studios and was my first neighbor there (before she moved to the third floor, the traitor! lol!).

There was a *ton* of foot traffic through this show, but not a lot of bags going by, which means there were a lot of people just browsing. Not surprising, given the current economic situation, of course. I was pleased with how much I sold, in the end, especially since this really isn't the season that I sell well in, generally. Handed out a ton of cards, postcards and Western Avenue brochures, too, so that's always good, especially since last year people really *did* come back at Christmas time.

I also learned an interesting lesson, being next to Ms. Vicky - people seem to get stressed out about their booth location at a craft fair, etc. etc. Well, Vicky couldn't have had a tougher location, in my opinion (in the middle of a side corridor) and her stuff flew off of her pegwalls. Interesting, huh? A combination of really gorgeous work, that people really like, and reasonable prices (she paints a lot of small pieces, but she also sold one of her large pieces to a couple from Croatia!).

I'm trying to figure out how to apply this to my work... Weaving is very time-consuming after all, even if I am a fast weaver. It's interesting - I get two types of comments. Either raised eyebrows at the prices or comments about how *reasonable* my prices are. You can tell which group of customers know about fiber art/handwovens...

And considering my taste in yarn just keeps getting more expensive, my prices aren't going to be coming down anytime soon. I figure one way around it is to make sure my designs are interesting enough to make the pricetag not outlandish. And I'm also starting up a line of lower-priced, solid-color scarves, since I get requests for them quite often.

Anyway. The show was a lot of fun, and a really great way to try out my set-up, etc. I'll be there again next year, if they'll have me!

Front Page on Saturday!

I'm still playing catch-up from this weekend, and I just realized that one of my scarves was on Etsy's Front Page on Saturday morning!



It was this one... It's been in a ton of treasuries lately, so it was really nice to see that it got it's 15 minutes of Etsy fame. You can see the whole treasury here on CraftCult. (For some reason I can't seem to embed the widget from CraftCult here in my post, argh! It's really a very nice selection, I'd love to put it all here.)

Hooray for StudioHaus for creating such an awesome collection!

An Award from the Weavers' Guild!

Just a quick post - I'm up to my eyeballs in preparation for the SOWA Art Walk this weekend (gulp) (I'll take pictures)...

But I did manage to get to the Weavers' Guild of Boston Meeting today (I'm Yearbook Chair, I figured I should probably be there for the Board Meeting...) - and I got an award! I'm completely tickled!

From our yearbook:

"The Dorothy Glowacki Celebratory Award is given annually to a younger, newer member who exhibits steady progress and merits recognition for continuing his or her educational endeavors in the fiber arts field."

Hey, cool!

And, while I'm at it, I should plug the new and improved website for the Guild:

Weavers Guild of Boston (website).

Nancy Kronenberg, the Website guru for the Guild, has put a lot of hard work into the site, and I think it looks great. While you're at it, you can take a peek at Nancy's lovely weaving, too, at her website Rosepath Weaving.

SOWA

Anybody out there on the art and craft fair circuit at all? I'd be interested in hearing about your experiences!

I've got my first real outside juried show coming up soon (so soon, in fact, that I'm kind of in denial about it)...

Yup, May 16 - 17 - is that really next weekend?? Gulp! Happily, I'll be going over with several friends from Western Avenue Studios, but, in the meantime, I'm really focused on building inventory. I'm weaving lots of pretty basic scarves:


A pile of bamboo huck lace scarves, taken right from my first Handwoven article and modified a bit, waiting to be washed. Eventually, I'm going to be able to list quite a few in my Etsy shop, I think, but not yet!

They would be more efficient if I wound enough warp to weave two or so at a time, but it turns out I have a short attention span when it comes to weaving solid colors. It is interesting, though - as a weaver, I enjoy complex patterns and colors, but as people come through my studio and comment on various work, I've found that basic colors and clean design sells just as well as, if not better than, the ones that are more interesting to my weaver-ly eye.

There is room for both, of course, and sometimes mindless weaving is just right - I find I spend a lot of time letting my mind wander to new and different ideas while weaving these guys, many of which never come to fruition, but some of which may just be pretty good, eventually.

Two Months?!

Good grief - almost two months, that has got to be some sort of new blog-slacker-record... But I've been busy, I suppose - kids, house, working in Boston a bit in March and at the studio, and Carlos (Mr. Skiingweaver) has been working literally around the clock for the past six weeks or so at his start-up, it's been pretty insane. Add to that that I'm stressing about having enough inventory for an upcoming art show I've been accepted into...

But it should be fun - several people that I know from my studio building are going to be there as well - but in the meantime, I'm frantically weaving! (Click on the poster if you want to read a little more about it.)

Weaving some lace scarves...

This one has been in a couple Treasuries on Etsy!

I've been busy researching new yarn sources, too, and have some gorgeous yarn being dyed for me in Canada as we speak - I really can't wait to get my hands on it.

What else? Ah yes! A new loom is on it's way to my studio! Tom Beaudet (LeClerc's U.S. rep., at least in my area) is refurbishing a 45" 16shaft Weavebird (compudobby) for me! Hooray! I jumped all over it when it came up for sale - it is really, really hard to find used Weavebirds... I've been kind of holding out for either a new or used one, just because I love my LeClerc Colonial and they're built in the same way. Also like that you don't need to add any sort of lift assist mechanism to the Weavebirds... (If you go here you can see a video of the loom in action!)

Isn't she pretty? I wouldn't be terribly surprised if I end up trading up to a 32 shaft eventually, but, for now, I'm sure this will keep me busy. Although, considering we are also in the midst of getting estimates to get our roof replaced (ouch!), maybe this wasn't the best time to be spending $$$ on a new loom. Ah well! :)

I hope all of you are well, and I won't let it slip for this long again, I promise. Ive been thinking lately that I don't have anything particularly interesting to say - mostly just feeling tired and overwhelmed. Things are easing up for Carlos at work, though, thank goodness, so hopefully I'll have more energy for blogging!