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.

Ice Storm! And Handwoven

Good grief. If you're not in New England, you probably don't know, but Massachusetts/Southern New Hampshire were hit with a HUGE ice storm Thursday night/yesterday. We lost power for the whole day yesterday - got it back around 9pm, I think. We spent the night in a hotel - it was supposed to get down to about 19 last night - too cold to spend the night in a house without heat! (And little man Conall is sick, too, to make things more complicated.) It looks like Worcester is a huge mess, yikes... (one of my brothers lives there - another lives a bit south of Worcester and didn't get any ice!).

On the bright side of things, the latest issue of Handwoven magazine arrived yesterday, and my ruffley scarves are in it! Hooray!

This was a fun project, I actually got a lot of input from Madelyn van der Hoogt on it. The scarves started out like this:


And, after a lot of back and forth, ended up like this:

(The photos in Handwoven are so good!!) The project scarf is actually in the berry colorway, like the little one above, but I didn't have a chance to take pictures of it, I was weaving right up to the deadline, it actually went into the mail still damp, lol! (After my dear little son got into the laundry room, pushed buttons on the washing machine and sent it - the berry one - through the wash a third time - ahhhh! LOL! It shrank a bit more than I expected, needless to say. This child, I'm tellin' ya...)

Anyway, it was such a fun project! And the Dragon Tales yarn is just so gorgeously colored, it's hard to go wrong with it...

Well, here's hoping today gets back to normal. I theoretically have Open Studios, and I also have a couple of cashmere scarves to send out to Etsy customers, goodness. Time to get going!

A Long Summer Hiatus

I can't believe it has been so long since I posted... Life got pretty crazy there for a while, and I lost my motivation for blogging, as well, though not my motivation for weaving. Never that!

To sum up about Convergence - it was a whole heck of a lot of fun. The second two classes that I took were about color theory - no pictures, really, to post, but they were good classes, and kind of confirmed for me that I do better than I think I do with the color stuff... In the first, we did a series of exercises with hues (setting up a grey scale and then choosing colors from a huge amount of color chips to go with each hue on the scale - a great exercise, and, I found, a lot easier when I just went with my gut and *didn't* use the little grey scale finder that the teacher gave to us). In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have signed up for two classes on color theory - they were both very good, and either one on it's own would have been sufficient (the teacher for the second one, Ruby Leslie, brought a huge amount of her very fun samples with her to illustrate how colors work together - also fantastic!).

Those colors work together, I think, at least in real life... The scarf is a little more warm than this picture shows. Kind of toffee-ish. Yum. (This is one of my old standby patterns, made in Bambu7 from Silk City.)

The exhibits were amazing - I didn't get to see as many off-campus as I would have wished, including, I'm ashamed to admit it, missing Kathy Roig's piece in the Weave and Resist exhibit (wah! lame!). But the exhibits that were in the Conference center were a lot of fun to explore... And the yardage exhibit took the cake. They hung the pieces from the center of a rotunda in the conference center - really gorgeous, so you could get the full impact of them length of cloth, or go up to the second floor and see them up close.

I've been playing with some really yummy variegated yarn that I found at Convergence lately:

I am actually going to be working on a project using this yarn for Handwoven Magazine very soon! More of the yarn is on it's way, courtesy of Earth Guild's Dragon Tale Yarn. I'm very excited about this - the design is based on the ruffled scarves that I've posted here before, and, hopefully, the project will turn out as Madelyn van der Hoogt and I hope it will and it will get published... Fingers crossed!

In family news, Ms. B started preschool today...

Who is that big girl? Goodness. (Took this picture a week or so ago, actually.) And Mr. Conall is growing like a weed...

Who is that big guy?? These pjs are a riot - I didn't realize it when I bought them, but all the little animals on them actually glow in the dark. He glows all night long. Hooray for Carters!

At any rate, for anyone who has actually been wondering - sorry about the long break, I hopefully it won't happen again. And very many thanks to anyone taking the time to read this now, after all this time... I hope all is well with all of you!

This and That

Had a nice day in the studio on Saturday... The light was lovely!


I also set a new speed record (for me) for a sale. Listed this guy in my Etsy shop on Saturday:



And when I woke up Sunday morning, it was sold! It's off to Australia to live with a lovely repeat customer. I'm tickled. So, I wove it's sibling, and just posted it today:



They're both based on my scarf that is in the March/April issue of Handwoven Magazine. Huck lace panels run the length of them, with a little plain weave at each end, along the middle and along the borders. I used 8/2 tencel from Webs in lots of colors and sett these two at 24 epi (120 ends total, they wound up 4" wide once they were off the loom and washed).

I'm hoping to weave a little series of these, we'll see how it goes... I have some 8/2 Bamboo from Webs, too, that I'm going to try out, just to see if it behaves differently from the Tencel.

Handwoven Magazine

I just got an email from my Etsy friend Shannon of Sunrise Lodge Fiber Studio (click that link to go to her shop for some really fabulous handspun yarn and woven items, too) - she received her March/April Handwoven Magazine today.

I'm hugely tickled pink to have had my huck lace scarves published! And also to have written the Endnotes... It was a whole heck of a lot of fun and a very big honor.

I'd post pictures, but I'm in Vermont for the weekend with the family to ski. Hopefully the magazine will be in my mailbox when we get home on Sunday!

Handwoven Magazine!

Well, I've been sitting on some very exciting (for me, lol) news, but I think it's probably safe to post about it now...

A couple months ago, I was contacted - out of the blue!! - by Madelyn Van Der Hoogt, the editor of Handwoven Magazine, asking if they could publish one of my scarves that she had seen on Flickr. How cool is that??? It's this one, that I wove a while ago as a custom order for a lovely customer:

It's made from 8/2 amethyst Tencel, and uses a simple five-end huck lace to create panels along the length of the scarf. Since I'd already sold the scarf, I wove up another one to send along - thank goodness I keep detailed project notes so that I could recreate it exactly!! And, since I'm an overachiever, I wove another one, too, in a spring green color (called lemongrass), also in 8/2 Tencel from Webs.

I got the proof of the article yesterday and it looks great! I wish I had the Handwoven photographer around to take pictures of all of my work, wow... It will be in the upcoming March/April issue! I'm so darn excited, how cool! I hope it doesn't get pulled at the last minute, lol! I'll believe it when I have it in my hands, I guess...

So, that was enough to have me bouncing around the kitchen, all happy. But then she asked me to write the Endnotes for the issue as well! Wahooo!! The Endnotes are a one-page column at the end of the magazine, written by various weavers - usually very prominent weavers, I'm incredibly flattered to have been asked, even if just to provide a more beginning weaver's perspective... I talk a bit about becoming a weaver, being a stay-at-home-mom and selling on Etsy; I'm not sure what will remain in the final version, she's going to edit it this weekend.

I had a wonderful time writing both the article and the Endnotes (love writing, but it can be very hard work) and just can't wait to see them in actual print.

12 Days of Weaving

Oh my gosh, if you weave (or live with a weaver), check out this YouTube video from Bonnie Tarsis, it's hilarious:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyaE_3k8fN8

(Let's see if that link worked...)

Lots of packages going out today! The purple scarf is done and being shipped:

As well as the black/white/fuchsia bamboo scarf along the same lines (also sold yesterday - yippee!), and the tencel lace scarf is on its way to Handwoven Magazine (gulp) (wish it luck!).

I must say, it has been a fabulous first year of selling my work... I've done far better than i ever thought I would (the validation, lol!), and it has given me the confidence to move ahead, and not worry so much about whether things will sell or not. What I've discovered is that when I really love a piece, it sells. When I'm not so sure about it, it doesn't.

All except for this scarf, that is:


I love this scarf, and, for some reason, it just hasn't sold. Maybe it's a bit too pink? Not sure, but it's lovely in person (maybe I'll just keep it for myself!).

At any rate, it's been a great year - and if any of my wonderful customers happen to read this - thank you so much!!