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.

Spinning! And Weavers' Guild of Boston Sale

Can you believe how completely lame I am about blogging lately? I guess when things get hectic, this is one of the low-priority items for me, sad to say...

At any rate, in fiber news, two exciting things happened today. First, I learned how to spin! Really, really badly! But I think I may be hooked. I took a beginning spinning class at the Fiber Loft in Harvard, Mass., got my knuckles good and bloody learning how to card fleece and spun some really lumpy yarn on a Louet S10. Which came home with me after the class. (No, I didn't buy it, I'm just renting it for the month to try to get the hang of this a little better. I'll definitely look for one with two treadles when I buy a wheel...) The teacher said I took to it like a duck takes to water, but I think I'm going to need a lot of practice before I get usable yarn (I'm picky).

So much fun, and my respect for the fantastic handspinners on Etsy has gone through the roof. Like lovely Ms. Maple of North Star Alpacas - wow, how on earth does she get her handspun so beautifully even??


I mean, look at that! Wow. (And click on it to buy it!) I bow to a master...

The other bit of fun fiber news was that the Weavers' Guild of Boston annual sale was this week, Thursday evening through this afternoon. I just popped down to Weston to pick up my unsold items - and found out I sold 12 pieces! (Half of the items I brought to them.) I'm most pleased! My etsy shop and studio are going to be pretty darn bare again, and the holiday open studios at Western Avenue Studios are still coming up, gulp!

No wonder I haven't been blogging much lately... I'm off to make the rounds and read some of my favorite blogs, I feel like I haven't visited anyone in ages! I'm sorry!

Weaver's Guild of Boston

Goodness, I meant to post about this a while ago - we had our first Guild meeting of the year a couple of Wednesdays ago now. Always nice to catch up a little bit with people - and I'm finally starting to get to know some of the people there. (I'm pretty shy in social situations, not that great at putting myself forward, so it's nice to be getting a bit more comfortable with this lovely group of weavers...)

It doesn't hurt that I volunteered to be an officer of sorts - I'm the Yearbook Assistant this year, and will take editing the whole thing next year. Not a hugely terrible job, but you have to be comfortable with computers. A nice side bonus is that I got to install the Guild's copy of Pagemaker on my computer.

The afternoon speaker was the very engaging Patricia Palson - a former Guild member who now lives the weaving life full time, selling at various high-end craft shows throughout the year - including Paradise City, coming up. (I really, really want to do this show.)




I so want to be her when I grow up! Not sure if I'll ever get to the point of sewing jackets like she does (I loathe my sewing machine, and I'm pretty sure the feeling is mutual), but I would love perhaps to expand into custom yardage, and create fabric for people that are on speaking terms with their sewing machines... Maybe someday. For now, my plate is quite full enough. (Stressing out this week - Open Studios, plus a custom order, plus the project for Handwoven, I've bitten off more than I can chew, I fear.)

Weavers Guild Sale - Pictures

Finally a few pictures from the Guild Sale:




Hey, there's one of my scarves, lol! (The rolled up green one on the left side of the photo - I re-rolled it with the other side out, and somebody bought it!)

Here's a gorgeous wall-hanging (huge amount of work, the picture kind of sucks, but there are all these fabulous woven pleats in it):



Three-dimensional weave structures (either by weaving in pleats, working with high-twist yarns, or playing with differential shrinkage, not sure yet...) are next on my list of things to try, once I have a little time to play around. I missed Anne Field's free lecture, but I'm looking forward to buying her book on collapse weave.

And, finally, here's why I don't have a ton of pictures from the show:

Good thing she's cute. :)

Jurying the Weavers' Guild of Boston Show

So, yesterday's jurying experience was fantastic!

The amount of handwoven items was unbelievable - when I first saw the sign-up sheet for the jury, I was surprised at how many people were acting as jurors. Now I see why! The only way to get through everything in a three or four hour time frame was to have about 10 teams of jurors going over items...

My partner and I only got through three people's work - we did get one of the *very* prolific weavers, though, who does really beautiful work. (And I can't remember her name, argh, I can't believe it! I'll find it and post it here - with some photos of her work, too.) She works mostly with rayon chenille, done in plain weave, with supplemental warps of novelty fibers (ribbons, boucle, etc.).

It's her color sense that makes her work special - just out of this world beautiful combinations of color in her warps, where practically every thread in a scarf, e.g., is different from the one next to it. And to top it all off, she dyes most of her own yarn. Wow!

Her art-to-wear coats were fabulous - I tried a couple on, how fun! My jurying partner was like - "you *have* to have that coat, it's fantastic on you" - tunic length, with wide sleeves, fantastic antique/ethnic buttons, etc., I can't really describe it. $1200. Eeks. Definitely a fair price for the amount of work that went into the item - but at this point in my life, $1200 would buy a whole heck of a lot of yarn! LOL. Maybe someday... I would absolutely *love* to have lots and lots of extra money to spend on things like that, and to support artists. (Buy Handmade!)

** Edited to add - hooray for people with better memories for names than me! :) Maureen identified my mystery weaver for me - Barbara Willis. I do believe she also shows her work at the Cambridge Artists Cooperative gallery in Harvard Square, as well. (59A Church Street, Cambridge, MA). Thank you! **

I completely forgot to bring my camera. Duh. I am hoping to scoot down for part of the sale tomorrow before it's over, though, so I'll bring my camera then and take some pictures and get them on line.

The variety of the work was astounding - and very inspirational! You'd think that after my mad rush of weaving/finishing/getting ready for this sale, I'd take a night off... But, nope, I spent the evening warping some merino yarn I dyed a while ago to give a Wall of Troy twill scarf a whirl, just to see how it comes out.

MVP!

Ah, finally, a chance to post. The resident Woodland Fairy has been hogging the computer today.


(She has wings, too, but we decided they were a little big to wear to preschool.)

Things are insane around here. Conall is croupy and teething, I'm sick and stressing out about the Guild sale, and Carlos is working (literally) around the clock (he's gotten about two hours of sleep since Saturday - seriously, two hours). Huge design review for him at work, yesterday (from 9am - 8pm) and today. Tape-out (when the chip schematics go to the fab to get built) is next Friday. Here's hoping he'll actually sleep tonight - I'll be the one pulling the all-nighter tonight!

The baby blanket is off the loom, I have a huge array of scarves, and I'm working on a quick bamboo shawl, which needs to be finished tonight. Then tomorrow night will be dedicated to tagging everything with care instructions, etc.

Oh - and the Red Sox won the World Series! :) And Mike Lowell, my favorite player, got the MVP award for the Series! Red Sox management, please, please, please sign him and stay miles and miles away from stupid-head A-Rod!

Baseball, Pillows and More

Now *that* is what I call a baseball game! Heck of a game last night at Fenway - of course I'm happy the Sox smucked the Rockies in Game 1, but last night's game was a real classic pitching duel... Both starters were excellent and the final score was 2-1. That's the kind of game that is fun to watch!

OK, on to weaving matters... I managed to put together my inventory for the Weavers' Guild Sale. Phew. One task done. Now I just have to finish up the last few items that are on the list but are still on my looms, eeks!

I did finish what I thought would be a turned Ms and Os shawl last night... Twisted the fringe in front of the game and got it washed, etc. But, as I suspected while I was weaving it, I'm not wild about the stripe pattern that I put into the weft. Looks kind of table-clothy for a shawl, at least to my eye. So, I'm thinking of cutting it up and making bolster-shaped pillows from it, which should suit the pattern perfectly. And it's made from bamboo, so it should stand up to use as pillow fabric (though that will be interested to discover). I've never made a pillow from my handwoven fabric before - fun!

I would post a picture, but half the batteries are missing from my camera. Taken to put into some toy or another (a little flashlight, actually, I think, for Bella, who loves that sort of thing).

There are never enough rechargeable batteries in this house! :) And we don't even buy the munchkins very many electronic toys...

So, here's a picture of some bamboo from Wikipedia article about bamboo:




And I really wish I had batteries in my camera because the leaves are soooo much prettier than last week! The colors are really spectacular this fall... We had a pretty terrible drought in August and September, I wonder if that contributed to the colors (eeks!)?

Earth Challenge

So, etsyFAST (Fiber Arts Street Team) has a challenge theme each month - and this month's theme is the element Earth. So, I wove this scarf (bamboo again):

And finally listed it yesterday. :) Brown tones, and for some reason the pattern reminds me of crops/fields. Here's a closeup:

The squares appeal to my structured side. I think I'm going to have to play with this structure and more colors at some point. Probably *after* the Weavers Guild Sale!!

Weavers Guild Sale

I've been AWOL lately. Lots going on at home - and I'm also trying to get ready for the upcoming Weavers' Guild of Boston Textile Show and Sale.

Eeks.

This will be my first time participating, and I'm sitting on the jury as well. I'm really looking forward to jury service - how fun is it going to be to be able to see/handle all the fabulous items various guild members have been working on this year? Yup, definitely going to be fun. A little scary, but lots of fun. Most of these women have been weaving for a *lot* longer than me... I like to think that I can add a little something, just by using interesting fibers (hooray for bamboo!) and colors, but we'll see...

At any rate, if anyone out there lives in the Boston area and would like to come visit the show, here's the info:

Where: Josiah Smith Barn, 358 Boston Post Rd., Weston, Massachusetts

When: Thurs Nov. 1 (5pm - 9pm), Fri. Nov. 2 (10 am - 9 pm), Sat. Nov. 3 (10 am - 5 pm).

Directions: Take Route 128 (I-95) to Route 20W to Weston Center.

Let's see if I can manage to link to a google map of the location.


View Larger Map

Admission is free, and the Guild is also putting on an exhibit of Overshot textiles (neato!). My overshot table runner that I'm weaving in my picture is going to be in the exhibit, actually. And I'll be hoping to sell some of my work there, too! Best of all, a portion of the proceeds of the sale is used to support the study of weaving and textiles.

I hope to see you there!

Finally!

I have been *hugely* lame about finishing projects lately. Finishing meaning - once something is off the loom, it tends to languish in storage because I procrastinate horribly about twisting fringe and washing/drying, etc.

So, I finally got around to twisting the fringe and washing the alpaca/silk/bamboo fuscia/lime/black scarf that I wove ages ago! Here it is...


(OK, random side topic here - how the *heck* do you spell fuscia? Fuschia? Fushia (no)? Everything I try comes up wrong, but none of the spellcheckers actually know what word I'm trying to spell. Hmph.)

In the end, I wound up liking it quite a bit. I really do lean towards brighter/more saturated colors, I think. The grey/white scarf on my little loom right now (pictured below) is boring me to tears. Poor thing. Oh well, I'll finish it up quick and maybe it will find a good home at the Weavers' Guild of Boston annual sale, coming up in November...

Hemming and Hawing

Kivy's shawl is off the loom!

I took this photo outside, so the colors are closer to how they look to my eyes, though now, if anything, they look a little over-saturated. Hmph. Who knew photographing textiles could be so difficult??

I remembered which is my "bad" selvedge, by the way (the left). And now I'm hemming the shawl:


Not too shabby! The stitches don't seem to show on the front at all to my eye (I'm proud of myself; a seamstress, I'm not, lol).

Anywho, I was thinking of adding some tassels on the corners of the shawl, but now that I see it, up close and personal, I don't think I will. I like the clean lines of it as is and think that maybe tassels would be a little overly fussy. I'm dithering, though. I should ask Kivy what she thinks, it's for her, after all!

I hem and twist fringe during Red Sox games. The kids are in bed and I can spread out with no fear of curious - and grubby - fingers. I got half of it done last night while the Sox tromped on Toronto - here's hoping for another win tonight!

On other fronts, I went to the final Weavers Guild of Boston meeting today - what a lovely group of women. We had the yearly business meeting, lunch, a little fashion show and then a lecture about collecting coverlets given by a former curator of the American Textile History Museum. It didn't quite get my creative juices flowing as much as last month's meeting, but I did get to meet a lot more people this time, which was very nice - adult conversation! Wow! A novelty for a stay-at-home-mom... I actually missed my munchkins while I was gone. Silly, I was gone for all of 4 1/2 hours or so, that's all. Mommy love is pretty powerful stuff.

I also got some delicious yarn in the mail today from Yarnchef at etsy - check out her shop! Lovely stuff. I got some gorgeous variegated pink merino yarn from her, I'm thinking of combining it with some dark brown bamboo. How Mod. Yum.