Yesterday I gave a talk on “Online Selling” to the Olympia Weaver’s Guild.  What a great group of women!  I got to sit through their show-and-tell before the talk and found myself getting inspired by all the wonderful things folks held up and talked about: amazing knit fish, a window curtain from recycled plastic, a coat with fringe on the sleeve, vintage kente cloth, and a knit sweater with woven strips (and much, much more.) This was the first time I’d given a talk on this particular subject and thus was a bit nervous (was the talk too technical? too basic?)  The audience was perfect, however.  I quizzed the audience before I began and of the 30ish people in the room, nearly all were considering selling their handwovens online, and only two were already doing so.  (I quizzed them again at the end, and 15 or so indicated thay they were now encouraged to actually go ahead and give online selling a try.) If there’s interest in online selling or the business of selling your handwovens, please leave a comment on this blog post.  There already are two great “business” articles on the site: Photographing Your Work by Daryl Lancaster and How Much? Pricing Handwovens by Nadine Sanders.  And if there’s enough interest in weaving-to-sell, I’ll publish more. After the talk, I treated myself to a stop by Shipwreck Beads.  This place is HUGE.  These pictures (taken with my humble cell phone camera) cannot do it justice. In the 1980s, I worked for Tropic Jewel in Madison, Wisconsin I manned the retail counters, helped customers design and build necklaces, did mail-order fulfillment.  It was the perfect twenty-something slacker job.  Low pay, but fun co-workers and surrounded by beautiful glittery things all day.  That was where I first learned about Shipwreck Beads, our store did business with them, and so yesterday felt like the end of a very slow pilgrimage. It was a bit overwhelming, actually.  If you go, plan to stay the day.  You don’t even have to pack a lunch, because they have a café right there in the store.  The store is pirate themed, which adds additional fun.  I’m planning to go back with Eric and Kai, both of whom like the glittery stuff, too.  I think it’d be a fun family outing. Laura Fry asked me on Twitter what I bought.  I was quite restrained, considering the kind of wildness that a place like Shipwreck Beads encourages.  I bought a knotting tool that I needed to make birthday presents for my Mom, 8mm bead strands for the same project, a cheap flocked disc to hold beads… and the find of the day: Magnetized Hematite Beads!  (So cool, they had to be capitalized.) They even come in three colors: natural black-grey, silver coating, and iris coating.  I can’t tell you how hard these rocked my world.  Best of all, they were inexpensive ($2.95 for a 16” strand of natural-colored 8mm beads.)  I’m not sure yet what these are going to become, but my mind is churning away with ideas! Last night Kai and I worked together on my Mom’s necklaces.  He strung the beads and I did the knotting. Those are 8mm round beads, strung and knotted on Griffin silk cord #10, finished length about 30-32″, no clasp.  One necklace is rose quartz, one is rose quartz and Peruvian pink opal interleaved, the blue-green one is kyanite.

Most days I stay home and work on WeaveZine, or the house, or my weaving.  The only people I see day-to-day tend to be men: my husband and son.  This past Friday, however, was filled with the company of wonderful and creative women. First up was lunch and a weaving lesson with Bonnie Tarses.  In a complete reversal of the natural order, I was the teacher and Bonnie the student.  She had never woven on a rigid-heddle loom and wanted to give it a go, so I brought over one of mine, gave her a mini-lesson and then left it with her to play on.  I can’t wait to see what she comes up with!  Bonnie’s work has been so much about doing amazing things in plain weave that she and a rigid-heddle loom seem destined to be together. In the picture below, Bonnie and Kai (my teaching assistant.) At first I was a bit nervous at first about teaching someone who has been weaving longer than I’ve been alive.  But it was a lot of fun.  Most of the time I teach folks who’ve never woven before, so I have to explain everything from first principles, explaining what a heddle is, what a shed in, where the shuttle goes.  Not the case this time!  I think the whole “lesson” took three minutes, then we went out for Indian food. Later that evening, I was honored to attend a “coming of age” ceremony for the daughter of a friend of mine.  It was a women-only gathering of like-minded individuals, and we all helped this bright and wonderful new woman celebrate her status.  There were presents, and words of wisdom shared.  We talked about our own transitions and whether they were marked with a ceremony, went unmentioned, or were scary and unknown.  There was laughter, tears, and chocolate. No pictures of this event, of course, as it was private and personal.  But I did get permission to take a picture of the first stages of decorating her feet with henna. It was a fun and moving evening.  I wish our culture had more of these rites of passage rituals.  It’s a moment to reflect on the life that was and look forward to the life to come.  A time to get advice and support from people who’ve been down the path ahead of you. The default ritual in this country—going down to the DMV and getting a driver’s licence—is somehow not the same…

Sock Summit was the brainchild of Tina Newton, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, and Cat Bordhi.  The idea, to hold a fiber conference devoted to sock knitting.  Turns out, this quickly became a wildly popular idea. Go read about it on the internet, it was quite the thing.  The server got trashed during registration when tens of thousands of folks tried to register all at once.  I was one of the lucky ones who got through, and thus last Wednesday my friend Astrid Bear and I drove down to see what there was to see. This was the first indication that we were no longer in Kansas: Thursday and Friday morning I had classes with the incomparable Cat Bordhi.  The first day was all about her new pathways in socks (hint, gusset increases can go anywhere.) Here’s me thinking very hard about wrapping and turning short-row heels.  The yarn I’m using was designed by Cat to have very short color repeats and really was a help seeing what was happening in the stitches. The second day was all about designing new knit stitch patterns.  I was generally hopeless at this, until…I started using floats and figuring out how to knit weave structures.  Then things got fun.  I knit twills and was making good progress on huck lace when the class ended. Even better than the classes were the people.  I met a man at the Skacel booth knitting a week’s worth of socks all at once.  (It’s a looong needle.) One of the highights of the conference for me was turning a corner and hearing three women squeal: “It’s Syne Mitchell!”  And then finding out that the three women in question were Abby Franquemont, Denny, and Sandi Wiseheart.  And they all follow and love WeaveZine!  Besides being notables in the spinning and knitting world, they’re weavers!!! It was such an unexpected thing that at first I couldn’t believe it; I thought maybe Astrid had put them up to it, but no, it was real.  Turns out there are a lot of famous knitters who secretly or previously were weavers.  But that’s a topic for a future blog post. I ended up having dinner with Abby, Denny, Sandi, and Jasmine (and her mom) from the Knitmore Girls podcast, and Ann Budd, and a whole host of really cool folks whose name I did not catch.  No pictures of that, as I was generally laughing too hard to take a picture.  Let’s just say: Yes, they really are as fun to hang out with as you’ve imagined.  Moreso even. I stood in line to get autographs from Barbara Walker (the knitting one, not the weaving one) and Anna Zilboorg.  And although it was a long line, the folks who were in line with me were so entertaining that the time just flew by.  One woman had knit this wee little sock out of laceweight yarn.  It was amazing and very soft.  That’s a spider design from the Barbara Walker stitch dictionary on the back. There were world records in the making.  First there was the chance to knit on the world’s biggest sock (still in progress.) I did my bit to help out. There was also an opportunity to sit in on an attempt to get into the Guiness Book of World Records for most people knitting together in one place.  The previous record had been 256 knitters in Australia.  We blew them away with 700+.  (Sorry about that, Aussies!) We had to knit with straight needles (which I never, ever do) but it was for a good cause, so I broke out the Brittanys and did a bit on the center of a scarf.  It’ll be fun to wear it and think, “that purple bit there, I was breaking a world record when I knit that.” It was a sock-knitting convention, but there was weaving if you looked for it.  Imagine my delight when I was wandering around the vendor’s hall and saw this. It was a scheduled demonstration of weaving by Karrie Weaver (love the name!) on a Weavette.  (Karrie’s the one in green.) Many pretty little things were woven out of sock yarn.  Karrie had the brilliant idea of tucking a square in your purse as a cell-phone screen cleaner. The dealer’s room was an astounding blend of colors and textures.  Tons of indie dyers were represented.  Most of what was there was sock yarn (of course) but there was also at least one skein that called out to me. There was a sock museum filled with vintage socks and reproductions of historical socks.  It will soon be online, so I’ll just show you two of my favorites. Hand-knit child’s socks from the victorian era. And the Arggh-gyles (a more recent innovation.) Last, but certainly not least was the luminaries panel.  Where the topic was how to make a living from your passion, women in business.  (Or at least that was the first question, things evolved from there.) There’s a lot of talent up on that stage, from right to left: Lucy Neatby, Cat Bordhi, Deb Robson, Anna Zilboorg, Priscilla Gipson-Roberts (hidden behind the podium), Tina Newton, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, Meg Swanson, Barbara G. Walker, Judith MacKenzie-McCuin, Nancy Bush. And it was the kind of event where talent was often seated right in front of you as well.  On the left is Jes, one of the co-founders of Ravelry. Not to mention the less-well-known but still fabulous knitters all around. It was a week of geeky fibery goodness.  I’m so glad I went.  Thanks Astrid, for suggesting it, and Brenda Dayne for telling me I’d be A FOOL not to go.

Yep.  I’m still a weaver.  But a weaver who wants to know how to knit truly fine socks. Today I took a class from the ever-inventive Cat Bordhi about her new sock architectures.  You know, the ones that can put the arch increases pretty much anywhere on the foot.  I’d bought her book, NEW PATHWAYS IN SOCKS, when it first came out, marveled at the beautiful designs, and then hit a wall when it came to knit from the instructions.  Some things you just have to see how the hand moves and be there to ask the questions.  I did that today and knit two of the new architectures: Upstream and Coriolis.  Fun stuff. Like many good teachers, Cat throws out additional asides as she goes.  Teaching you how to knit a better Continental purl stitch, a smoother SSK, and one super-secret technique that she swore us all to secrecy about. After the class, the marketplace opened up.  Wowsa.  It’s huge.  Bigger than Convergence was in Tampa.  And there are no looms filling up space.  Let’s just say there is a lot of yarn here in Portland.  I saw some familiar faces: Webs, Bluster Bay Woodworks, Jenkins Woodworking, and a whole host of others.  Frankly, after filling up my brain this morning and afternoon with new sock possibilities, I was too tired to shop, and so headed off to my hotel room to edit this week’s article. Pictures tomorrow.  My camera is packed away and my roommate’s asleep and I don’t want to wake her.

All internet communities have their urban legends: bits of information too good not to pass on, which seem plausible enough, but which ultimately turn out to be more interesting than true. If you go to Snopes.com, you can waste hours reading titillating and shocking stories that have circulated through email: both true and untrue. Weaving is no exception to urban legends.  There’s so much about weaving that seems odd or arcane when you first take up the craft that it can be hard to separate fact from fiction. A few years ago I heard online that you had to have metal heddles on a Schacht Baby Wolf because the weight of the heddles was needed to pull the shafts back down when you were ready to close the shed. This seemed odd to me, since I’d been in the habit of shifting heddles around and taking unused heddles off the loom so they couldn’t bounce around and chew on the selvedge threads.  If the heddles were needed for their weight, how come the loom seemed to work as well with 25 heddles on each shaft as it did with 150? It didn’t really matter to me until I had trouble with split-metal heddles breaking fine silk warp threads.  The sharpness of the split-metal heddle was just enough to cut the 140/2 silk, so I put some Texsolv heddles into the center of the shaft, dutifully surrounding them with extra metal heddles so the shafts would return.  The problem of breaking warp threads was solved.  And I didn’t think about it for another year or so. Until I wanted to weave at night while my husband and son slept.  Days are busy around here, and I’m a night owl, so this seemed the perfect opportunity to get a little extra weaving in.  Of course, metal heddles jangle when you weave.  I wanted to switch to Texsolv to make my loom quieter…but what about the whole weight thing? I’d taken a workshop with Joanne Tallovaric, author of Rep Weave and Beyond, where high weaving tension and a dense warp sett created a situation where the shafts sometimes tried to stay up when we closed the shed (and this was with plenty of metal heddles on the looms.)  One of the other students introduced me to a product sold by Lunatic Fringe, called Jazz Bands.  They are a set of short bungee cords that attach to the treadles and help the shafts return during weaving. I came home and bought a set of those, thinking: “Aha!  Now I can switch my loom over to Texsolv!” But with one thing and another, I never seemed to get around to actually trying it.  Until earlier this week.  I pulled all the metal heddles (4.2 pounds worth) off my loom and replaced them with Texsolv. And you know what?  The loom wove wonderfully.  So I tried the ultimate test, I took off the Jazz bands and let the weight of the shafts themselves close the sheds.  Again, the loom worked just fine. I will confess that I put the Jazz bands back on after the test: I like how they keep the treadles not in use off the floor, I like the snappy feel they give during weaving, and I have wishful thinking that adding resistance bands to my loom makes it a “fitness machine.” I can’t promise that there isn’t a combination of warp and sett that won’t cause problems with shafts returning on a Baby Wolf.  But as I learned in my class with Joann Tallovaric, that can happen no matter what type of heddle you use. All I can offer is this data point: I’m on my third warp with all-Texsolv heddles on my Baby Wolf and it’s weaving wonderfully well.  The loom is lighter and easy to move around.  And while it’s not completely silent, it is quieter during weaving without all those metal heddles clashing around. Got a question about a bit of conventional weaving wisdom?  Take it to the loom.  That’s the best teacher there is.

This past week, I spent with Laura Fry at her studio in British Columbia, weaving and learning.  She and her husband Doug generously hosted me and Kai and we had an absolute blast.  (Yes, I got to bring Kai with me on my weaving adventure.  He and Doug did fun things during the day while Laura and I wove.  How cool is that?) The things I learned were subtle.  Small refinements like: wear thin slippers while weaving to protect your feet from strain, how to wind weft onto a bobbin without leaving a tail you’ll have to cut off later, etc.  No single lesson was life-changing; but there were so many little tweaks and improvements, that overall my weaving has taken a leap forward. One of the most surprising things I learned this past week, was just how satisfying and lovely four-shaft projects can be.  In my race to learn all that I can about weaving, I quickly jumped from four shafts, to eight shafts, to sixteen shafts. So I was a bit disappointed when the first loom Laura sat me down to weave was on a four-shaft LeClerc Fanny counterbalance loom.  I’d heard that counterbalance looms were limited to balanced weave structures only, and the pulleys on top looked terribly antiquated and old-school.  Laura is known for her wicked-fast weaving on an electronic 16-shaft loom.  Why the heck was she starting me with this?   But once I sat down and started weaving (and after the awkwardness of the new finesse  Laura added to my weaving motions wore off) I fell in love with four-shaft weaving all over again.  The Fanny performed flawlessly, with big sheds and solid and easily adjustable tension.  I—a confirmed computer-assisted loom enthusiast—enjoyed the mental exercise of teaching my feet new treadling patterns for each tea towel.  By the end of the week, I was day dreaming about whether I had room for a counterbalance loom anywhere in my house.  (Verdict: I don’t.) Kai was with me, and I had a WeaveZine deadline to hit, so I wasn’t able to get to all the various projects Laura had planned.  But perhaps that was meant to be.  Perhaps I needed to learn that four-shaft weaving was just as lovely and wonderful as it had been when I first started to weave.  That even if you can weave more complicated things, you don’t have to.  That even simple structures can be satisfying and fulfilling.  I’d known that about plain weave and rigid-heddle weaving, why hadn’t I realized it about four-shaft weaving? Other lessons learned

• The loom is a tool.  If it’s not working perfectly, change it.  (Doug is a wonderful loom mechanic and showed me many of his inventions and enhancements to Laura’s textile gear.)
• Industry pirn winders are very cool.  Imagine loading a bunch of pirns into a cartridge and coming back a while later to find them all perfectly wound.  Wowsa.
• British Columbia is a stunningly beautiful province to drive through.

• Kai is a superb car traveler.  Fifteen hours in one go with no whining.  Few adults could rival that.  We listened to The Hobbit audiobook (twice) which helped.
• Weavers, spinners and felters in B.C. are friendly and serve up a killer potluck.
• Tim Hortons is really as good as Canadians say.
• Many little weaving and warping efficiencies, right down to “hold your hand this way, not that, it’s more comfortable and faster.” The kind of coaching you just can’t get from a book or video.  Having a live teacher really makes a difference.

  And it wasn’t all four-shaft weaving.  Laura did let me have a go on the big loom, in all its air-assist, four-fly shuttle, glory. I’d forgotten that I was wearing my oh-so-lovely big yellow hearing protection when she snapped the photo.  But it’s a great opportunity to talk about the importance of protecting your hearing on a noisy loom.  Flyshuttles are noisy, so is the air assist on Laura’s loom.  Hearing protection, especially one with a high-impact filter, is the smart thing to do.  This headset has a built-in MP3 player, so I can even listen to tunes and podcasts while I weave. A wonderful week, indeed.  Getting to spend time with Laura and Doug was every bit as fun as learning to weave. I came home all fired up about weaving and have already woven off one warp, and beamed on a second.  For me, it’s as much about the peace and meditation of weaving as it is about creating textiles.   The biggest lesson I got from Laura and the hours I spent in her studio: I’m a better, happier, less stressed person when I weave.

This blog post could be subtitled: String Heddles Kick My Butt. The day started off well.  I settled down to weave on my knotted-pile project.  Of course, before I could begin, I needed to weave a header in plain weave, and to make that easier I needed to tie some string heddles for the loom, so I didn’t have to hand-pick the sheds. Easy-peasy, right?  I mean, this is basic inkle-loom weaving stuff.  You find a spot on the loom that’s the right size and you tie thread in circles. The first challenge was finding a thread thin enough for the heddles so that it wouldn’t interfere with the closely sett warp.  I picked up a mill end Judith had brought that I thought was 20/2 cotton. First lesson learned: know your yarn. The yarn turned out to be a slippery rayon, and no matter what knot I used (square knot, surgeon’s knot, etc.) it slipped right out.  The second issue, it started breaking.  Judith also said something about the yarn probably being reverse-twist and that was also complicating matters. So back to the drawing board.  We both looked around for a strong 20/2 cotton (all the ones there broke easily) or a 60/2 silk, but couldn’t find either. Second lesson learned: bring the right supplies So, there being no way to materialize 60/2 silk out of the air (I did try, mind you, several times) I hopped in my car and spend an hour running home and back to the retreat. At home I grabbed up some wonderful yarn I got “somewhere” (I get a lot of my yarn from weaver’s garage sales and such like) which is a super-fine nylon string.  I’ve used it for woven shibori, and previous string heddles.  It’s great: slick, strong, and thin.  The cone it was on was unlabeled, and I have no idea where to get more.  If you know of a source, please leave a note in the comments. So I get back to the retreat, eat a wonderful and healthy lunch.  (Good food I didn’t have to cook and all-day weaving with friends, it just doesn’t get much better than this!) Bolstered by gazpacho and pita pockets, I headed back to the loom and begin tying the 102 string heddles I need for the project. Third lesson learned: that’s a lot of string heddles The nylon was slippery, and even with surgeon’s knots kept wanting to come undone, so I had to tie multiple knots, which slowed things down.  Plus I was running out of the nylon, so I was trying to tie the knots with very little waste, which also made things trickier. It was a bit frustrating, but then I had to laugh at myself.  If I wasn’t up for tying a few knots, then what the heck was I doing warping up this kind of project, anyway?  Because once I start weaving, I’ll have to tie nearly 100 knots in every row! That bit of perspective got my mind right, and I settled into enjoying the conversation around me and the mindless repetition of tying knots. Finally, I got all the heddles tied and on the loom. Then I noticed the twining error I’d made in the warp.  I’d gone up-down-down-up in one place instead of up-down-up-down. The only fix was to take out the twining and redo it.  Happily, the error was only a few ends from the edge, so that was a snap! Fourth lesson learned: if you persist with a happy and willing heart, sometimes the weaving gods give you a break.   At one point during today’s retreat, Judith brought out a collection of shuttles to show the various designs and styles.  Included in the mix was one of her personal shuttles that’s she’s woven with for a long time. How cool is that?!?  You know you’re good when your shuttle tell you so!   I ended the day with the heddles all on, and the twining fixed.  Tomorrow, I’m gonna weave something!

If you’ve listened to the early episodes of WeaveCast, you’ll have heard the story of how I learned to weave at a five-day weaving retreat with Judith MacKenzie McCuin.  It takes place every year not 30 minutes from where I live.  (Which is practically a miracle, because I live in the boonies.) Since then, I’ve attended most years, when finances and schedule allowed.  This is one of the years I get to go.  Most years the same people come back and take the retreat, so it’s become over the years like a gathering of old friends.  It’s fun to see how everyone’s weaving is progressing from year-to-year. This year, continuing in the theme of “summer of slow weaving” that started with me taking tapestry classes at ANWG, I’ve decided to learn cut-pile weaving from Judith.  The kind practiced in the Middle East, where each knot is individually hand tied. The first warp I tried was gorgeous, charcoal-colored, worsted-spun wool that Judith had in her class supplies, sett at 12 ends per inch.  Unfortunately, after I’d warped it up I realized my hands were swelling a bit.  It might have had some alpaca in it, and over the years I’ve come to realize that I’m allergic to alpaca.  Weaving with that and throwing bits up in the air to breathe would not have been good (as I found out the last time I tried to spin alpaca, alas.) But no worries, I’ve been intrigued by the idea of weaving silk pile (ala the multi-talented Sara Lamb) for a while now, so this presented the perfect opportunity.  I hopped in my car and brought back all the silk yarns I could find in my stash that might work.  I ended up warping with a light-copper colored 20/2 silk sett at…are you sitting down?  Twenty-four ends per inch. Now I know that there are rugs woven in Iran that are a staggering 120 knots to the inch, but this is my first rug I’m working on here!  Fortunately, it’s based on a design 8-1/2 inches by 11 inches, so at least it’s not too big. I’m not sure if I’m in denial about just how many knots this sampler rug is going to take, but I was happy as a clam warping it up.  It took some experimenting to find a twining thread thin enough that I could use it to space out the threads properly.  I ended up using a 20/2 cotton.  Isn’t it pretty? In a happy moment of serendipity, I discovered that one of my impulse purchases from ANWG is going to be just the thing for helping me weave this piece.  It’s a teensy weensy beater produced by Northwest Looms.  When I saw it, I knew immediately that I needed it; I just wasn’t sure what for.  A week later, it’s the perfect beater for a project that arose out of necessity.  Intuition is like that, I guess.  You get a flash of “do this” that makes no sense at all…until later, when it all comes together. I had to leave class early to go pick up Kai from school and be a mom.  I’m really looking forward to tomorrow and getting started weaving!

Ow.  My brain hurts…but in a good way. Today was the first day of the Koehler workshop on tapestry basics.  We started off the day by warping our looms.  One of the wonderful things about taking a workshop from a good teacher is that you get all these wonderful little tweaks and efficiencies that aren’t in any of the books.  Ironically, two of the gems of information I got in today’s tapestry class were tips on how to warp a floor loom.  (James weaves his tapestries on Macomber floor looms.)  First of all, you can use a credit card (that you don’t mind scratching up, not your main Visa) to thread a reed.  Wrap the thread over the end of the credit card and then pass it through the reed. The second refinement is a way to tension warps with one hand while winding on with the other.  You tie onto the back beam, then take the warp under the front beam, over the top of the entire loom, and hold it in one hand under tension while you crank on with the other. Once the looms were threaded, we started weaving.  First we wove a header to spread the warp and to build a base to beat our tapestry against.  James showed us how to bubble the warp.  I finally understood what he meant by seeing sine waves in front of him all day in his studio (mentioned in the interview I taped with him yesterday.)  I thought he was referring to his harmonic oscillation series, but he wasn’t.  He was talking about the sinuous way he bubbles the warp before he beats it in place.  Watching his hands wove was mesmerizing, the movements were so fluid and efficient.  There was absolutely no wasted motion. I spent a lot of time back at the loom watching what my hands did, and the resulting cloth they made.  I worked on perfecting the technique, weaving more header than was strictly necessary.  My hands aren’t  fluid, and my sine waves often look more like hills, but every once in a while it would all come together.  And as the day progressed my bubbling got less awkward and more fluid.  At one point I cried out: “I’ve got sine waves!”  (Which, given my name, seemed only fair.) After the header was woven, James showed us how to do twining and a hem woven with the warp yarn as weft.  Then we were ready to start weaving.  We started with two colors weaving in the same direction and practiced splicing and slits. That doesn’t sound like a lot for an all-day class, does it?  Let me assure you, it was.  Because this isn’t just a “how to weave tapestry” class.  It’s a “how to weave excellent tapestry” class.  Each technique was shown with all of James’ personal finesses explained, and it often took several demos to wrap your head around a given technique. A tough class, but we wouldn’t have it any other way.  Tapestry is sloooow.  If you’re going to weave something that takes this long, it should look perfect. That night, a surprise.  I walked down to the supermarket to buy some shampoo (I’d run out early in the conference, and bar soap just wasn’t cutting it.)  While there, I ran into Joann, one of the other tapestry students.  It had gotten dark while I was shopping and Joann offered me a ride home in her car.  Instead of taking me straight home, she took me on something I call “Joann’s Magical Mystery Tour.” She showed me several wondrous sites in downtown Spokane (who knew it was such a cool city?) which were even more magical at night.  We got close to the raw power of the waterfall, toured the vintage steam-punk glory of the steam house (now converted into a restaurant and fancy offices, but retaining all the orginal equipment that used to supply steam power and heat to the whole city, and drove along the cliff overlooking Spokane (yes, the city is not all flat.) It was all the spontaneous fun that I used to have with friends when I was in college.  We’d pile into a car and just drive, making our own adventure.  A reminder that adventure is not just for the young.  As I close in on 40, it’s worth noting.

Today there were no classes, and what a good thing that was.  I  needed a day of rest after all the excitement of the previous two days.  I didn’t just lounge around, however, I was taped interviews with Kris Abshire and James Koehler. I gave a brief 15-minute talk about online media for weavers at the end of the ANWG general meeting.  I mentioned WeaveCast and WeaveZine, of course, but also talked about all the other great resources for weavers online, such as Handweaving.net, the Yahoo groups and Quilt.net, the upcoming launch of Weavolution, artist’s websites, etc.  And I pointed out that for a lot of the younger generation, if it’s not on Google, it might as well not exist. After that I went back to my dorm and ran into Jannie Taylor field-stripping an AVL workshop dobby loom.  It was an amazing site to see the dobby head taken apart and watch the solenoids click into place. After that, Jannie gave me a quick demo on how to more efficiently design summer-and-winter designs on my computer.  It was WAY faster than the laborious hand-entering I’d been doing.  Hooray for the Interleaved Paste function in Fiberworks PCW (Jannie first showed me the method in WeavePoint, then we figured out how to do the same thing in the software on my machine.) She’d heard my plea on the latest WeaveCast, and I truly appreciate her sharing her knowledge in such a wonderfully generous way. That’s one of the wonderful things about a conference like ANWG, you never know who’ll you’ll run into and there are all these opportunities— both scheduled and not—to learn. Dinner that night was a treat, a whole group of us went out for Asian food at a place called the Mustard Seed.  It was yummy and the company delightful.

It’s after midnight on the first day of ANWG, and I am happily exhausted.  It seems as if at least two days worth of stuff has happened since I walked over to breakfast with my podmates Jan and Joan, My first class of the day was how to create cartoons for tapestry.  The teacher is James Koehler, who was a benedictine monk for eight years (and a trappist monk before that.)  The tapestries he creates are luminous, layers of monochromatic colors and texture that draw you in further the more you look at them.  He told a story about weaving in the monastery, and how weaving became his meditation practice.  When the rules at the montastery changed, he was supposed to sit still like the other monks for contemplation and found he just couldn’t do it.  He ended up building a pipe loom and sneaking it into his cell, because that was the only way he could find contemplative peace. That story made me so happy.  I’ve never been sucessful at sitting still and meditating, and have long thought it a personal failing.  But I can reach a meditative state while spinning, weaving, or dancing.  In that classroom today I gave myself permission to never sit cross-legged and try to clear my mind.  It’s so much easier to weave and find that state of happy mindlessness. But personal spiritual revelations aside, James talked about weaving things that are meaningful to you, not just weaving a pretty picture.  He talked about art, and meaning.  I found that terribly fascinating.  I’ve always considered myself more of a craftsman than an artist, but I must say, the idea of communicating through the things I create has an appeal. We practiced tracing details from French tapestries to study how cartoons fit together.  I took copious notes; so much of what he said was new to me, as a person who’s never actually completed a tapestry. The design I came up with started with the simple expedient of tracing my hand (since that was easier than drawing, and I hadn’t brought any images to trace.)  From there I thought abouth the things that were meaningful to me, the symbols that keep recurring in my life.  The images turned into a mood, a story in my mind, and the design has lots of areas where I can play with color to create the illusion of transparency, which is something I’ve wanted to do since seeing Sarah Swett’s work. Here’s what I came up with.  It’s not terrible sophisticated, but it speaks to me, and I want to become a good enough tapestry weaver to be able to weave it.  James’s comment, “That’s a good design.”  Hearing that from an artist who’s woven tapestry for 30 years and whose work is in the Smithsonian?  I was over the moon. I lucked into a quick demo of Arahweave by Sheila O’Hara.  She uses the program to design her jacquard weavings.  I’d asked her a bit about ArahWeave, and she was kind enough to invite me to a 20-minute ad hoc demo she was putting on for one of the other instructors.  It was mind-boggling.  In Jacquard weaving, not only can you layer color upon color, but also weave structure upon weave structure, since in a jacquard loom, each thread weaves independently. I missed the fashion show, but got to spend some bonus time in the dealer’s room.  Here’s a picture of that foot-powered skein winder.  Check out the shape of the treadle; it’s a carved foot.  Is that cute or what? Well, I better get some rest, tomorrow I have a class about how to weave a four-selvedge textile like Navajo weavers do.

It was a beautiful day for a drive.  Washington is an unusual state: the western side (between the mountains and the sea) is rainy and foggy, the eastern side is desert.  As I drove I passed snow on the ground at the summit of Snoqualmie Pass, and a few hours later was in high desert with Canyons. One of the joys of traveling by car is that you can take little side diversions.  This is the Wild Horse Monument.  Up at the top of this ridge are a line of giant metal sculptures of wild horses running.  I didn’t linger too long, because I wanted to get to ANWG! Gonzaga University is in Spokane.  (The name makes me think the college president should be a wild-haired muppet with a hooked nose, but I may be dating myself a bit there.)  It’s a private christian college, judging from the icons and statuary. As was walking to my dorm, I was struck by a wonderful smell and realized that there lilacs blooming! The dorms we’re staying in have these amazing open-air common areas on every room.  The rooms are very dorm-ish.  Plastic-covered mattresses, particle-board furniture, and the funk of academic desperation.  One of the two beds in my room is set up loft-style, about four feet of the ground.  I dithered for a bit over which bed to take, and decided to opt for the adventursome option.  If I fall out of bed one morning, I’ll let you know. The folks running ANWG seem very organized and friendly.  They got me squared away in no time.  I put my name down on the list for internet access.  I should have a password sometime Friday, according to the student host.  I arrived too late for the cafeteria dinner, and by the time I carried my luggage up to the room and checked the schedule, I discovered that I had time to either (a) go get food before all the restaurants closed or (b) check out the dealer’s room.  Which would you choose? Yep, me too. I chatted with the friendly folks at the Glimakra Booth and checked out the two-heddle set up on their Amelia rigid-heddle loom.  I met two new woodworking vendors with lovely wares.  Northwest Looms had teensy shuttles and beaters for fine-silk tapestry, and Hokett Would Work had an innovative skein-winder that you drive with your foot!  I drooled over the yarn blockers at the Bluster Bay booth (I love the finish they put on their wood) and checked out the fine hand-dyed silk (60/2 and 120/2) at RedFish.  I told the Just Our Yarn folks that some of their varigated 60/2 silk had totally saved my bacon on my sample exchange project for the Complex Weaver’s Fine-Thread study group.  Then I had a delightful exchange at the Village Spinners and Weaving booth with Jennifer Moore (who weaves doubleweave) and met Sheila  O’Hara who teaches Jacquard weaving and had some of her artwork with her. As for shopping, I confess that a 24-dent reed jumped into my bag as did a very nice book on tapestry. Tapestry is my focus this conference.  I have signed up for three classes: One on designing a cartoon for tapestry (because my designs to date have been surprisingly hard to weave), One on a four-selvedge Navajo warp (because I don’t know how to do that and four selvedges sounds intriguing), and a multi-day workshop on tapestry techniques.  I’m going to get over my fear of tapestry this week, or decide that tapestry weaving is not for me once and for all. P.S.  I got lucky on dinner, Pita Pit was having their summer hours and was open late.  I got a Babaganoush pita with Taziki sauce.  Yum!  The place was like a cool, hip Subway with healthier options.  Why don’t we have one of these where I live???