Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Frolicking

How my heart sings when I am back in the mountains.  So it was this past weekend when I had the opportunity to frolic with other spinners, knitters, felters and weavers and fiber artists of all kinds at the Carolina Fiber Frolic in Sapphire Valley, North Carolina.  
I was invited to teach some weaving classes on the rigid heddle loom by Frolic organizer Jan Smiley.  I was excited to share the idea of playful exploration on an affordable portable loom like the little Schacht Cricket loom I got last summer.  I made a Saori-inspired bag to carry my Cricket and lots of paraphernalia (tools, shuttles, yarns, etc) from my handspun alpaca yarns and fabric that my good friend Cathy Hill gave me a while ago.
Saori® Is a registered trademark for a Japanese company that makes very adaptable easy to use floor looms, but it has also become known as a philosophy for weaving freeform, Zen-like, textured and colorful designs on whatever loom you have available. I was excited to share my joy in weaving this Saori-inspired way.
Shortly after arriving after our 6 hour drive (the last hour happily winding back and forth and up and down through mountain roads in early early Spring) I settled down with my 3 eager students to learn how to warp their looms for the Sari-inspired Rigid Heddle Loom class I was facilitating the next day.  It's always a challenge finding places to attach the loom to a table (difficulty I I possible on a curve) and the peg 2+ yards away.  We managed to put a coffee table up on 4 rolling chairs to make it a more comfortable height for one weaver.! Fiber artists are nothing if resourceful!!!

Saturday morning at 9am after an early morning soak in the hot tub and delicious waffle breakfast... Our group of 9 weavers were ready to roll.  Some felt comfortable with being playful and experimental while others felt challenged to relax and explore, but by the end of the 3 hours, I was delighted to see everyone finding new ways to interlace weft with warp yarns to create unique one of a kind pieces.  It was delightful.  Several of us who had not scheduled an afternoon workshop met in the sunroom in the afternoon and 4 were able to finish weaving the length of their warps and excitedly pulled their creations off the loom and tied the ends.  What will they be... What will they be???





Each time I have the opportunity to teach I am made better for the experience. I absolutely love facilitating creative expression!  It reaches in and nourishes my soul!

Reunion of Fiber Guild of the Savannahs friends new and old... me, Sarah DeRoo (aka Copper Corgi), Fran Wilson (aka TallFran) and Jennifer Reardon

Sunday, March 1, 2015

Painting the Big Apple RED

...actually I've been weaving the Big Apple experience in red...
Here is my finished piece titled: 
February 23, 2015, NYC



or does she want to be a scarf... 

I title it in honor of On Kawara whose work my daughter, g'girls and I explored at the Guggenheim during our recent adventure in the Big Apple.  On Kawara painting stark images of dates and then created cardboard boxes for them and stored them with a newspaper clipping from the day.  I love the idea of creating memory pieces... so this piece is a bit of a diary of that day... the day we went to Loop of the Loom saori studio in the Upper East Side NY and the yarns I bought at Lion Brand Yarns and Purl Soho which I used in the woven structure with my handspun yarns.




I wove it the week after I returned from NYC incorporating the open free weaving technique I saw demonstrated while memories of all I saw were still fresh in my mind...  the freezing temps, the warmth of family and friends new and old, the lights and energy of the city, the intense memories of the horrors of the day of 9/11, the bold red of most of On Kawara's paintings... and the textures that were everywhere I looked.

Here is the piece being woven that inspired me at Loop of the Loom...