Fiber Forum 2011, the beginning

Yes, it's true: Tuesday Weavers' Guild is sponsoring 2011 Southeast Fiber Forum! The work has begun in earnest, and we are very excited! I met with the board members at Arrowmont, site of the event, in Gatlinburg, TN last week. This week, I asked for, and got, volunteers for the jobs that need to start right now. There will be much more to do later, but for now, noses are to grindstones, fingers are tapping out emails and the excitement is building. Above is the teachers' quarters, a lovely building, furnished with antiques and framed fiber arts.

Here are some of the classrooms. You can see they are well-lit and spacious, with just the right accessories, like sinks, burners, dye pots, easy to clean surfaces. With me on the tour are Judi Jetson, Susan Vezina and Marjorie Warren, some of the team that put together the Southeast Fiber Forum in 2009. They are so helpful and generous. I know we couldn't do this without their help and guidance, and we are very grateful.

As things progress, we will keep you posted, but for now, mark your calendars: April 29 & 30, and May 1, 2011. Get ready to learn and relax and have a fabulous time!

Terrific Tuesday!

Hold Your Applause............

The Tuesday Weavers are pleased to announce that we will be hosting the Southeast Fiber Forum April 29-May 1, 2011, at Arrowmont School of Art and Craft in Gatlinburg, TN.

Maggie has stepped up as our fearless leader. After lunch today we brainstormed possible classes and vendors and goodies for the participants. Notable tapestry weaver, Tommye McClure Scanlin has already graciously agreed to teach a class!!! Yeah!!!!

Stay tuned for more details as they are available for:

Return to the Mountain of Fibers

(now you can applaud!)

On the weaving front, Pat cut off her rug warp today! The cloth beam was full (4 rugs were cut off a few weeks ago) and the back rod inched closer to the shafts. The next thing we knew, she brought the roll to the table. What an amazing sight to see those rugs displayed on the floor. They are truly works of art (and a great stash buster!!!)

And, now back to your regular weaving, my friends!

LouAnn

Love is in the air!!

The goats on the left are my goats! They are Nigerian Dwarfs. The one on the left is Esau and the one on the right is Emma. Aren't they cute? Goats are fun. They have wonderful personalities! Yesterday, I discovered my Emma was in heat so I arranged for her to have a "date". This morning I took her to meet Cori's Fancy Prince Edwin. He is the goat on the right in the picture on the right. What do you think? Handsome?? He is chocolate brown with blue eyes. Emma wasn't sure he was the one for her and it was fun to watch as she played hard to get but in the end I believe they got the job done. Time will tell. In five months I hope to have at least one little one running around here!

When I took Emma out of the van I left Esau behind. He wasn't too happy about being left. Goats are herd animals and don't do well alone. I thought I had latched the crate well but I guess not. When we were almost at the barn where the buck was, my friend Patty looked back and here comes Esau running at top speed to catch up with us! I was a bit nervous at first. I wasn't sure how he would react being on a strange farm not in a fence. He did great! He stayed right with me and never left my side! Goats are so fun. Hmmmm, I wonder if goats and weaving go together? Three of us have them!

Linda

Fabric cut off loom at KMA

Didn't get much personal weaving done this week. With DD not being able to drive right now, I drove her to practices and performances and physical therapy appointments and doctor appointments......need I say more? So, never having seen the Vagina Monologues, I wasn't sure what I was in for, especially since she wouldn't practice in front of me. It really is good. It's so much more than the name says. If you have a chance to see it, please do. This year the featured country was the Democratic Republic of Congo. Back in my day, it was the Belgium Congo. We spent 5 years there while I was a child. My sister was born there. The program had a nice little feature on it. So, there was one name missing from the program. You got it, my DD!!!! After the first performance I found the director and asked her if she had anything against a homeless lesbian (DD's part). She was puzzled til she found a program and then was mortified. The second performance they announced it before the play started plus they gave us 10 programs with the correct information in it. I do want to mail one to my Mom and sister since they'll be interested in the information. So that's over! Next step, hopefully will be the surgery to repair all the mess that's now inside her knee! Once surgery is done they said she'll have to use crutches for a month with very little weight on that knee and then 2 weeks walking with the crutches. She hasn't used crutches in a couple of weeks now so it'll take some adjusting to get back into the swing of that!

Thursday was my morning to weave at the Knoxville Museum of Art's Wind, Rewind exhibit. It's always so neat to get in there and see what the weaver before you wove. The last row was gray! I am not a gray or black person. However, in the spirit of what Ann Wilson told us, I thought for a minute and then figured out what to transition into my colors. It was a rainy, dreary, cold day. So I got into the theme of flowers and wove red, orange, orange/yellow, and then yellow and into green and brown and then decided we were by the ocean and got into blues and some blends that suggested white caps. It was great fun!

While I was there an art class from UT was there winding bobbins and experiencing the exhibit. I asked one student if she knew who Nick DeFord was. She had him last semester, LouAnn! They were there quite awhile, wandering in and out.
Other people came to wind bobbins, 3 generations in one family. Another, pretty macho guy came in and I explained about winding the bobbins and then signing the book to be part of the permanent record of the exhibit. I think he liked that idea because he sat down and wound 2 bobbins!

I was there from after 10 til a bit after 1:30. This is how the loom looked after I was done. You can see going around the breast beam, my ocean and then getting back into flowers and then just some fun colors that blended nicely.

Underneath you can see the yellows to reds and the 2 turquoise combinations I did to blend from that gray!

While I was there and actually, for the past week or two, they'd been trying to decide when to cut off the fabric from the warp beam. It doesn't look like there's that much on there but if you saw behind the cloth it's mighty close to the harnesses. I guess if they'd thought this through, and maybe next time they'll do that, if they'd threaded on the last 4 harnesses instead of the first 4, they might have been able to weave the whole fabric off without cutting it off. But then, who'd have thought?! I wouldn't have.

Here's another view of the cloth. It's so hard to get a good picture! You also see that temple on the bench that we've grown to not mind as much as we'd thought we would!

Friday Christy Matson was weaving. I think she's from Chicago? She was given the honor of cutting off the fabric. The idea was to leave a long tale, at least a foot, I suspect and then wind it off onto a roll. She tied the warp back on and weaving will continue. After all, they put 50 yards on the loom! I'm not sure how much they will get done before the show is over. If there's warp left after that we are to continue weaving as we can to get it all done. I'm glad it's not going to be my job to merge the 2 pieces of fabric! That will take a long time of needleweaving the warp thread from one section to the other, both ways! It will be interesting to see how it all get together structurally.

They were hoping to keep it on for another few weeks because they have some VIPs coming to lecture at the museum. However, in another way, perhaps they will see the cloth on a table, partly unwound for their benefit?

Two weeks from now we weave again. Thursday afternoon Pat took over to weave the rest of the day. I wonder who's going to weave the next time......

Carol

The Warp That Keeps On Giving!

WAY back last summer, Linda sent me a link from Craig's List about two looms and the "stash" to support it. Long story short....the whole shooting match came to live with me. I named the rug loom, John, in honor of the man who had been weaving on him before he passed. John had a wonderful warp wound on already, but I had no idea how long it was. I graphed out the threading, and unwove to figure out the treadling pattern. It was the Hollywood Rug from Meany & Pfaff's Rag Rug Handbook. That was August.....it's now the end of March!!!!

Yes, you've seen all of this before, I know. But, that warp just keeps on going. I'm starting to have some threads twist as they come off the warp beam, and I keep trying to straighten them out. I have also had a few knots that have come through...but no big deal so far. I feel like a possessed weaver trying to weave it all off, which has presented some interesting twists, too. I wanted to use this latest rug on my screened-in porch, so I really wanted to weave at least 6 ft. so it would go in front of the french doors. When I was at about 38", the weft coming off the roll changed colors! The pink and turquoise became MUCH darker. I could see a color change in the roll about an inch in that was light again, so I started pulling off the strip until I got back to the lighter part. I have pulled all of the lighter strip off until it started to get dark again. The large roll of fabric still weighs 5 pounds....the smaller roll of dark weighs about 2 pounds. I only wish I had thought to weigh this roll before I started! (Lesson learned!) So now I'll weave until I run out of the light weft, and call it done!

It will be hard to stay inside and weave today....although it's chilly right now, the sun is shining and it is warming up. The mess of winter is hollering at me outside, and the honeysuckle is already starting to take over again! But, all around my yard are wondrous signs of new life...and

they're calling me out!

So, Happy Weaving, y'all.....enjoy this Spring Day!
LouAnn

brooks bouquet with a twist

Moving right along with the lace towels, I thought I would try my hand at the brooks bouquet. You don't need a pick up stick for this, you use your shuttle to go under a certain number of threads in the upper shed, usually 3 or 4, then you wrap those threads and pick up the next 3 or 4 threads. I chose to use 4 threads since I thought it would fit well in the space I am using.

Here is the lace with 5 plain picks between the lace rows. Looks good, I thought but a little blah, don't you think?

At this point I began to have real problems with draw in and thread breakage, so I brought out the ancient temple I got with Kathryn the 8 harness. More on that later.

I had only done a couple of inches on the towel, but way more than I wanted to unweave or cut out. So I just did a couple of picks of a contrasting color and started over. At the same time I noticed that the lace was off center just by 2 threads. I puzzled over this for just a minute and I wondered what would happen if I staggered the lace rows.

And here it is! In the first couple of rows I only used 1 plain pick with no additional picks before starting the new row. I then began to use 2 more plain pics before the lace row.

I have found that I need to use the filler rows as well with this lace.

Here is a close up of the wrap.

I have found that I get a more even row if I do all the wraps and then beat, then using my fingers and/or a reed hook, going from right to left I tighten up the lace motifs.

Here you can see the looser wraps to the left of the hook.

Here is the really old temple that I got with my 8 harness. I thought I would never use that old thing. All there was was 2 pieces of wood, so I had to piece something together that would work.

Here you can see one of the screws I am using.

A little 8/4 to keep it all together. I can slip these off easily when I need to.

I went online, to price new temples......... Wow, I guess this one will do just fine!

On the rug warp in blues, I had been using 8/4 doubled in black as the hem weft , and I really liked the way it showed off the bright colors in the warp. I thought it might look good to try a mess of 8/4 as weft material. I got up to 16 strands and it still wasn't enough. I then went looking for black material, and found this in my stash, what a relief.

Now for the rug shuttle full of 16 strands of black 8/4. I see a black warp in my future.

Wally is remembering how hard it was to get that big pile of bermuda grass out of the blackberry patch!

Happy Weaving, Tina

Profile of a Weaver: Joyce Hoffman

Joyce Hoffman joined the Tuesday Weavers two years ago, shortly after moving to Maryville from Matoaca, Virginia. A mother of five, Joyce started college at 36 with the intention of becoming a teacher and emigrating with the family to Canada. Through a few moves and college--as well as goal--changes, she received a degree in Art History from the University of Arizona, then went on to complete a Masters in Library Science. Though she'd always been interested in weaving, with five kids to raise, she'd had to make do with a small hand loom, weaving an afghan of squares, or knitting complicated sweaters.

Her career as a librarian took Joyce from Tucson to southern Colorado, to New Orleans and Baton Rouge, back to Arizona, then to West Virginia. When she found herself in western Virginia, she decided it was time to fulfill her dream of learning to weave. Joyce took a class at the now-closed River Farm in Timberville, Virginia. She took a class in overshot, the only raw beginner in the class. The instructor was very patient with her, and Joyce struggled to keep up. At the end of the class, she wasn't finished with her project, and asked if she could come back to finish in subsequent weekends. The instructor said yes, but wouldn't she rather take the loom home? She did, bought the loom, a Harrisville 22 inch 4 shaft, and took it home with her.

After the class, Joyce wanted to do a study of twills, using the twill collection in A Handweaver's Pattern Book by Marguerite Porter Davison. She threaded her new loom and wove the entire section, including the part she liked the best, the doubleweave sample. She was delighted when not one thread had skipped, and her doubleweave sample was a complete tube!

Next, Joyce took some roving she had and placed it in a warp for an interesting wall hanging, and wove another twill sampler, using white on white, blue and the red from the original twill sampler.

Life got hectic after the first weaving class, and the Harrisville was left warpless for a few years. When I would visit, I would stay in the loom room, with a Union loom and the Harrisville, frequently stubbing my toes on them. One day, I asked for the Harrisville to try weaving myself. It saw me through my first few projects, samplers, curtains and tote bags, but I outgrew it right when Joyce was downsizing and needed it back. The Union loom was sold, and the Harrisville fit right into Joyce's new home, along with a twining loom the wonderful gentlemen at Anderson Lumber made for her. With some Euroflax linen, Joyce made a light, lacy scarf in cream and pink on the Harrisville. The next scarf, also in linen, in sage green and cream, became handbags for gifts.

The current project, inspired by a Handwoven article on bamboo yarn and huck lace, is coming along beautifully.

Joyce is now OUR librarian, in charge of the Tuesday Weaver's and the Clinch Valley Guild book collections. She weaves diligently every Tuesday, and many of her latest creations have sold immediately, once they hit the gift shop shelves.

At home, her loom sits waiting in the sunny living room, waiting to spend many more hours, making many more projects.

Happy Weaving!

Caution-Busy Tuesday Ahead

Hey all, it's Tuesday again and the gang is all here! Ann is here cutting rags for rugs, Maggie is computer surfing to learn about "Fiber Forum",

Our dear friends Cathy and Paula stopped by to say "Howdy"!

There are conversations going on around the lunch table.

Looks like it was old home week, Jane came to weave with us today too!

Rugs are going strong, with Lanny, and Pat on duty. Carl is doing those springy green placemats.

Joyce is in the pink today! She is shhh, hemstitching.

Looks like Carol and Ann are planning a new project.

Ila is working hard on her placemats.

We were also happy to see Bonnie back and feeling good!

Wally and I are still trying to get that loom threaded for towels.

This morning,Lou Ann's son Nick gave us a short course on color, and how it works together. It is really a treat to have him close by so that we can learn from him.

Carol just told me that if everyone came to weave with us at one time, there would be 21 of us!

We really had a busy day today, visits from old friends, a class on color and we managed to get some weaving done as well. It was as fun as it looks.

Happy weaving, Tina