Ahhh, Midwest!

Boy, am I tired!! Yesterday morning Molly and I left St Thomas University in St Paul, MN at 7:45 after breakfast and checking out of our dorms. She drove almost all the way home. I gave her a short break inbetween but it was mostly her driving. We pulled into my  driveway just after 11pm.

I haven't unpacked yet. Hopefully that'll happen sometime today so that I can collect things to show everyone tomorrow at weaving.

It's hard to describe a week at Midwest Weavers Conference. It's always wonderful. You meet the best people each year, often the same ones, but always new ones, too.

You take classes and even if it's not a new topic, you learn new things about it.

My 3 day class was on single 2-tie weaves. That's another way of saying summer and winter. This first picture is just a tiny example of the piles of samples Robyn Spady had for us to look at.

 The class was 3 days but we had lectures all morning, each morning. Tons of information. This was not a round robin class but each person had a choice of 4 different threadings to use, either 4, 5, 7 or 8 shaft weaving. I chose the 4 shaft this time and took my wolf pup.
Only 2 of us cut our cloth off near the end of the class. Because my loom was going to be folded on its side in the car, I thought it was would better. I did tie the rest of the warp back on and will weave it off at home. You can see that the 2 fabrics are very different. One is probably on 7 shafts and the other 4 shafts. Blocks, lots of blocks!

 Then on Friday I took a class with Susan Wilson on One warp, many Fabrics. Here's her roll of samples from what she told us. We had a small handout and she told us which books to use to figure out the samples she had done. Makes sense to me now! Some people took pictures of each little sample.

 Besides classes, there are vendors, fashion show, keynote speech and exhibits. I didn't take alot of pictures but some of the individual exhibit pieces were phenomenal. Really humbles you! However, it also spurs you on to try new things.
I liked the guild exhibits. They have these each time. This year there were 7 guilds that put together exhibits for us.
Who doesn't like teddy bears? Some dressed them and other wove them.

 How about a picnic with the lunch in handwoven bags and some chairs with woven seats?

 Or, everyone weave a scarf and hang them in a display?

 I got a real kick out of this one. It's called After the Picnic with bugs, squirrels, rabbits, etc there to scavenge the crumbs. The flags in the back all were different weave structures with labels to match.

 How cute is that? When they gave out the awards, it turns out that this exhibit was done by 3 people. Yes, only 3 people put this all together, watermelon, spider, ant and all!!

It's 2 years til the next Midwest Weavers Conference. It'll be June 12 - 17 at Rutgers University in Indianapolis, IN. That's only about a 5 hour drive from us. How wonderful after driving a couple of days each way for the last few midwests!!
So, Tuesday Weavers, are we up to trying something like this? If not in 2 years, maybe in 4?
Because it's 2 years away, I'm hoping that several of us will be able to save our money and go to the next one. It's so worth the time and energy. The teachers are nationally and internationally known. It's the best deal to be able to go to a conference like this and sit across from one of the teachers while eating lunch. Everyone is friendly and helpful and very encouraging!
That's it for now. I'm heading off to run a couple of errands and then back to unpack! Getting your mind back to what's needed here and now is going to take a couple of hours!
Until next week, keep weaving!
Carol