The Best Kind of Day

Recently I was invited to teach an inkle weaving workshop for the Carmel Crafters Guild. Ann, who is a member of that group as well as the Santa Cruz Handweavers Guild to which I belong, organized it all and hosted us in her lovely home.

 With 11 weavers we filled two sunny rooms, covering every available table. Most of those present had experience weaving on other types of looms and made good students.

I wish I had taken more closeup photos of each person's weaving, as the choice of colors and patterns ran a whole range and was interesting to see. Some of the pattern charts which I colored in last week turned out to be helpful visual tools for some. Others were just sort of willing to do experiments and see what happened, which was great. Thanks to Somerlynn in the Inkle Weaving Yahoo Group for sharing this pattern page!

We had an assortment of looms, new and old, home-made, second-hand and newly manufactured. It is always interesting to see looms, too. Sometimes the looms present a challenge for me to figure out the intended warp path. I'm glad no one this time had a two-sided loom so we were all able to set up continuous warps.

We spent 6 happy hours; everyone got warped and weaving and I demonstrated how to do pickups and weave letters. By the end of the day one student tried her hand at weaving letters on my loom and did a good job of it!

 We discussed yarn weights, which I am not very good at. Ann pulled some 10/2 pearle cotton out of her stash and gave it to me to try out for the project I am working on below. The pattern is great, now I need to reduce the width by 100% and see if I can make it work. This yarn should help. Lucky me!

On the way home, I made a stop at the always interesting Monarch Knitting and Quilts in Pacific Grove and picked up some DMC pearle cotton to compliment what I got from Ann. Lucky again!

And to top off the day, I attended the opening reception for the art exhibit "Sculpture Is" at the Sierra Azul Nursery in Watsonville. There was a real crowd, including many artists of all varieties and I got to visit with some very cool people. I'll have to go back when there is not a crowd to see more of the art, and highly recommend it to anyone in the area.
What a day!!!