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The glorious days of summer are here!  I’m spending a quiet week at home enjoying the things I cannot do on a boat!

The gardens are looking great this year, with little input from me.  It’s been perfect weather to sit outside until the past couple of days when the heat drove me indoors and made me turn on the AC.

Our sailing grounds have moved to Eastern Long Island Sound now, but I did not weave on our last trip.  We had guests on board so there was little room for my loom.  Instead I did some crocheting and drop spindling.  We visited the newly built Ocean House in Watch Hill, RI, which is certainly as spectacular as the original structure must have been 100 years ago.

Now I am home alone for a few days, finally using the Toika that I bought from my friend about two years ago! This project will be a set of placemats for my older son and his wife.  The loom needed a lot of tweaking, at least for this old girl who is only familiar with jack looms!  I might be a bit old for learning new tricks, but with Sr. Bianca’s help, I think I’ve got the loom in great working condition now!  I’m a convert to countermarche!

5/2 merc. cotton warp with 8/1 linen tow weft in lots of beachy blue/green colors.  Each set of two will be slightly different, for a total of 8 placemats. The reverse side is quite nice too.  This pattern is from Jean Scorgie’s “Weaver’s Craft” issue 16, Monk’s Belt.

I’m working on the Archie project too and hope to have a new blog post there soon!

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The first dot on the map may be the most interesting!

Bonnie Tarses will be weaving in western Montana, at Flathead Reservation, in a bucolic spot called “The Garden of 1000 Buddhas.”  Through the internet I found this description from a Montana newspaper:

“Visualize a 10-acre garden with a thousand Buddhas to inspire visitors of all faiths to reflect on peace and find compassion and happiness within themselves.”

And now visualize Big Sky country, a peaceful garden for contemplation, and your loom at your side!  Does it get any better than this? The Dalai Lama plans to visit the completed garden in 2011. 

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Late last week I visited Shelburne Falls, Mass, with a couple of weaving friends.  It was open studio week at Vav Stuga.  We had made our plans too late to participate in weaving on the looms, but we were happy to make the trip to visit the town and check out this weaving studio!

 

Shelburne Falls is known for its “Bridge of Flowers,” and we learned that the bridge has been turned into a small botanic garden, planted with trees, vines, shrubs and many perennials.  In May there is a lot in bloom!  Azaleas, wisteria vines, iris, Solomon’s seal, columbine, poppies….well, I just cannot name them all!  There were plenty of summer blooming perennials starting to bud! 

The Bridge of Flowers was started in the 1940s by a group of volunteers on an old trolley bridge .  For many years it was known as the “Bridge of Weeds.”  It is now supervised by a professional gardener, but still requires the hard work of many volunteers.  While my friends and I walked across, we saw one volunteer hauling numerous wheel barrow loads of black dirt onto the bridge. 

We stopped at WEBS on the way up and had a fun shopping spree!  Their spring sale was in progress, and we each got some wonderful things!  My most exciting purchase was two cones of tencel in complimentary colors to recreate the two-block twill fabric that was on Bonney’s loom when I got it.  That’s the fabric I wrote about earlier this month!  It will be wonderful to have my own version!

On our first evening in Shelburne Falls, we met the business manager of Vav Stuga who happens to be living at the Dancing Bear, where we stayed.  She mentioned that there was one cancelation for Friday, and after a little discussion, my friends agreed that I could take the spot!  Lucky me! So while my friends toured the town on Friday morning, I wove at one of the looms!  It was a rep weave project in colors that were just perfect for both my kitchen and my family room!  I loved the studio (sorry, no photos…but you can check out the website! I was too busy at the loom!), and I enjoyed weaving in this setting!  Now I hope to visit again for one of the week long classes.  Becky (owner), Susan (business manager) and Celeste (apprentice) do a wonderful job of creating a calm setting with lots of good weaving energy.  The studio and living spaces make you feel like you’ve just entered a Karl Larsson painting!  It’s lovely.

Here’s my runner!

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It’s full spring now, and I have just treated myself to two weaving trips!  I feel decadent, and it is wonderful!

First was a two day workshop and evening lecture at Jockey Hollow Weaving Guild, which is in a beautiful part of New Jersey, just west of Morristown.  This is horse country with lots of historical, colonial sites…not that I visited any of them since I was busy weaving!

The workshop instructor was Ruby Leslie from New Hampshire, and her class was titled “50 Ways to Weave Your Color.”  Seventeen students each got a warp from Ruby in the same colors but different color sequences with different weave structures.  We then had a very organized round robin of weaving over the two days.  It was great!

Huck Weave with dark weft on a shaded warp

 

 

 

Advancing twill on a different shaded warp with dark bars between the color changes.  Woven with a dark weft

 

 

Bumberet.  Lots of variation here.  Warp stripes in bright colors on muted background and weft, or more subtle colors when the bright colors sections are not raised.

 

Color and Weave Pinwheels, using multi-colored warp instead of just light/dark. Weft also shades through the various pinks/terracottas and the various greens.

 

Asymmetric plaid, woven either in straight twill or plain weave.

 

 

 

Double weave, with color striping and dark weft.  There were two versions: one in cotton and one in tencel.

 

 

There were 17 looms, with six weave structures to try, so there were three each of 5 structures (bumberet, huck, adv. twill, plaid, color & weave) and two looms with double weave.  Everyone went home with six samples and some of us went home with 7 or 8 eight samples.  It was extremely well organized!  Ruby will be teaching at Convergence this summer, and I’m sure her students will be happy they chose her class!

While Ruby has lived in New Hampshire for many years now, she is originally from Queens.  She made a comment that she likes to receive tiaras from her students as a light hearted reference to her ‘royal’ roots.  One of the students really outdid herself by making Ruby a felted tiara late at night after the first day of class had ended! 

Ruby in her felted tiara!

 

 

 

 

News of my second weaving trip to follow!