Spinning on the River - July 2008

• President's Note
• Minutes from June 2008
• Member Gallery
• Treasurer's report
• Cellulose Fiber Workshop update
• Whirlwind Summer of Spinning
• Olds College Alberta Fibre Week
• Calendar
• John D's Wood Things

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Member Gallery

Olds Master Spinner level 4 students had a dye day on during class week. Angela & Mary joined Vicki, Arlene, Liz, Marilyn, Karly, Jackie and instructor Marg to work on several projects with acid dyes:
Side rails - Color wheel produced with Percentage dyeing Bottom shelf - Gradient dyeing, using graduated amounts of yellow and blue dyestock. Top Shelf - Ombre dying. Subtle shading is achieved by putting all skeins in the dye pot together and pulling them out at intervals. Everyone was amused by our "simulated nature dye" color produced with acid dyes. Our color "Karly's Gold" is 75% Yellow, 10% Red, 5% Blue Ashford dyes.	Rainbow dyeing - grease wool, water, soap and dye powder in a crock pot yields clean, colorful wool. Injection dyeing (not shown) on tightly wound balls and hanks
Spinners - please send pictures of your handspun projects for future issues. Your work just might inspire someone else.

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So far this has been one extremely busy summer! Lucky for me this included not one but two exciting fiber-themed trips. At the end of June I attended part of Convergence 2008 in Tampa, Florida. This biannual conference from the Handweaver's Guild of America features weaving, spinning, contemporary basketry, dyeing and surface design. (see reviews of the 2006 and 2004 conferences) The convention center and nearby galleries were packed with shows of textile arts. The kickoff Wednesday night was the fashion show, complete with loud music and professional models wearing handwoven, knit, and felted garments - and a few pieces that were more wearable sculpture than clothing! I attended four seminars. The first was "Inkle Weaving in the 21st Century," a look a some novel ideas for a very simple loom. The second was "What Makes a Handspun Project Stand Out" with Rita Buchanan. While we didn't do any spinning in class or talk about specific techniques, she offered an insightful and very humorous look at how to make handspun special - no small task since she readily admits the spinning is the last thing anyone will notice in a finished piece. It was a very interesting talk with ideas that could apply to many varieties of hand work. Friday morning started with "Shimmering Colors: the Magic of Iridescence" looking at ways to manipulate warp and weft to create cloth that changes color as it moves. The day wrapped up with "Weaving in Dimension," a mind-bending look at 3-D modeling with intersecting flat surfaces. I skipped one of the featured lectures Friday afternoon because I was having too much fun at the TWIST meeting - Tablet Weavers' International Studies and Techniques. Members shared their work and made plans for the future of the group. Finally I made a couple of visits to the vendor hall where I avoided the temptation of yarns and fibers, only to succumb to many books from friends' recommendations and demonstrations by authors. I had one heavy backpack, with barely enough room to bring home my new 00000 and 000000 (yes, 5-0 & 6-0) knitting needles! I skipped the last day of the conference, getting home a little after midnight Friday night for a brief rest & repack before heading out again less than 30 hours later...

Sunday morning I took off for Olds, Alberta by way of Calgary. This was my first visit to the beautiful Canadian prairie. The sky is very, very big out there. Olds is a little town 80km north of Calgary, about an hour's drive. Olds College is a small agricultural college with a prominent horticulture department that keeps the campus grounds looking like a beautiful botanical garden. The walk from the dorm to the classroom at the other end of campus was a lovely stroll past roses and irises, herbs, fir groves, "rare" oak trees, and lilacs in bloom. Fibre Week had 9 master spinner classes running and many more classes and activities. I arrived near the end of the fleece judging Sunday night. It was very interesting to watch Kammy, another of our classmates, sample and carefully evaluate each fleece, assigning points for specific qualities, with Mary helping out as fleece "steward" unrolling each fleece to be judged and putting them away again. The wool, alpaca, and mohair shows were held in a large garage that also served as the vendor hall for about a dozen shops. I netted some new-to-me fibers to try, "sea cell" made with kelp and "black diamond" a new carbon-colored bamboo derivative. This was also the location Monday night of the keynote lecture by knitter Lucy Neatby and a silk-spin in where spinners could sample many varieties of silk and blends, and the informal fashion show on Tuesday. Fibre Week attendees modeled a variety of sweaters, shawls and socks. I gave my kumihimo necklace and tablet woven bracelet to another student to model. She did a great job showing them off. People came up to me frequently the rest of the week asking for a closer look at the bracelet. I like to think I inspired some new tablet weavers.

On to the heart of the trip - the class... Instructor Marg Sjostrom creates a very relaxed and supportive environment. This wasn't a place where we had to produce perfect yarns, but we did have to work within the technique of the moment. Some of the material in class was a familiar, but Marg has some different ways of approaching some of the techniques so it was helpful to see her style. Our first task was to spin some bison fiber, then to spin a blend of bison and something else. Marg made a fuss over Mary and I being such expert cotton spinners (really it's just that we came up from cotton country), that I chose to make my bison blend with cotton and call it my "Shelby Farms blend." A few other students followed my lead and blended with cotton too. Several topics in class were totally new to me. We blended fibers and colors on hackles. Imagine a single wool comb 10" wide mounted on a table edge. Lash on layers of fibers and pull off a new blended top through a diz. It's a very interesting and fun tool. We dressed a distaff with a flax strick and spun line flax wet and dry. We tried four different ways of holding flax tow. Thursday we teased out Icelandic wool locks to make lopi yarn - thick low-twist, woolen singles. This yarn is a core of coarse fibers with the softer down on the outside. To stabilize the singles yarns, we alternated plunging the skeins into hot soapy water and cold water followed by a vigorous whipping against the brick walls outside. We frightened a few passersby with our yarn abuse! That was an exciting exercise. I've been able to make sewing thread for a while now, I enjoyed taking my spinning in the other direction. We did some fun dye techniques and fiber burn tests on dye day, and the last task was trying out a set of Russian paddle combs. With these combs, the locks get just a few strokes before the combs are mounted on a holder next to the spinner. The wool is spun directly off the combs. Overall, the class injected some new excitement into my spinning. I am looking forward to working on the homework and returning to Olds for two more levels. I can hardly wait a few more days for our Cellulose Fiber workshop!

Angela

• drop spindles, niddy noddies, orifice hooks, yarn gauges, nostepinnes
• knitting needles, crochet hooks, yarn needles, darning eggs, buttons, brooches, shawl pins
• boat, stick, belt, rag, and ski shuttles; pick up sticks, temples, warping boards
• kumihimo marudai and tama, lucets
• large & small plates & bowls, cutting boards, trays, rolling pins and cups.
• New: 1, 2 and 3-foot tri-looms!