My “Exploring the Design Process” workshop last weekend went well! We all had a blast, my students learned a lot (and loved it!), and it was wonderful seeing light bulbs going off in people’s heads at various points of the workshop. Teaching it was grand fun, and I’d love to do it again. I’ll put a more detailed description of the workshop online later this week, in case anyone is interested.
And I am signed up for another workshop this coming weekend! Learning this time, not teaching. Diane Totten is teaching her “Crimp Cloth” workshop for Complex Weavers, and since a work conflict got canceled, I signed up for the class! I’m really excited about this class – permanently crimped fabric is one of the things I’ve been thinking of for Phoenix Rising, and this will give me an opportunity to play with it.
There’s just one small hitch, of course. It’s an on-loom workshop, and the warp has to be at least 16 inches wide. My little Mountain table loom is only 12″ wide (13″ if you really stretch) and my Workshop Dobby Loom is tied up with the phoenix warp. So I am borrowing a small floor loom from a fellow guild member and bringing that instead.
The other part of the hitch is that the loom must be warped and ready to weave by the workshop start on Sunday morning. And one of the yarns has to be synthetic, and the only 100% synthetic yarn in my stash is a fine gold machine embroidery yarn. I don’t have time to order more, so I’ll have to use that. A good sett for the thread is 40 epi, and at 16″ wide, that means I need to wind and put on at least 640 threads by Sunday morning, in a fairly fussy yarn.
Fortunately, I’m pretty quick at what I do, so I think that’s feasible, but it will be a bit of a stretch. I wound half the warp this morning and will be picking up the loom tonight, so with luck, I can get everything beamed on an ready to thread tomorrow. If I can do that, getting the rest done by Sunday morning should be easy.
Off to work! I’d love to play with fiber all day, but there’s that full-time job to feed.
Dianne’s workshop sounds like great fun – I’m hoping that the loom you are borrowing will have 640 heddles!