Ends & Picks » Weavers Guild

Woven Shibori

Melissa — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 03:42:58 +0000

Throughout the month of May, my friend Elisa and I spent our Saturdays at the Weaver’s Guild taking a wonderful class on woven shibori taught by Traudi Bestler. Woven shibori was developed by Catharine Ellis and it was her book, Woven Shibori, that we worked from throughout the class.

The first two days of class we planned, calculated, wound, warped and started weaving our projects. It was WONDERFUL being back in a weaving studio and even though I was pretty rusty with all my preliminary yardage calculations (as exhibited by the extra long warp I ended up with – oops!)

The third class we spent in the Dye Lab and since I ended up with two pieces of fabric, I decided to immersion dye one and hand paint the other. The fourth class we all came together for show and tell!

Unfortunately, the yarn Elisa and I wove with had a much higher twist than our classmates so we didn’t get the high contrast that others got.

Even so, I’m quite pleased with the results!

I Got Better

Melissa — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 03:23:14 +0000

The past few weeks I have been a spinning maniac. It all started when I picked up some beautiful fleece at The Fiber Studio to finish out my last two weeks of Spinning for Knitters at the Weaver’s Guild.

Kitties, of course, were very interested.

Those bobbins look a lot smaller than they really are – it took forever to fill them up!

The first yarn I spun was so irregular and nubby and the twist was all over the place. I call it the Unintentional Bouclé.

It’s amazing what a little lot of practice can do.

This skein is ginormous (compared to the 10 yard skein I had spun before this).

Here’s my haul for four weeks of class…not too shabby!

And of course, a kitty approval bonus!

I made yarn…I think

Melissa — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 02:23:00 +0000

Yesterday was my second day of Spinning for Knitters that I’m taking through the Weavers Guild at the Textile Center. Our teacher, Nancy Preckshot, is a great teacher with a wealth of spinning knowledge, but also enough patience to deal with us bumbling newbies. It definitely took me awhile to figure what I was doing, and even then the going was pretty rough. But amazingly, by the end of our first 3 hour class, I had yarn!

Granted, it’s probably some of the gnarliest yarn you’ve ever seen, but it’s yarn nonetheless!!

Nancy encouraged us to take a wheel home with us for the duration of the class so we can continue practicing at home.

She also sent us home with 5 oz. of brightly colored fleece to practice with. No big surprise that mine is purple and turquoise, I’m sure.

Celeste approves of the gnarly yarn (or maybe it’s just the dangly woolly bits…)

Much Needed Distraction

Melissa — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 04:20:12 +0000

Today was a long day full of too many stressful announcements, after which I definitely need a pick-me-up. I stopped at BN on the way home from work to scope out the magazine stand and came home with these two beauties. I’m sure the knitting magazine doesn’t surprise you, but I’m really excited about taking the Spinning for Weavers class at the Weavers Guild next month, hence the Spin Off magazine. Here’s hoping tomorrow is a better day and if it’s not, at least I’ll have some good reading for the bus ride home.