I’m having a bit of trouble with the photo card reader. Nothing that will result in losing precious images, but enough to make blogging annoying. I did get a few though, enough to give you all a feel for my brief vacation.
Also much hanging out, chatting, beer, live Irish music, boat rides, birding, and more hanging out, plus spinning and knitting. I suppose I have to go home tomorrow, but like Emily, I wish I could stay.
[More later, including the spinning and knitting.]
I have lots of photos from all around the state, and tales to go with them. A few from Grand Rapids are here, but you’ll have to wait for the rest, and for the stories. I have a 6am flight tomorrow morning, and a lot to do before then.
World Wide Knit in Public Day is this Saturday! There’s a State College meet-up in Central Parklet, hosted by the Centre Knitters Guild. It’s also quite likely that there is a meet-up somewhere near you, where ever you might happen to be. I won’t be there, alas: I’m running an SCA fiber arts workshop all day.
Go! Knit! Meet people! Have fun!
So… who wants to help me organize a World Wide Weaving event for next year? There are lots of kinds of weaving that don’t require big heavy equipment. We could take them out and show them off.
Feeling left out because Ravelry is for knitters (even though there are weavers there - the first thing I did was set up a tablet weaving forum)? Not interested in recording your needle sizes? Try Weavolution. Looms, drafts, sett, but also the old standbys of projects and forums. Give it a whirl - I’d love to see weaving take off like knitting and spinning have, and this new website for weavers could give it a push in the right direction.
I’m going to be gone the rest of the month, between work trips and some personal travel. I’m rather fried, and badly need a vacation. There will be blogging, I think, but the store will be down for the duration. I’ll still be taking orders, but nothing will be filled until July. Then I will bat through them as quickly as possible, in the order in which they were received. Thanks for your patience!
Penn State Libraries’ craft sale to benefit United Way
The University Libraries United Way Committee will hold a craft sale from 11
a.m. to 4 p.m. on Thursday, June 11, in Mann Assembly Room, 103 Paterno
Library. The sale will feature knit and crochet items, plants, fabric,
photography and general crafting supplies.
I already talked about another library-related item, the “Fiber Artist in Action” presentation I’m doing at the local public library on July 13. I’m starting to put together my list, so if there’s something you’d like to hear about, leave me a comment.
And finally (short notice, I know), I’m doing an all-day fiber arts workshop at a local SCA event this Saturday, June 13. Activities may include any or all of: spinning, rigid heddle weaving, tablet weaving, sprang, naalbinding, braiding. Two very talented tablet weavers are doing their own workshop, so I’ll probably focus more on the other fiber arts.
I’ve been taking lots of photos, spring flowers especially. Those photos have been sitting idle on my camera’s memory card, twiddling their thumbs, just waiting for their turn. Impatiently. Even this one, the most graceful and loveliest poison ivy plant I’ve ever seen. (Not mine; it was spotted in a local park.)
The babies have gotten big. They aren’t able to fly yet, and are still all fuzzy and cute.
Nick and I ate dinner outside on campus, and were immediate beset on all sides by ravenous and horribly spoiled ducks.
And I do mean beset. And all sides. They snuck up from behind, one ran across my feet, another tried to make off with half a sandwich. Ducklings will eat potato salad, but they do not like tomatoes. If another duckling looks interested, then even a tomato will disappear, eventually.
The weather continues to be odd. Frost last night, 80F today. I want to plant tomatoes and other veggies this weekend. but not unless I think the frost is over. Frankly, I’m not yet convinced.
It seems like all my free time has been spent cutting grass and trying to keep ahead of the Dandelion Police.
The perennials are happily doing their things, regardless of frost and torrential thunderstorms.
The announcement for the European Textile Forum (or Textilforum) has been circulating on various relevant email lists. It will take place in the Openlucht-Museum Eindhoven, 8th to 13th September 2009. The call for papers is open until 25th of May.
Katrin Kania writes, in the email announcement:
We’re having a textile event in Eindhoven in September this year to try and establish better communication between professionals and amateur enthusiasts (like Living History people) working in historical textile crafts, since we believe that both sides can profit greatly from better and closer contact. The time we focus on is from the bronze age to the early 16th century, and we have decided to concentrate on spinning, dyeing and tablet weaving, though all other historical textile techniques are very welcome. We want to provide an opportunity for textiles people to get together and talk about their research, projects, etcetera. There is enough space at the museum of Eindhoven so that people can bring their pieces with them to demonstrate or even sit down and work together. The focus is on actual crafts in connection with research and scholarship; it is an open event where we invite both amateurs and the public to come and see what is done and what is possible in textile work.
At the same time, we will grasp the opportunity with so many craftspeople available and run a spinning experiment, with the aim to find out more about the influences of fiber, spindle and spinner on the resulting thread. Apart from the spinning experiment, the only bit of programme are some short presentations/lectures in the evening; the rest of the day is free to sit, work and talk with each other.
I think that’s an amazing idea, and would love to attend. Bank robbery is probably not a good idea; anyone else have fundraising ideas? I promise I’d write extensively and take lots of pictures.
Dori Ann is helping an elderly neighbor sell off the supplies from his sock-making business. There’s lots of yarn, mostly but not entirely acrylic, also cotton, wool and wool blends. Cones, and cones, and cones. Pictures of the items for sale are on Flickr, and all yarns are $5 a pound (full cones only). You can email her, or probably leave a comment at Flickr on the items you are interested in.
Phiala has been doing stuff with string for quite some time, and describing it to others online since 1996 or so at Phiala's String Page.
Social networking: phiala on Ravelry (account required), phialastring on last.fm, phialastring on LiveJournal (echos this blog), and Phiala on LibraryThing. And also Phiala on Twitter.
