Joan organized a private tour for us to Ohlone Village, a reconstruction of a 10,00 year old local Native American settlement as it might have been in this area. It is adjacent to Deer Hollow Farm, both part of the San Antonio Open Space Preserve off 280s in Los Altos. We learned how to live without weaving – but using baskets and braiding. We learned how to create flame without matches. And we learned how to prepare Acorn Mush!
Our regular meeting is held at Woodside Community Church, Woodside Rd in Woodside CA. Doors open at 7pm for set up and conversation. The program starts at 7:30 and lasts about an hour. That is followed by refreshments and a short business meeting.
Our presenter in January, Kim Davis, works at the Lace Museum in San Jose. She will give the program to us that she gave to the BRAIDS conference in 2015. In it she gives some history of how bobbin lace developed, and shows some similarity between loop braiding and bobbin lace. Her personal interest is in wire lace, as you can see in two of the example photos included here.
She brought several examples of her own work to show us as well:
Our meeting this month will be held in our usual location, Woodside Community Church on Woodside Rd in Woodside. Dinner reservations will be made at Buck’s in Woodside beginning at 5:30pm; Carol will be there, so do come for conversation. Doors at our meeting place open at 7pm. The program begins at 7:30 and lasts about an hour. Refreshments and a short business meeting will follow.
This month our presenter is Carol James, who is teaching her second Sprang class for Santa Cruz Guild earlier in the month.Carol’s website, http://www.sashweaver.com features 5 Galleries, each displaying her work in five different types of weaving – finger weaving, sprang, and loom-woven sashes, as well as clothing and accessories and woven art. She has published 2 books, and 4 articles in 2016 alone. She travels worldwide to speak at conferences and to teach. Her website also contains FREE VIDEOS showing in detail how to do finger weaving and sprang.
Here are pictures of many of the items she passed around during her talk for our closer viewing, followed by the pictures originally posted:
Laverne titles her program for us “Woven Structures in South American Textiles”. She promises to walk us through the various woven structures she has encountered while learning to weave in South America. “I’ll show examples of how I have used these in my own work on the backstrap loom”, she writes.
She elaborates, “Simple looms do not necessarily mean simple textiles. Weavers in South America use rustic looms to create complex cloth employing a wide variety of techniques using complementary-warp structures and both supplementary warps and weft. Even plain-weave textiles are not in any way “plain” when incorporating ikat or finished with intricate knotted fringes, colorful joining stitches and tubular edgings.”
Our program will be different from Laverne’s workshop (doubleweave, a structure commonly used in South America which fell into disuse but in recent years was revived by Jennifer Moore), held the previous weekend at Ruth’s house. The workshop there is full but more details will be posted.
The meeting location will be VETERANS’ MEMORIAL SENIOR CENTER, 1455 Madison Ave., Redwood City, an alternate site we have used several times in the past. The doors will be opened for us by 7pm. Our program will start at 7:30 pm. Refreshments and a short business meeting will follow the program.
Reservations will be made for 5:30 pm for the pre-meeting dinner at a restaurant new to us but highly recommended – Redwood Grill, at 356 Woodside Rd in Redwood City. It is only a 6 minute neighborhood drive from the meeting location, and it offers a variety of menu choices as well as parking and accessibility.
Our program this month will be a Members’ Show and Tell, in which each person who attends is invited to bring one fiber object which has been important to your life. Certainly it can be created by someone else and gifted to you or inherited by you, and sentimental value is just as important as artistic merit. Please be mindful of the number of people present who want to share during our normal hour of program, and limit your explanations accordingly.
For instance, during the summer Joan brought in a special quilt:
Our meeting location is the familiar Parish Hall at Woodside Community Church. Doors will be opened by 7pm. Program runs 7:30-8:30, approximately, and we’ll have a short business meeting as well as normal Show and Tell after refreshments.
Dinner reservations will be made at Buck’s on Woodside Road for 5:30 pm.
1. Sept. 15, 2016 – Tien Chiu – Book Signing – “Master Your Craft”
2. Oct. 20, 2016 – Laverne Waddington – program To Be Announced
3. Nov. 17, 2016 – Members – Timeless Treasures
4. Dec. 15, 2016 – Holiday Party – Potluck and Presents
5. Jan. 19, 2017 – Kim Davis – wirelace.net
6. Feb. 16, 2017 – Carol James – Sprang
7. March 16, 2017 – Sandy Fisher – Chico Cloth
8. April 20, 2017 – Robin Lynde of Meridian Jacobs Wool
9. May 18, 2017 – CNCH Show and Tell
10. June 15, 2017 – Sale and Raffle
We gathered at the home of Betsy for Show and Tell, and an experience with ice-dying. We have pictures only of tubs of fabrics covered with ice, and sprinkled with dye – since the tubs had to be taken home to cure for 24 hours before rinsing, washing and drying to reveal our creations. Catch our results on subsequent posts! First, Show and Tell:
white-on-white, unfinished samples of saori weaving
felted
scarf
held
vertically
reverse of scarf, finished with lavender edge
Displayed several articles of interest obtained on travels. The item pictured is an animal horn decoredated with tiny glass beads.
Showed us one of six large cotton napkins begun recently with wax resist and elements from nature. She added drawing with pointed permanent markers.
Constructed from a recent two-meeting project in which we (step 1) dyed nine different fibers with personally chosen colors, and (step 2) displayed them on felt of our choice, thus creating in most cases scarves. The photo shows a simple sampler, embellished with found and created objects, resulting in a wall hanging.
In this, a silk scarf has been placed on TOP of the ice-and-dye
layers, in order to see whether some or all colors would seep upward, as well as trickling downward with the melting ice.
This program plan was for each attendee to bring several samples of weaving “around the house”, anything from a mass-produced dish cloth to souvenir craft weaving from another country. We divided into two manageable groups, passed them around, and shared our individual understandings. The results were interesting, surprising and sometimes mysterious to the max, so for fun we are posting some photos from that evening:
Our web mistress has published a new book, Master Your Craft: Strategies for Designing, Making and Selling Artisan Work. This book helps beginning and intermediate crafters create award-winning work by outlining a powerful creative process, then offering advice through each step. It also provides an introduction to design – visual, functional, and practical – to jumpstart you on your journey to mastery.
Insights from 22 master artisans appear throughout the book, across a broad range of media: glassworking, metalworking and jewelrymaking, woodworking, and of course textiles! Textile artisans include surface design artists John Marshall and Ana Lisa Hedstrom; tapestry weavers Archie Brennan, Susan Martin Maffei, and Tommye Scanlin; felter Andrea Graham; and milliner Wayne Wichern. Many of these artisans have also been Black Sheep program speakers!
Tien will show and tell us about it at our first meeting, Sept. 15, as well as have plenty of copies for purchase and signing. (If you can’t wait until Sept. 15, you can order the book from her at http://www.creatingcraft.com/books/masteryourcraft/ .)
Reservations will be made at Buck’s Restaurant for dinner at 5:30 pm and you can come unannounced, Buck’s is happy to accommodate us. (We have “our own waiter”!)
The meeting will be held IN THE CHAPEL, to the east of the community room we usually use at Woodside Community Church on Woodside Rd. Door opens at 7 pm, program runs 7:30-8:30 pm, followed by refreshments and a short business meeting. Y’all come!
Summer programs are simple, home-grown and laid-back. Reservations for dinner at Buck’s Restaurant on Woodside Road will be made for 5:30p.m. The usual meeting site at Woodside Community Church down the road will be opened at 7 pm. We are giving Melanie a break for the summer, so bring something light to share, or a carton of lemonade.
Tonight’s program will feature Ann McDonough sharing with us a fascinating class she took at CNCH this spring from Cameron Taylor-Brown.
We will have a round table program for which everyone brings in various pieces of woven cloth collected from their travels, or even “cheap” dish towels from World Market — something interesting. In small groups, we’ll examine these fabrics for weave structure, what makes this cloth interesting (or not), fiber type, etc.
