Please join us for an informal social get-together at the Veterans Memorial Center. ((1455 Madison Ave, Redwood City, Goldstar Room, 7 – 9 PM.) If you wish, bring along a portable project to work on, as well as show-and-tell items to share. We also appreciate your snack contributions to our hospitality table. Hot tea, water, and serving items will be available.

In Person Program for 7:00 pm Thursday, June 20th

This month we will feature guest speaker, Cata Gomes, an indigenous elder, activist and expert basket maker. Cata has documented lineage from three tribes in Central California and is a Rammaytush from the Timiktak Village along the Calera Creek, which is currently known as Pacifica. She is the founder and executive director of Muchia Te’ Indigenous Land Trust, a woman-led organization with majority of Rammaytush descendants on their board of directors.

Dedicated to the rematriation of her ancestral homeland, the land trust is named in honor of the family matriarch from whom Cata is descended. The Muchia Te website is https://muchiateilt.org/
Cata will share one of their many cultural revitalization programs, focusing on their Basket Circle and the making of pine needle coil baskets.
Please plan on attending this informative presentation Thursday, June 20th from 7-9 pm, at the Veterans Memorial Senior Center. Following the program, we will have the new board elections — your vote is important to the guild!
As we no longer have a hospitality coordinator, we appreciate if you can bring a sweet or savory item to share. Hot tea will be available. See you soon!

Topic: Sharing of recent projects from CNCH Conference and recent personal projects and any other conferences attended.

Come join us for an In-Person guild meeting to share what you have been up to lately in the area of fiber! We look forward to welcoming each of you and seeing your beautiful works!
If you attended CNCH, let us know about the workshop you attended and your new learnings, as well as any completed projects done then. If you did not attend the conference, we would still love to see you and bring something you have recently completed or share what you are in the process of completing.

Perhaps you have a recent travel adventure to share or a workshop you can recommend.
We will need help with refreshments, so please bring something to share, sweet or savory! Hope to see you soon.

— Barbie, Barbara, Ann and Johanna, Programs Committee

Memorial Senior Center, 1455 Madison Ave, Redwood City. The program will start at 7pm, but the room will be open at 6:30 for those who want to visit beforehand.
Our program will also bring us back “home” with four of our own guild members speaking about their different paths that took their lives out of the realm of “hobby” weaving.
Our moderator will be Johanna Gelb

Our panelists will be:
• Barbara Shapiro, internationally exhibited basketmaker and weaver, conference and
workshop teacher https://www.barbarashapiro.com/
• Ulla de Larios, internationally exhibited weaver https://www.ulladelarios.com/
• Jodi Paley, weaver of commissions and pieces for gallery and craft fair booth sales
@stitchfiberart
• Barbie Paulsen, elementary school weaving teacher, retired              

Bring your questions and your own stories of where weaving has taken you. We look forward to seeing you in person.
If anyone would like to bring something finger-edible to share, that would be lovely. We don’t send around a signup sheet for monthly snacks any more.

COVID note: Masking is optional, but please wear a mask if you have any respiratory symptoms, even if it’s probably just allergies from everything that’s blooming.

Program for 7:00 pm March 21st via Zoom : Our guest speaker is Carson Demers.

By day he is a mild-mannered physical therapist (well, actually award winning!). But the rest of his life he is spinning, knitting, designing and teaching, always with an eye to ergonomics.

He is the author of Knitting Comfortably: the Ergonomics of
Handknitting. Plus, he is a poodle lover! https://www.ergoiknit.com/

Do you do more than knit or spin? This presentation takes inventory
of the ergonomic pros and cons for a variety of fiber arts including
weaving and finer needle work.

You’ll learn how injuries occur and
the contributions your craft makes both to their occurrence and
prevention. You’ll learn to identify ergonomic risk in your craft and
techniques to prevent injuries including improved posture, stretching and exercise.

February 15th, 2024 Guild Meeting with Kathy Hattori

Program starts at 7:00 pm on Thursday, February 15th :

January 18, 2024 Guild Meeting: Robin Lynde

January Program
Thursday, January 18, 7:00 pm on Zoom
Link will be sent out before the meeting and will be on the Black Sheep Handweavers Guild calendar

Join us this month for some time with a local fiber celebrity, Robin Lynde of Meridian Jacobs in Vacaville. This month’s program is an inside view into where our fibers come from and what goes into the care and production of the yarns we use. It also brings insights into the host of Lambtown, a favorite local textile event.

In her own words, Robin Lynde says:

“There is more to running a fiber business than admiring shelves of yarn and knitting all day just as there is more to raising sheep than cuddling lambs. How do you combine farming, shop-keeping, teaching, and weaving into a successful business? I will discuss my experience developing and managing Meridian Jacobs with plenty of time to answer questions.”

We look forward to seeing your faces and hearing whatever questions you might have about the processes that come before your warp touches the heddles and your weft fills your shuttle.

Program for 7:00 pm Thursday, December 14: Holiday Party

Welcome, one and all, to the Black Sheep Guild Holiday Party! We will be meeting in person at the Veterans Memorial Center, 1455 Madison Ave, Redwood City at 7:00 p.m. Let us gather, greet old friends and new, and share our love of textiles and each other Come in a festive spirit! (Last year, we encouraged donning a special hat or other wearable
decoration, so why not make that a tradition?) As always, we eagerly anticipate seeing your fiber creations at our show-and-tell time. And if you have a textile that holds some special meaning, we would love to hear your tale. May our shared stories be a bright spot in the dark winter!
Please join in our evening of merriment and bring an edible treat to share. For simplicity’s sake, we are just asking for contributions of finger foods, sweet or savory. We will supply an assortment of beverages.
Please also consider bringing an item (or many) from your stash! Instead of a gift exchange, this year we will feature a stash give-away table, which we trust will fill with tempting offerings.
Lighten your cache of those “someday” items, let them become someone else’s treasure, and come away with something that sparks new inspiration! Doubtless, most of us will not be leaving empty-handed!
If you have any interest in helping with the party set-up, please contact Gail (President) or any Programs board member. We look forward to your company!

November Program

Weaving TnT: Dynamite Tips ‘n Technique for Every Weaver with Robyn Spady

Robyn Spady’s website offers this description: “ Would you like to learn a great method for repairing a broken warp end, tracking your treadling while you weave, making your own repair heddles, or just make weaving easier and more pleasurable? This gizmo-and-gadget centric presentation looks and feels like an interactive show-and-tell and will introduce over 36 offbeat tools, techniques, or tricks to assist weavers in all phases of weaving.”

Robyn has years of experience with a broad variety of weaving techniques. She is the founder of Heddlecraft, a digital magazine for handweavers: https://heddlecraft.com
She has written numerous articles for Handwoven. She is also an engaging and enjoyable speaker. 
Whether you are a new weaver or an old hand, Robyn will bring something to savor.

The meeting will be held on Zoom at 7 pm, Thursday, November 16, 2023.
Her website is https://www.spadystudios.com/, Her blog is here: https://spadystudios.wordpress.com/

Sardinian Arts — Handweavers of Sardinia

On the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, handweaving is an ancient and revered art considered so complex and magical that legends say the Jana (fairies) taught women how to construct looms and weave. Sardinia’s tessitrici artigianali — women weavers who work by hand in the old ways — are extraordinary and rare. Only a handful remain working as professionals, maintaining the ancient and distinctive textile traditions of their towns.

Meet these women weavers, see the loving and painstaking artistry of their textiles, and glimpse just a bit of Sardinia’s majesty in March’s Guild meeting, featuring Kelly Manjula Koza, founder of Sardinian Arts.

During the event, Kelly will show bits of her film, I Want to Weave the Weft of Time (2016), about the few remaining hand weavers of Samugheo, as well as additional videos, photos, stories of the weavers, and glimpses of her personal textile collection as she presents the textiles and weavers of three areas:

Samugheo (the best-known of the Sardinian traditions, that of pibiones), Nule, and Aggius. Kelly will also provide some background about Sardinia, touch on the importance of the handmade, and discuss the need to create protective classifications for traditional textiles.
Before the event, you are invited to watch the entire documentary for free online as an introduction to what we’ll discuss at the event. See the film (29 minutes) at http://weaveweftoftime.com. Find additional information on SardinianArts.com.

Kelly writes, films, photographs, and produces events about Sardinia, the handweavers, and related topics. She founded Sardinian Arts in 2013 to help protect, promote, encourage, and advance the tessitrici artigianali and the arts, culture, and heritage of Sardinia in a sustainable manner. In addition to producing, filming, writing and editing I Want to Weave the Weft of Time, she produced and curated Sardinian Textiles:
An Exhibit of Handwoven Art in San Francisco (2017), Intrecciati, an intercultural fiber arts project coordinated between Sardinia, Milano, and San Francisco (2017), and other events. More films and events are in the works. 
Kelly’s background includes 30 years of volunteering with an NGO based in India as well as corporate work in technology, communications, and program management. She senses an emerging connection between gizmo-based technology overload and the rising desire for handmade items, especially in fiber arts.

• tessitrici artigianali — https://sardinianarts.com/meet-the-artists/
• Sardinian Arts — https://sardinianarts.com
• I Want to Weave the Weft of Time (Directly on Vimeo) — https://vimeo.com/175328435
• I Want to Weave the Weft of Time (on Sardinian Arts) — https://sardinianarts.com/documentary-film/
• Sardinian Textiles: An Exhibit of Handwoven Art in San Francisco — https://sardinianarts.com/thank-you/
• Intrecciati — https://www.facebook.com/groups/1244193932289776/

      We are excited to have Kelly Mondola Koza as guest speaker for our Oct  19 Guild meeting!