In the world of spinning, we often think of silk as an add-in for spinning. We blend silk top with our wool. We spin mawata into lumpy, bumpy silk thread. We dye cocoons and incorporate them whole into our art yarns. We often don’t consider reeling silk. Reeling silk is hard. Reeling silk requires lots of
What do you do when you have little scraps of fiber sitting around the studio, bits and bobs, tufts from other projects? While mini-skeins is often the answer, I am not a fan of minis without a specific purpose in mind. If I can’t coordinate a full project, sometimes I just combine down and blend
Onions are one of the most common vegetables found worldwide. They’re not just a delicious staple, they can also be used to dye with! Natural dyeing can be intimidating for beginners, but onion skins are an easy place for beginners to start. Yellow onion skins will produce a bright yellow-to-orange color. Red onion skins will
Happy Valentine’s Day, friends! Depending on your perspective, today is either a day full of love or loathing. I won’t judge either way. Today, I’d like to share some art yarns we spun this last year. First, we have a tailspun yarn using soft green and brown locks. The locks were spun using a coreless
Rating: 4/5 Audience: Intermediate Spinners Judith McKenzie is, no doubt, one of the greats when it comes to writing about fiber arts and spinning. The Intentional Spinner lives up to her reputation. She offers a detailed overview of many spinning concepts broken into two parts; a section about the nature of fibers and a section about technique. She approaches
During 2017, a colleague and I have been working on a fabric art book inspired in part by Louise Bourgeois’s work. Bourgeois is probably best known for her giant metal spider sculptures, but she also did a series of fabric books. There is a beautifully executed children’s picture book called Cloth Lullaby: The Woven Life of
Greetings, friends and welcome as I launch my new website! If you have found your way here, you may be familiar with me from my Ravelry, Twitch, Etsy, or my other social media presence. Creating a website will give me an opportunity to gather all of those outlets into one location and will act as
3 hour class (half day)20 student max You’ve mastered the basic two-ply yarn. Now it’s time to jazz up your weaving and knitting. In this intermediate class, we will learn to create crepe, cabled and coiled yarns and see how these techniques can be used together to bring texture into your yarn. Students should bring
1-3 hour presentation50 student max The first question I always hear is “How do I get people/customers to come to my website/Ravelry group/Facebook page?” What we need to ask is “Where is my audience?” and we need to engage them where they are. This is a discussion on developing online communities through the use of
3 hour class (half day) or 6 hour class (full day)15 student max If you have cold feet about dyeing yarn and fiber… If you would love to create your own custom colorways… this is the class for you. In this class, we’ll start with food safe dyes you probably have in your own kitchen
