Workshop Round-up

I’ve reached that point in my crazy May schedule where I have deadlines for different activities just about every day and it all seems quite random and unconnected. In the last seven days I have prepared two maths classes and taught one (the other is tonight); set up and hosted a taster workshop in the studio; re-warped one table loom to design the activities for another workshop next week; marked a large batch of assignments and returned them to the students (in spite of the university’s systems being out for a day); delivered my work to the Design Festival venue and checked out the workshop space there; delivered and set up the Magic Dobby in the atelier at the Old Flour Mill; attended the opening of said atelier – which is looking fantastic, I must say; but aside from the workshop prep, I can’t say that I have done any actual weaving.

So here’s a quick round-up of what other people have been – or will be – weaving.

At the taster day on Saturday, we had all kinds of experimentation with twill patterns, clasped weft, chunky yarns: you name it.

The Deisgn Festival workshop will be a drop-in, so the activity needs to be quick and easy. Any complexity needs to be included in the threading to keep the liftplan super simple. I decided to riff on the wool mug rugs I’ve used before, but this time incorporate the Festival’s branding. The posters were designed by Sooper Double D, a Dundee-based artist, and one of the elements he has included is a reference to the city’s textile heritage: little pictograms of weave structures.

So I checked with him if it would be OK to use his colour scheme for the workshop and started experimenting. I’ve got more or less the right colours in lambswool, although I am blowed if I can get them to come out accurately on screen.

Oops. I have the warp heading N-S in the top photo and E-W in the second. Oh well. This warp is dark teal and silver grey. I will set up the next in pink and silver. I have also got some jute yarn to try as weft, and some hemp in case that is too tricky to handle.

On Saturday I will be at the Tea Green atelier in person, weaving on the Magic Dobby: do call in and say hello if you’re in Dundee. And if you are not on Facebook you won’t have seen this album of photos from the Make/Share last Wednesday. What are those faces I’m pulling?

“Workshop Round-Up” was posted by Cally on 19 May 2016 at http://callybooker.co.uk