WOW! Group - Part 1 - World Traveler Returns

Last Wednesday our WOW! Group was back to full strength with the return of Bill and Larry. They had just returned from a transatlantic cruise from Copenhagen to Ft. Lauderdale, with some stops in Ireland and New York City.

At their stop in Ireland they toured a flax spinning and weaving mill which Bill found fascinating. In passing he mentioned to the mill tour guide that he was also a weaver. After taking several pictures and being the last to leave the room, Bill was surprised when the tour guide gifted him with the hank of unbleached linen she had been showing during the tour. You can see it the above photo. It has a grayish color not unlike old barn wood.

Flax is a plant and the thread produced is made up of the fibers from the plant stem after the flesh has been beaten away and called linen. That is a simplified version of a longer process. The whole process is discussed in the Nov/Dec 2008 issue of Handwoven on page 64. The thread is actually quite thin and certainly fits the term fibrous.

Bill is one of our two guild representatives to IWC (Intermountain Weavers Conference). IWC is a regional association of western weaving guilds that holds a weekend conference every other year in the year that Convergence is not held. The conference consists of two and a half day workshops, over Friday, Saturday and Sunday mornings, with a style show, and juried and non-juried gallery shows of fiber related works. The past two conferences and the one in the summer of 2009 will be held in Durango, CO, on the Ft. Lewis College campus.

Each participating guild usually donates some “favor” to be distributed to the attending conference members and leaders. For the 2007 conference our guild wove about 200 book marks 1 ½” X 6”, made on 6 looms passed around our guild through out the year.

Starting last year our guild has been doing cardboard weavings making small purses for the 2009 conference, as Bill is working on in this photo at WOW. The small weavings could be used as coin purses or business card holders. The purses are closed with a loop going over a button. The variety of purses has been quite interesting. Bill is hoping to accumulate over 200 by June. He is over half way there now.

The Fall Guild Schedule Has Started

Our guild, The Weavers and Spinners of Southern Nevada, AKA Las Vegas Fiber Arts Guild, started our fall schedule with the September meeting on Saturday the 13th at the Blind Center on the corner of Bruce and Washington Streets in Las Vegas.

The meeting was pretty well attended, as everyone was ready to tell what they had done over the summer. Several members had gone to the Black Sheep Gathering in Oregon in June. A couple of members had taken a workshop in Flagstaff, and I had attended my first Convergence in June in Tampa. But I couldn’t attend the first guild meeting to talk about it as my husband and I were babysitting two of our grandchildren in Salt Lake City.

I heard I also missed a terrific weaving sale offered by a retired guild member. But there is hope. Not everything was sold and the remnants will be at this month’s meeting on October 11 for a second chance for a sale to -- people like me who couldn’t attend the first meeting. How thoughtful.

Since the meeting is coming up soon I have to gather up the door prizes, my monthly chore for the guild. This photo gives you a preview of what this month’s door prizes will be, mostly cones of yarn and some books. Tough competition with the yarn sale still going on.

The guild has a new website, which you have to check out. Go to my fiber related links, or click on the LV Fiber Arts Guild. The creator did a very nice job with the new website. You can locate directions (and a map) to our guild meetings and a calendar of events, plus photos and links to good weaving websites. For example, this Saturday the 4th, we’ll have guild members demonstrating weaving and spinning at “Something Scottish” at the Rainbow Public Library at Cheyenne and Buffalo in the north end of the LV valley. At the same time other members will be out west of the valley at Spring Mountain Ranch State Park for Pioneer Days doing the same thing in pioneer costumes.