GUILD RECEIVES GRANT
The Guild has been awarded a grant of $500 from the Pennsylvania Council
on the Arts to offset the cost of the Rita Buchanan workshop next spring.
This will allow us to charge less for tuition and hopefully make it possible
for people to attend who otherwise could not afford it.
Registration information for the workshop will be available SOON. I apologize
for the delay in getting it out.
-Ann Sheffield
GUILD LIBRARY BOOKS DUE
According to our records, several library items are (past) due. The strayed
items and, where known, the guilty parties (including yours truly) are:
| Card Weaving by Crockett |
Checked out by: Elaine Fertig |
| Knitting Ganseys by Brown-Reinsel |
Checked out by: Maggie Fry |
| The New Clay by Roche |
Checked out by: Maggie Fry |
| Bodywork for Weavers and Fiber Artists (video) |
Checked out by: Maggie Fry |
| Handspinning, Art and Technique by Fannin |
Checked out by: Sandra Grimm |
| The Weaving Book by Bress |
Checked out by: Susan Helm |
| The Maker's Hand by Collingwood |
Checked out by: Susan Helm |
| Rag Rug Handbook by Meany & Pfaff |
Checked out by: Barb Lodge |
| Hands On Dyeing by Blumenthal & Kreider |
Checked out by: Barb Lodge |
| Color in Spinning by Menz |
Checked out by: Barb Lodge |
| Handwoven's Design Collection #8 |
Checked out by: Donna Long |
| Knitting in America |
Checked out by: Ann Sheffield |
| Color and Weave by Sutton |
Checked out by: Ruth Walker-Daniels |
| The Essentials of Handspinning by Ross |
Checked out by: Nancy Washok |
| Merino by Stove |
Checked out by: Nancy Washok |
| Knots and Netting by Waller |
Checked out by: Nancy Washok |
| The Weaver's Book, by Tidball |
Checked out by: ???* |
| The Trials of Jurying by Eckenwalder |
Checked out by: ??? |
| Drafts and Designs: Guide for 5-12 Harness Weaves |
Checked out by: ??? |
| Warping All By Yourself by Garret |
Checked out by: ??? |
*But you know who you are!
MINUTES OF THE OCTOBER GUILD MEETING
Treasurer's report:
| Checking balance: |
$912.80 |
| Savings balance: |
$1091.36 |
It was announced that Ann Sheffield will have a mailing out within the
following week on the particulars of the Rita Buchanan workshop. We will
have exclusive rights to sign up until Nov.1, after which it will be open
to members of other guilds. Sign-up deadline is Feb. 1. [Editor's note:
obviously, this has not happened. The mailing will be out shortly, and members
of our Guild will still be able to sign up first.] The drawing for the Guild
scholarship for the Rita Buchanan workshop was won by Bonnie Crytzer. It
was reported that Ann Sheffield wrote a proposal for a grant to offset costs
for the Buchanan workshop.
Barb Lodge read a report from Elaine Fertig regarding progress on next year's
program schedule. It was also decided that our regular April Guild meeting
will be Friday evening, Aoril 8, next year. After a brief business meeting,
Rita Buchanan will give a talk on "Making Time for Fiber." It was hoped that
members who prefer not to drive at night will be able to ride with those who
do not mind night-driving.
Ruth Walker-Daniels reported that, in addition to the many changes that
have already taken place at the Sawmill Center for the Arts, more changes
are expected. Many things are in limbo and it is hard to make plans. We discussed
this year's Fiber Fest and its addition of other fiber arts. Barb Lodge showed
the shawl from the Fiber Fest fleece-to-shawl - finished! She said it is about
15" longer than required, which would account for at least one hour of our
overtime. It has not yet been decided how to dispose of the shawl.
FOR SALE
Ruth Walker-Daniels passed on this information from a woman in Warren who
is selling most of her weaving supplies and also a friend's loom. The equipment
and materials include:
45", 4H Nilius Leclerc counter-balanced floor loom $700 Included: raddle,
12-dent reed, lease stickes, heddles, sectional warp beam
Bench for 45" loom $100
24", double-harness Nilius Leclerc counter-balanced floor loom $500 Included:
raddle, several reeds, lease sticks, heddles, bobbins, bobbin winder, shuttles
Nilius Leclerc table model warping reel, 28" high x 72" around $100 Inkle
loom, 12" x 8" x 6"79 [sic] $30
Also, cones and balls of yarn in many fibers along with a wide selection
of books and back issues of Handwoven are available. To ask about any of these
items, contact Ruth.
DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME
I heard about dyeing cotton T-shirts with Kool-Aid several years ago. I
remember the stuff staining my clothes when I was little, and figured, if
it stains, it dyes. I called Pat, our Guild's dye guru, and asked about it.
She said it didn't work very well. I took that as gospel, and promptly forgot
about it. Several months ago, I was perusing our local newspaper, The Columbus
Dispatch, and lo and behold, on the kid's page, there were detailed instructions
for tie-dyeing cotton T-shirts with Kool-Aid! I decided to give it a try.
The following are the instructions and my comments on the project.
"Here's how to make a nifty-swell-neato tie-dye shirt." Cool! Now let
me find a plain white T-shirt
"Soak shirt overnight in salt water, mix 1/3 cup of salt to 1 quart of water."
OK, this is good. Salt is used to brighten colors when using Rit dye, so
it should work for this.
"Fold the shirt using a tight accordion fold. Fold forward then back across
the shirt until the shirt is a single strip." This narrow folding stuff
isn't as easy as it looks. Darn! Lost it again!
"Roll up the shirt and tie with rubber bands." This looks like a big white
sticky bun!
"Mix three containers using a packet of unsweetened Kool-Aid (red, yellow,
blue) and no more than a quart of water." "Honey, are you going to the
grocery store? Oh, good. Can you get some Kool-Aid? The unsweetened kind.
Flavors? Oh, some red kind, some purple kind,, and maybe a blue and orange
right, I'll go with you." Much later: Now then. Do you suppose that means
a quart of water per three packages, or a quart of water for each package?
"Dip one-third of the roll in each color. Overlapping colors will create
new colors." Duh. Gee, this lemonade flavor isn't very yellow. It isn't
coloring the shirt at all. And the grape, yuck. I've never seen such an ugly
purple. Now this orange, that's better. This "Pink Swimmingo" is really pink!
I'm going to be dipping this all day. Maybe if I use the turkey baster as
a syringe to squirt the Kool-Aid onto the shirt there, that's better. What
pretty soft colors! Smells like candy, too.
"Let roll dry on a piece of wax paper." OK, this should dry overnight.
The next day: This doesn't feel the least bit dry. The second day: This might
be a little bit drier than yesterday The third day: Geez! I'm putting this
in the sun.
"When dry, take off rubberbands, turn shirt inside out and dry in a dryer
set on high for about 15 minutes." Boy, this shirt is stiff. I'll set the
dryer for 25 minutes just to be safe.
"Shirt is ready to wear. Wash in cold water by itself for first time cleaning."
Ready to wear? Only if you like sticky, stiff, candy-smelling T-shirts.
I'm going to wash this. Let's see delicate cycle, cold water, Tide.. When
I opened the washing machine, I had such a surprise. Pasted to the drum was
a brilliant white T-shirt.
I have this to say about Kool-Aid on cotton: it only dyes when you don't
want it to. Sigh.
[Written by Dawn Lanman-Ludwig; published in Thrums, the newsletter of the
Central Ohio Weaver's Guild. Their Editor notes that Kool-Aid does work well
on animal fibers like wool, silk and mohair. -Ed.]
TUESDAY SPIN
The Tuesday Spinning group continues to meet the third Tuesday of the month
at Christ Episcopal Church on Diamond Park in Meadville, 10 am - 2 pm. The
next meeting is on November 17. The group will NOT meet in December due to
the general Yuletide chaos. As always, all are welcome to attend, with beginners
especially encouraged. Bring a project, a wheel or handspindle, and a bag
lunch. Beverages are provided; bring a treat to share if you wish.
TURNING ANCIENT CRAFT INTO ART FORM
Look at it long enough - the cloud banks, the bright mists veiling the uplands,
the lovable green squiggle of hills - and you can begin to lose yourself in
the landscape.
Which is remarkable: it's not every evening bag you can get lost in. But
Marla Krasnegor, who made the one described of handmade felt, says she likes
her work to have "a sense of the land", and it does. Krasnegor started out
as a weaver, and after a while began to resent how long it took to see results.
So she took a felting workshop and found her medium.
To make felt by hand, you layer carded but unspun wool crosswise for your
background, then arrange drifts or wafts or nubbins or squiggles of wool or
yarn on top where you want them. Already you can see what the finished piece
will look like. "You lay it out and, if you don't like it, you change it."
Krasgenor says, "It's like painting with fibers." Then you roll it up in a
piece of fabric, add soap, water and friction - kneading or rubbing or rolling
- and, almost presto, it's felt. The scales on the surface of the wool fibers
catch onto each other and lock and curl up and shrink, and it all ends up
connected.
The technology goes back practically forever, probably further back than
weaving, to the time when Central Asian nomads started wearing animal skins.
One legend says Noah discovered felt on the floor of the ark, where sheep
had shed their wool and trod it into felt, but Patricia Spark says felt was
being made well before then. Spark, editor of the North American Felters'
Network newsletter out of Albany, OR, says it's largely because of felt that
half of this country is here, since the trappers who first explored and eventually
began settling the West were after beaver pelts to be turned into tall beaver-felt
hats by English hatters. Industrial feltmaking came to the United States shortly
after the Revolution,, she says, but making felt by hand at home came much
later, with the waves of Scandinavian and Eastern European immigrants who
arrived toward the end of the 19th century.
A few of them passed their ways of making felt boots and mittens down to
their children, but not many. Most of the handmade felt being produced in
America today can trace its roots only back to the 1970s when, after Marshall
McLuhan observed that the medium was the message, arts-and-crafts types began
exploring all sorts of media to test their expressive potential. Little had
been published about felting technique, so early 70's feltmaking was hit or
miss: "these funky, stringy, lumpy things," Spark says.
But she had seen picture of exquisite felt artifacts recovered from Siberian
tombs so she "didn't want this lumpy stuff." She started studying the techniques
of traditional feltmaking - often by scrutinizing photographs in ethnographic
journals with a magnifying glass.
As more fiber artists experimented with felt, books were published, exhibitions
mounted, workshops offered and international confabs of felters held. (Spark
attended one with felters from Hungary and Mongolia where they lived in yurts,
the felt teepees used by Asian nomads.) Now, she says, after 25 years of feltmaking,
American felters have more control of their technique - to the point that
some produce photorealist images in felt, mainly to show that they can. Felters
tend to divide into those who do functional objects - from rugs to cloaks
to hats to eyeglass cases. A rug of any size by an established artisan can
cost upwards of $1,000 - one reason Marla Krasnegor likes doing shoulder bags,
eyeglass cases, tree ornaments and cat toys. They're "things normal people
can afford," she says. Which is almost as nice having them be things that,
if you look long enough, you can get lost in.
[Written by Patricia McLaughlin. Gleaned from the North American Felters'
Network newsletter by way of Fleece Facts, newletter of the Canton Weavers
and Spinners Guild. -Ed.]
SPIDER WOMAN
There is a woman who weaves the night sky;
See how she spins,
See how her fingers fly.
She is with us from beginning to end,
Our grandmothers,
Sister and friend.
She is the needle
And we are the thread
She is the weaver
And we are the web.
She changes everything she touches
And everything she touches changes.
She changes everything she touches
And everything she touches changes.
[Navajo poem found in the Butler County Spinners & Weavers Guild newsletter.
-Ed.]
