sweetgeorgia

Sample Girl

I am the new sample girl for our Greater Vancouver Weavers’ and Spinners’ Guild. What does this mean? It means that every two months, I serve as a liaison between a weaver/spinner who is interested in providing woven or handspun samples to our guild newsletter and the newsletter editor and other volunteers.

Members who receive paper versions of the guild newsletter will also receive a handwoven cloth sample or some interesting handspun yarn. Members who opt to receive their newsletters by email will see a photo of the sample and can pick up a real, live sample at the following guild meeting. The handwoven samples are usually about 1.5 to 2 inches square to allow people to get a good sense of the structure, drape, and hand and are accompanied with instruction on how to produce the fabric (e.g. draft for weaving, list of yarns, special equipment, special techniques, etc.). For physical handwoven and handspun samples, the provider receives a cash honorarium.

When I volunteered to take on the task this past March, I figured it would be a great way to learn more about weaving using different techniques or fibres… but there can be no learning if there are no samples! Yep. The deadline for samples is this Friday, September 1st and all summer I haven’t heard even a peep from anybody who might be interested in contributing samples. I mentioned this to a couple long-time members and they both agree that if there are no samples, then hey, there are no samples. Too bad, but, no worries. They also mentioned that I shouldn’t feel pressured to weave something myself just so that we have samples. Ok, sounds good to me, but…

I wonder if this situation exists elsewhere. Do you belong to weaving or spinning guilds? Do you contribute samples? Why or why not? Is it just too much work? Or you think your contribution might not be appreciated? Would providing more structure be a more attractive option? For example, for November/December let’s showcase samples that employ interesting use of colour and in January/February we’ll feature handwoven samples that use overtwisted warp yarns… Or would people rather just add an extra yard or two to their warps for whatever they are working on? I have no idea. I don’t even know what would pique the interest of a long-time weaver or spinner. For me, everything is new, everything interesting. I’m sure that for a long-time weaver, things that I find fascinating would be ho hum. What would be inspiring?

So as we speed towards Friday and right past this deadline, I’m already thinking about the November 1st deadline. Maybe I should bring some fabric back from China?

my bags are full

Vancouver has a new yarn store, hurrah! Yes, we went to the grand opening at three bags full on Saturday morning… see the view:

The shop opening was packed with friendly knitters, flipping through pattern books and scrummy yarns while snacking on the cutest little cupcakes. There’s a computer terminal set up near the back of the shop where you can look up knitty.com and double-check yarn requirements… so handy. I bumped into fellow weaver, Barb, as well as Astor, the local knit & crochet instructor and knitwear designer.

Oh oh oh, and I bought myself Norah Gaughan’s new book “Knitting Nature”. So many things I want to make now…

Afterwards, we headed over to Nat Bailey Stadium for a friend’s company picnic/BBQ. With over 700 people at this picnic, there were plenty of activities planned from wallclimbing to bocce to… get this… human foosball!

You strap yourself into this velcro belt which doesn’t allow you to move from your “post”… so it really is just like foosball!!

Ok, back to fibre. Via Louisa’s blog I found out that Hannelore from Sun Bench Fibres is retiring and she sold all her inventory to Birkeland Bros on Main Street. So, if you go by Birkeland Bros right now you’ll find some weaving yarn, yummy Ashland Bay spinning fibres, and some weaving/spinning/knitting books. I don’t know if Birkeland is going to keep on with supplying weaving stuff, but it would be wonderful… to have a walk-in shop in Vancouver where we could buy weaving yarn and shuttles, rather than having to order everything by mail-order. Bah. Oooh, someplace like my beloved Weaving Works but in Vancouver.

And speaking of weaving, I’ve decided not to take the fall weaving class at Place des Arts for now. I’m so short on time these days and plus I’ll be missing nearly half the classes because of our upcoming trip to China and Japan. It’s two hours of driving from Kits to Coquitlam and back and that’s time that I could plug into doing actual weaving. I already have several projects planned and several warps ready to go… I just need the time to sit and weave. But to make sure that actual weaving occurs, I’m going to designate one night to weaving (or knitting, or spinning) — no work, no email, no television, no interruptions.

Once I get through these plain weave, twill, and log cabin projects, I’m sure I’ll want to learn something new. Maybe I can sign up for class in January… but that’s a long way off. But if you can take classes at Place des Arts, you should — it’s really the very best place in the Lower Mainland to learn to weave. The facility is incredible and I’m always so grateful for their generosity in lending equipment and resources — so essential to learning and practice.

Room6 in Deep Cove

This morning I drove up to gorgeous Deep Cove in North Vancouver with a big pile of yarn to meet Megan, the owner of Room6, and her cute dog, August. An hour later, I left the shop with a much, much smaller pile!

Room6 is a lovely and eclectic boutique right near the waterfront in Deep Cove and carries clothing, jewelry, accessories, books (like surfer magazine’s Guide to Northern and Central California Surf Spots) artwork and gifts made from local designers and artists. Megan also carries knitting yarn that is altogether different from what you find at most yarn shops in town — she has Magic Balls from Be Sweet, Ozark Handspun, organic cottons from Blue Sky Alpacas, and she’s also the only shop in Canada to carry Suss yarns (you know, Suss from Hollywood Knits). And now, she has some SweetGeorgia Yarn too!

Ah, and being so close to the waterfront made me want to get back on the water again…

Gone Surfing.

So… remember my birthday that just passed? Well, this is my birthday gift from some of my friends:

Yep. I got surf lessons!

On Friday morning, Michelle, Adam, Jayne, Desmond, Rich and I left for Tofino, stopping along the way in Coombs at the “Goats on Roof” market (yes, there are actually goats that live on the sod roof of this market!). It’s about a 5-hour trip including ferry and driving time… but so worth it…

The plans for this weekend only finalized a couple weeks ago and by that time practically all the accommodation in Tofino was fully booked. The only accommodations I could find were camping on the golf course or the Tofino Botanical Gardens. Luckily, we stayed at the botanical gardens. There is a new hostel-style facility called the Clayoquat Field Station (CFS) where students and researchers come to learn more about Clayoquat Sound… funny thing though, most of the guests were other surfers…

There are eight dorm rooms that hold four guests each for only $32 per night. It includes hot showers, a shared dining area and lounge, as well as a shared kitchen for cooking. It was wonderful to be able to use the big kitchen to cook our dinner on Friday night (thai green curry with tofu, brown rice and lentils) and breakfasts on Saturday and Sunday. The restaurants in Tofino are a little pricey (dinner entrees from $26 and up) so I think we were pretty happy to have the opportunity to cook for ourselves. There was also a twilight yoga class at the CFS on Friday evening which Rich and Jayne took while the rest of us cooked dinner. If I were to go back to Tofino, I’d choose to stay at the CFS over The Wick any day.

We had two days of lessons (three hours from 9 am to 12 noon) from Pacific Surf School on Saturday and Sunday, plus we got to keep all our equipment to play with all Saturday afternoon. We ate lunch on the beach and I, of course, forgot to reapply sunscreen so now I have this ridiculous wetsuit tan that ends halfway down my neck! The weather was incredible and the water wasn’t as cold as people had warned. For the 7 or 8 of us in the lesson, we had two Aussie instructors — both super friendly and great instructors… lots of theory on how the ocean works plus 3D diagrams in the sand to illustrate different kinds of waves and currents. We spent both days at Cox Beach (right where the Long Beach Lodge Resort is) and it would have been nice to see some of the other beaches, but that’s for next time, I guess! And wow, what an amazing feeling to be standing up on a wave! Seriously, seriously addictive. I’m already trying to figure out when I can go again…

A weekend with no cell phone access, no computers, no email, no television… so good. We sat around in the evenings and talked, drank yummy wine (Gray Monk Kerner and Sumac Ridge Gewurztraminer), read Adam’s surf magazines and did lots of knitting — Michelle on her Noro Silk Garden scarf and me on my Diamond Fantasy Shawl and Sizzle. I did more knitting during these past few days than I have in months.

It was such a nice weekend that when we found out that all the Sunday ferries were full (by 6 pm) it didn’t seem to bother us (well, except Dez who had to work on Monday morning). So we hopped on a different ferry, spent Sunday night on Salt Spring Island and then caught the 6:15 am ferry back to Vancouver on Monday morning. That’s a sign of a good trip, eh? When you just don’t want the weekend to end.

Procion MX and Cotton

During my latest dye session, I squeezed in a few minutes to paint a unmercerized 8/2 cotton warp that I will be using for towels/runners and maybe a doubleweave shuttle holder(?). See the finished warp:

I was inspired by an old back issue of Handwoven magazine (March/April 2000) where the author, Janelle Elissa, handpainted warps so that she could weave simple, quick, and inexpensive but incredibly colourful projects in between chasing her three young children. These are inexpensive cotton warps that will be woven with plain black cotton as the weft to make the colours pop out.

As for the colours, I was inspired by an old project designed by Jo-Anne Ryeburn from “Weaver’s” magazine (now defunct). It’s called the “Glowing Crosses Runner” and can also be seen in the book “Best of Weaver’s: Thick n’ Thin”. The colours in the runner are dyed with just three colours of fibre reactive dye: red, gold and navy. So simple. All the other colours — the varied purples, plums, wines, ochres, etc. — are all generated from mixing these three dye stocks in different proportions. I’m used to using two turquoises, three blues, three yellows, three reds… so this was so nice and easy!

Procion is available as a liquid, but is more expensive, so I used Procion MX powders and mixed up 2% dye stock solutions adding in Urea and Glauber’s salt. Rather than adding heat and acid to cause the dye to react with the fibre (like acid dyes), Procion relies on to addition of soda ash (alkali) to fix the dye. The first thing to do is scour the cotton yarn to remove anything that might interfere with the dye by washing it with Synthrapol or Orvus Paste. Then, the cotton needs to soak in a soda ash solution (1/2 cup of soda ash in 1 gallon of hot water) for about 15-30 minutes.

The soak solution can be saved and re-used (ProChem says this solution can be stored indefinitely at room temperature in a closed container!). Then the painting begins! If you like, you can thicken up the dye stock with sodium alginate so that you have more control over the placement of the dye. But I wanted to squish the dyes around and have them blend continuously throughout the warp, so I left the dye as is. It’s a little messy, but it’s like fingerpainting for grownups! These are “just for fun” dye projects so I don’t write anything down (except for recording it in a post like this) and I don’t worry about any of it being reproducible. Just splash, play, and squish…

Then the whole thing gets wrapped up in plastic and rolled up like a cinnamon bun. For some reason this is called “batching” or “batch setting”. I don’t know. Basically you roll it up and leave it alone for 24 hours. The dye “cures” at room temperature (above 22° C / 70° F). You could start washing the warp after a couple hours, but there are more vibrant colours to be had if you can be patient!

I do love this process so much that I find myself buying weaving yarns in only plain white/natural and black. Just add colour.

You can get the Procion MX directions straight from Maiwa here: http://www.maiwa.com/pdf/procion_mx.pdf. Or, ProChem has similar instructions here: http://www.prochemical.com/directions/MX_WarpPaintingCottonSilk.htm

And on a completely separate note, Connie at Pick Up Sticks has just opened her new online yarn shop and has lots of my sock yarns in stock plus tons more on the way!