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?

New Silks

How about some colour to go with that sunshine?

This is three skeins of 20/2 cultivated silk (bottom) and one skein of 70% silk / 30% seacell (top). SeaCell is a new fibre made from seaweed via the lyocell process. Sound familiar? It’s the same process used to make Tencel, Bamboo, Viscose Rayon, and other cellulose fibres. The manufacturers of SeaCell are saying that all the “good health” benefits of seaweed can be enjoyed, that is absorbed, by wearing fabrics made from SeaCell. That’s some fancy transdermal vitamin delivery system.

Healthy yarn or not, the SeaCell silk is gorgeous. It takes dyes nicely, but as you can see from first photo, it gives a warmer end product. I dyed all the skeins above using the same stock solution, but the seacell skein is slightly lighter (acid dyes not reacting with the cellulose portion of the yarn?) and slightly warmer.

Last night’s guild meeting hosted Diana Sanderson and Kate Barber who came and brought skeins and woven samples of these new silks — beautiful drape, luminous, light fabrics. There was also look/fondle/discussion about silk/linen, silk/bamboo, silk/camel and stainless steel yarn(!?!).

While they talked about yarn, I did this:

A couple days ago, I switched from the H&S ebony circs back to my standard Addi circs and knitting is faster and easier now. This weekend, I might just find some time to catch up!