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Tzouhalem Spinners and Weavers Guild NewsletterNovember December 2016

Hello Spinners and Weavers, With the whirlwind of furious fibre creating over the Christmas season, how many of us are sweeping away the dust balls and preparing for a clean start to the new year? Before Christmas I was in my usual state of knitting and weaving gifts, and the yarn and fibre had our household fluffed to the brim. One morning, when I sat down to breakfast, I was greeted by this image in a music book, which my husband had placed, instead of porridge, on my placemat! It is an illustration by Arthur Rackham.  The caption reads:  In Act V of Ibsen's Peer Gynt, the hero is attacked by Noster, or the Threadballs. After breakfast, I vacuumed under my looms and herded a few balls of yarn back into their baskets!  

Love those Threadballs,

Happy spinning and weaving,Cynara

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Alison has been honing her arts of inkle weaving and paper weaving.The paper pockets will be the name tag holders for the coming ANWG conference. We will be getting on board with her to make all 500 of these in our January meeting!

December Show and Tell

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Marion brought her basket handspun which she dyed with various natural dyes. The indigo blue skein is rose fibre. Yum.

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Linda brought her felted fish to join some of the others from our Nan C workshop, as well as a cowl which she made by joining together narrow silk scarves from a previous weaving era. Sorry that I missed getting a pic of her modeling it. So lovely and soft and just enough.

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Lois wove beautiful tea towels and a rag rug,Evid has woven all of the waffle towels (we lost count) on her loom that came out of moving and storage this fall. Aren’t they scrumptious!And Maria, our new member, shared with us her wonderful cedar bark baskets and Christmas ornaments. She explained her finely honed process of stripping and preparing the cedar strips.

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Leona is blooming! A wee jacket and cape wrap are out of her knitting basket, and old jeans have been transformed into a very nice diaper bag. She’s also been trying out controlled pooling with space dyed yarn.

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Cynara wove finger towels inspired by Gudrun’s, then tied on a Harris Tweed warp and wove vest fabric. Photos show the fulled yardage and below, the fabric while it was still on the loom.

Also, Cynara wove rep rag runner and placemats inspired by the latest VAV.

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Michele knit texting gloves, and lacy berets,and Cynara knit a hat and sweater for her grandson, and Cynthia knit a wonderful cowl with her precious yak silk handspun.

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Marion renewed the dog-chewed hat by re-knitting the top and she gave new life to old handknit socks by turning them into fingerless mitts and wrist warmers.

Carol re-introduced a sweater that she’d handspun, hand-dyed and knit a long time ago,

And Michele had some yellow and orange singles wool from Els’ old stash. She revitalized it by overdyeing with blue, plying it, and weaving it into her first doubleweave blanket. Fabulous. And it fits the ANWG colour scheme.

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Terry’s wonderful tapestry bird.

And Michele’s knitted snood.

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Cynthia has been making needle-felted critters and Christmas ornaments. I love the little mouse curled up in the walnut shell.

The felted and embroidered tea cozy that Sandy L brought is a lovely inspiration for ways to work with felt,and Diane Leee’s bumberet weave towels have intriguing colour play.

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Marion got this Ashford Country spinner from a Thrift shop. It’s missing the bobbin and drive band, but will make a great wheel when that’s remedied.

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And, our fabulous as usual potluck Winter Feast!

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Take a look at this linen and cellulose fibres growing and processing initiative in Atlantic Canada:Patricia Bishop’s website is here, and you can read the CBC story also.http://taprootfibrelab.ca/index.php/about-us/#!http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/nova-scotia-farmer-patricia-bishop-flax-clothing-1.3884439

An interesting and inspiring story on the Webshared by Evid

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November Textile EveningMembers gathered and sat spinning, while a Beginning Weaving Study session got going with warp making.

Our new member Colleen, silk worm farmer, and spinner extraordinaire shared her knotted, handspun homegrown silk (warp and weft and pile) knotted tapestry piece.

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Felting Workshop given by Nan C.Nan designed a rainbow trout and we learned the process of resist wet felting. It was a very successful, well organized and fun workshop! Thanks you Nan, and thanks Jo’Anne for organizing.

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November Show and TellThanks Marion, for taking the photos of our very colourful show and tell..

Linda’s wonderful cedar bark basket.

Alison’s inkle band in Baltic weave.

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Marion’s yarns from the Fungi dye workshop. The mittens are by Swedish dyer/knitter Barbro Wingard and are mushroom dyed colours. The scarf is dyed with cortinarius and lobster mushrooms as are the stuffed critters.

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Melody’s colourful shawls, and Toni’s rug woven from her handspun.

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Another colourful shawl from Melody, and her inkle woven ukelele straps in buckles.

Kazuko’s Noro Cowl

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Karen’s gorgeous blue and brown handspuns, and Carol J’s brown and magenta Providence spinning.

Tammy, modeling her knitted garter ridge shawl that she made from her handspun Shetland.

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America’s beautiful tapestries and slippers. She is combining weaving and knitting in the slippers and incorporated natural shearling and fur in her work.

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Pat’s spinning and felted bracelet with her fabulous silver work. The indigo leaf print was an experiment with fresh leaves.

Jo’Anne’s rag weaving,

Alison found this wonderful vest with the gamp woven fabric at a Thrift shop .

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Alison’s Inkle weavings, rigid heddle weave sample and sample pickup weavings.

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Lois has some cotton rovings to spin, and Evid has miles of fine copper wire for weaving and lace making.

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Gudrun shared some Guild history. This old newspaper article from the early days of the guild covers the TSWG’s annual show and demonstration, and features a photo of Gudrun, “toiling” away at her loom. And the other photo is our late Margaret White at her 100th birthday this fall. So many good weaving years. God rest.

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Next month - Distaff Day ....