10th Annual Jason Collingwood Workshop at Vavning Studio - Day Three (finale)

Sunday came and went SO FAST!

I wandered around the classroom area while everyone was up at the lecture portion and snapped pics of each workshopper's loom sample.  This may be boring for the non-weavers reading my blog today... but for the weaver's this is "eye candy" to look at all the variations!

Please ignore any of the loose threads on the surface, as they are needle woven into the sample as we go along... and some get them all done right away by needle weaving them in downwards at the fell line, and others wait till they have woven a few inches more and needle weave them upwards.

Non-weavers, please scroll down to read the rest of the blog???

It is amazing that all of these weave designs are created on only 2 harnesses with plain weave (tabby) structure.  The variations are almost endless.  Four basic patterns are horizontal stripes, crossways stripes, aligned dots and staggered dots.  But it's all in "how" you combine and put together those four patterns that allows you to make such interesting rug samples!

  (you can right click on each photo for a close up in another window) 

and here is mine:

As the morning went on, Jason was wrapping up the final instructions to the rest of the weavers... while I was busy flitting in and out of the kitchen.  (doing my Kitchen Wench duties)

I simmered up a big ole pot of homemade veggie soup... it smelled great!   I made it without any meats or meat broth base to allow the vegetarians in the group to enjoy the soup too.  We accompanied it with an array of deli cold cuts, breads and other "go withs" to make sandwiches.

If you would like to read a story about how I got this big blue soup pot...

 go to this blog post and scroll down towards the end to read about it... 

it's an "awwwww" love story! 

http://kareninthewoods-kareninthewoods.blogspot.com/2013/02/all-worlds-stage-and-so-is-our.html

As the class time wound down, the looms were hauled out and stashed in cars and vans.  Everyone helped grab tables and chairs to set up for our luncheon....

we went from THIS:

to THIS:   

After everyone had their lunch... that sweet Norma (wife of workshopper Jim)  brought a birthday dessert of a pistachio pudding cake as a surprise to Steve and Jim .. who both celebrated birthday's recently.  Well, then we found out Jason is having a birthday coming up too, but he didn't want us to sing to him.  LOL

Afterwards, Norma gave a demonstration on how she cuts up blue jeans for making rugs. 

All that is left after she is done with a pair of jeans is only enough for a biker chick's G string! 

We did a little "show n tell" of items we made.. not necssarily just weaving rugs.  I showed my towels and my socks too.   Karen York, a fellow weaver and friend of Juanita's, and me too, came for the luncheon (and get some socks) ... she brought the newest jacket she had woven with lovely colors in mohair.  Juanita had helped her plan the jacket.  Karen does such fine work!  She even modeled it for us and did the "cat walk"  hahahaha  Karen, you are rocking that denim mini-skirt quite well too!

Karen helped me clean up the kitchen afterwards as folks hugged and goodbye'd and went on their way.  Soon it was time for Steve and I to hit the road.  We stalled a bit and gabbed with just Juanita and Norm before we left the studio.  Boy oh boy are we ever glad we did!  Because as soon as we pulled out onto the highway to head north on I-90 there was a horrible accident that had just happened!  Perhaps if we had left a bit earlier and not visited with the Hofstroms, we might have been in the middle of it!  

It was a travel trailer totally mushed upside down on it's roof~!   The tow vehicle was upright and okay.  We can only assume something happened to the trailer either the hitch came loose, or high winds, or a person cutting them off, or too fast for towing safely or whatever.  But I saw a crushed doggie crate between the floor and ceiling surfaces of the trailer.. which were now compressed together!   We drove past slowly... and just hoping their happy doggy was up in their truck with them and not being towed back in the trailer in it's crate where it would have been crushed to death?


As we drove along, we were getting some pretty funny looks from people passing us on the interstate... especially children???  Boring riding in the back seats of their parent's cars ... we were giving them something funny to notice in our Tracker, being towed behind our motorhome.

Seems we had a "barely new driver" in our Tracker???  Hmmmmm 

This is one of the bears Norma bought at the auction and sent home for our grandtots

The winds had kicked up from the south and were gusting as we drove northeast... but we were getting a pretty good tail wind on the way home. Helps with the mileage too, ya know.

There were bad storms to the south and west of us... and some tornado warnings too.  I kept close watch on the weathermaps on Wunderground as we drove along in our motorhome.  High winds and a big rectangular shaped box zooming down the road are not a good combination.  We rode ahead of the storm all the way home....  and made it home without any bad weather. Not even a drop of rain. Actually the storms passed over and around Chilton, so once we got home it was pleasant.. but muggy warm and in the mid 80's outside.

Imagine our pleasant surprise of going into our new-to-us home, which had been closed up all weekend... to find the inside temperature was a comfortable cool 67 degrees!   With the garage blocking the hot sun to the west, our home seems to stay naturally cool, even on hot days?   What luck!  Being our first spring/summer in this home, we may find we don't have to run the central air as often as we thought.  This is our first home with central air, so that is another added budget expense we hadn't had before.

I had a nice big box waiting for me in the front porch. YAY!  It's my new warp yarn order from Chris Gustin at http://www.homesteadweaver.com   Time to warp up in one of my favorite patterns...

I have some denim rugs to get done for a customer. The pattern really compliments the denim fabric. She also included some big cones of sock yarns that I am anxious to try out too!  So it was fun opening up a box of good weaving stuff.  It's like Christmas!

Steve started cracking the whip and we unloaded the fridge and food and clothes from the motorhome.  We left in the loom and supplies until tonight when we have more time to unload.  As it was so hot and muggy, we didn't want to be outside any more than we had to.

About 8 p.m. a front came through, the winds changed to cool breezes from the east, off Lake Michigan. We put on our shoes, and took a walk up to Dairy Queen for a sundae.  Our lilacs are just starting to open here, and we were enjoyed the scents and smells of new blossoms all the way there and back.

Today I am heading up to the greenhouse to get some flowers to start planting in my beds and the clay urn pots I prepared on the front steps. I hope the danger of frost has passed... in Wisconsin, you never know!

We are not going camping this upcoming Memorial weekend.  Instead we are staying home and invited the kids and grandkids to come over.  Seems the Memorial Day parade goes right past our house!   This is the first time we lived in a home where the parades go by, so we are going to be the lucky ones with lawnchairs on our front lawn which is a bit raised from the sidewalk... and we can watch the parade go by, grill out in the backyard, and watch the grandtots enjoy the holiday weekend!