Student Update

Mel contemplating her work

It's such a wonderful and curious thing to see what someone will come up with when they choose the colors of yarn for their project. I am always intruiged and surprised to realize (yet again) that we all see color differently, and we all gravitate to our own unique combinations of color and effect when we plan our work.

Mel Donovan came to weave with us for a week after having been away from working on a loom for quite a number of years. I proposed she do a short cotton dishtowel warp, 5 yards long, enough to have a good experience of weaving and to make four towels, but not so long as to be difficult to set up and weave off in a week for someone who's been away from weaving for a while.

The weave structure was fairly straightforward, a simple 2/2 twill, but the challenge in the threading was to learn the technique of changing the twill direction on each color change in the warp sequence. She then chose different wefts and combinations of weft stripes for each towel, yet further experimentation with her color palette.

Her towels were beautiful, and not like anything that I've ever seen anyone else weave so far! She picked a few colors which we had hand-dyed here at the barn, and so her work has this lovely abrash and depth to it, as you can see in the photographs above.

We hope you had a good week, re-learning some weaving techniques, Mel, and look forward to seeing you back someday!

In other news, Taylore is back for a month of weaving, and we have two new longer-term weekly students, Rose Diamond and Susan Witham. Rose is the recipient of a Vermont Folklife Apprenticeship Grant and will be studying here for four months, and Susan got a VSAC grant and will be here for six months! These grants are a great resource for Vermont residents who wish to study with Vermont artisans. We are happy to have both Rose and Susan here as they both add to the general bustle and liveliness at the barn.

I've included links to both of these organizations in the right-hand sidebar of this blog (under"Financial Aid"). The Marshfield School of Weaving is now an approved teaching entity for both of them.