Rugs and .......kittens

In

The past few weeks there has been a flurry of rug weaving going on here at the school. The first was woven by Lynnette using the leftover warp from a baby blanket project using some wonderful Liberty of London fabric samples that were given to me by a friend. My young apprentice, Lila, was so inspired by Lynnette's rug that she decided to weave one for herself. We used a natural colored 8/4 linen warp and she wove a strand of 8/4 green cotton in between each rag.

The next project was woven by a new local student, Claudia Clark, and we dyed six beautiful colors of my custom spun English wool carpet yarn (I have more of this for sale if anyone needs a great carpet yarn!). She chose a four block rep weave pattern and did two different rugs by changing the treadling combinations. Gorgeous, aren't they?

Another rug was started just this Thursday by another local student, Susan Osterman; she had made a warp for a rag rug but changed her mind after finding the tedium of cutting rags too much for her busy schedule. Instead we decided to use up some of my leftover carpet yarn and have her weave just a weft-faced stripe.

And now for the kittens.....

In this past week there have been four kittens who have mysteriously shown up on the doorstep of the weaving school studio. We are right down the road from a working dairy farm with their share of feral barn cats, but for some reason it seems that some of these cats were used to being around humans and were possibly from a different source. The first to arrive was an all white male who was dreadfully dirty and matted and absolutely starved for both food and affection. We named him Bobbin ...Bob, for short....and he was the dearest, most loving cat I have ever met. It turned out that he was born deaf and wanted to be around people all the time, so I found him a new home with a friend in Montpelier.

On the day after Bob left, a grey striped tiger arrived...very wild and not at all used to humans and he disappeared again after a day. Then lo and behold, when Lynnette arrived to work, there in Bob's old bed were two almost identical twin ginger colored tigers. These two have now officially become our studio "Barn Cats" and Lila named them Rosie and Izzy...short for Rosamund and Isabel.....or collectively, as the Ginger Sisters. They must think that they have landed in kitty paradise for all the affection that they receive and all the great places to play, amongst loom treadles and spinning wheels. I'll definitely be posting more about them, as well as future weaving projects.