Last Week's Happenings

the view outside...not much snow, but definitely winter

Lynnette busy winding spools for a big warp

Zoe finished up her canvas and we had a big birthday lunch for her

Susan O working on finishing up her new blanket

Stevie working on a bright birdseye dishtowel warp

Sandra's new wool/alpaca throw beamed on

Susan W's cotton dishtowels

a short warp to test the new carpet yarn made from local sheep's wool

my latest adventure with tape

Stephanie working on her overshot piece

one of Stephanie's BIG rag rugs

Stephanie's rag placemats with different fillers

Stevie's dishtowels fresh off the loom

While this hasn't been a "typical" winter as far as snowfall goes, nobody seems to be too upset about it. We've had less than average snowfall, and perhaps more freezing rain and sleet than snow, and much milder temperatures on the whole. The driveway has been more like a skating rink than a snow fort. But in some ways it's a nice break, especially after all the snow and deep cold we had last winter.

We had a busy week...Lynnette has been occupied with winding spools for a big warp. Zoe finished up her roll of canvas over the weekend, and we had a big potluck birthday lunch for her: soups, salad, roasted potatoes, homemade applesauce, kale chips, with raw jersey milk, gluten-free compost cookies, green tea ice cream, and poppyseed pound cake for dessert. We always have a great time with birthday lunches and festive occasions around here...a lot of us like to cook and we enjoy making and sharing the things we love to eat. It helps to also have access to great local foodstuffs here in Vermont. So Zoe had a good send-off. It seems the month of January slipped by so quickly while she was here.

But the looms have been busy. Susan O has been finishing up a really nice twill blanket in Jaggerspun wool...she has such a great sense of color, and her work is always easy on the eyes and easy to imagine living with.

Stevie has been weaving a run of very brightly colored birdseye dishtowels in 8/2 cotton, playing with color relationships, which are always more challenging when most of the colors are bright ones.

Sandra has an uncharacteristically BRIGHT warp on for a wool/alpaca throw for a young relative of hers who requested certain colors that Sandra probably would never dream of putting together! So it is one of those exercises in working with colors that are not your own, and working on a project where what's going on is not necessarily pleasing to your eyes. An interesting experiment for all of us to witness!

Susan W has been working on some short warps to become more comfortable with the process of warping, beaming on, and all the set-up. Her most recent project is a 4-towel cotton dishtowel warp, and she's putting in some other color (reds) than is her usual way (neutrals).

There's been a short rug warp on to weave up a few samples using the new carpet yarn from a local sheep farmer's Romney and Border Leicester wool. Last summer Zoe skirted some 300# of assorted fleece from Bill's sheep and sent it off to Green Mountain Spinnery in Putney VT, who made beautiful yarn out of it. Kate dyed enough for this warp so that we could see what a finished product would be like, Lila wove them off on Wednesday, and we have to admit, we love the results! The new yarn is soft, durable, and takes the dye color so beautifully.

I've been socked in with tape projects lately...I finished up the last of four 7 yard warps of undyed wool galon for St. John the Divine's Textile Conservation Lab in mid-January, and then started right in on another project = 14 yards of heavy linen strapping for the Fort Ticonderoga Museum, to be used in the reproduction of some military satchels. It's very different from the galons, as the warp is stretchy and finicky and we've had to rig the tensioning of it a bit differently than we might on a shorter warp. But it's fun...having been admonished so continuously to watch my selvedges by my mother when I wove as a young girl, I somehow find this particular challenge to be very enjoyable on tapes.

And last, but certainly not least, Stephanie has been here from Old Lyme, CT for a week of setting up and weaving overshot. She is an experienced weaver, having expertise in several arcane specialties, such as Tibetan rug weaving. She has a huge 12' wide Glimakra at home that she's been weaving the most FABULOUS rag rugs on...which she brought out for a show-and-tell on Thursday, much to everyone's delight. This week was her first experience using a traditional barn frame loom, end delivery shuttle, and tenterhook, in addition to the whole process of learning to weave overshot. What a lucky dog...she can weave overshot coverlets on a 12' loom without having to make two pieces whose pattern sequences have to match up to be sewn on a center seam! It's been great having you here working with us, Stephanie, and we look forward to seeing what you'll come up with in your further adventures with overshot projects.

On to February...

Zoe's Here Working

We've been lucky this month...Zoe Sheehan is back for three weeks of intensive project work...she's here on her winter semester break from her teaching job at Baruch College in NYC to help us get a complicated plate design made for a new fabric embossing job. So we have the exquisite pleasure of enjoying her rapier-sharp wit and intelligence, while we spend hours poring over photographs, surface design books, and the computer, extracting the visible pattern from original fabric belonging to the drawing room collection of the US State Department, and then working with our design motifs to create camera-ready art to go off to our plate manufacturer.

But that's not all she's here for...in between bouts of computer work, she's been playing with an indigo discharge print of a standard bandana paisley on cotton fabric, and setting up and weaving off sixteen yards or so of cotton canvas for a dropcloth. Just that. (She's ambitious about the most off-beat kinds of things - during previous visits she's been known to weave reproductions of 49 - cent Ikea dishtowels, fine cotton twill tape to bind a cotton mop head with, samples of 3/1 twill indigo denim, and to single-handedly skirt 300 pounds of raw fleece.)

Our visits with her seem always to go by way too quickly. She's been here since January 3rd and will be leaving on the 24th...three weeks disappeared in the blink of an eye. It's a great way to get through a big chunk of winter...we have a pile of fun and get a lot of work done...because she's such a great studio person.

Thanks for everything, Z. We can't wait for you to come back.

Happy New Year....and how we spent our Christmas vacation

Happy New Year's greetings to all! After such a busy year here at the school we all decided to take some time off over Christmas to recharge our batteries and to reflect on the past year. It was a well deserved rest and speaking for myself, a wonderful time to just stay at home with my beloved cats and be quiet. The four of us spent alot of time just looking out the windows watching the snow fall down or the turkey's hunt for food. Or sitting by the woodstove drinking tea and reading. No matter what I was doing there was always at least one cat by my side...it was heavenly! And now we are back to work and ready to start another year. Many of you received our latest newsletter with highlights of the past few months and some of our plans for the future. We have lots of exciting classes scheduled with the new twist of theme weeks and the local students have some new projects of their own to dazzle us with. Eaton Hill also will be busy in the next few months as we work on another embossing job and a reproduction piece of calimanco for Colonial Williamsburg. Come spend some time with us this year if you haven't already! There is a charming apartment at my house that is perfect for student use and within walking distance to the school. Thank you all who made last year such a success! Kate

Thanks To All...

Many thanks to all...who attended and participated in our first annual holiday open house and studio sale. It was a great success, and our barn in the countryside was a lovely setting for many gifted craftspeople to come together and offer their work to an appreciative and steady stream of visitors.

Our best holiday wishes go out to everyone, near and far. We're going to take a little rest from all of this activity until after the holidays, but will be back in the new year for more adventures with weaving, dyeing, and spinning.

Until then...

Studio Sale Preview

fabulous cotton dishtowels in calimanco-inspired stripe colorways

wool silk shawls in deep jewel tones

on the drying rack after washing = wool silk twill scarf

on the drying rack after washing = wool silk birds eye scarf

wool silk and rayon chenille scarves

colorful striped cotton placemats

soft and warm 100% hand-dyed alpaca scarves

on the loom = wool silk plain weave scarf

luscious hand-dyed yarn

Here are just a few of the lovely handwoven pieces that will be for sale at our Open House and Studio Sale this coming Saturday and the next. There truly is so much more than this, not only more handweaving from our faculty and students, but also blacksmithing by Peter Welles, paintings by Susan Osmond, Emily Johansen, Jan Brough, Susan Abbott, and Lark Upson, glasswork and paintings by Viiu Niiler, lampwork and found object jewelry by Alan Castonguay, possibly some beadweaving by yours truly...and weaving demonstrations and tours of the barn studio and dye lab.

Sale Dates and Times =
Sat Dec 3rd 10A-2P
and
Sat Dec 10th 10A-2P

See here for directions to the studio.

It promises to be the beginning of many years of showcasing fine local artists and craftspeople in a rustic and seasonally festive environment. We look forward to meeting you and sharing our school with you!

Boys Can Weave Too

Mary Hays threading up her eight-harness dishtowels

setting up the countermarche tie-up

weaving at last!

Lynn threading up for spot weave linen toweling

getting accustomed to the treadling sequence

broken threads are often a by-product when one is learning spot weave

Alan getting ready to thread

weaving the log cabin pattern

such a beautiful pattern!

wearing before washing

The week before Thanksgiving we were busy with new and continuing students. Mary Hays came back specifically to learn how to set up for 8-harness countermarche, as she has a new loom that she wants to become friends with. Through doing her own threading, she became acquainted with her pattern before she even got to the long and somewhat tedious under-the-loom process of setting up for countermarche. And didn't all of that preparation and familiarity make her treadling a breeze? Pretty much. She wove off a couple of dishtowels in 8/2 cotton (warp and weft), and then went home to do the same thing on her new Toika loom, which she acquired through a series of happy, serendipitous incidents.

Lynn came over from Essex Junction to learn about doing fine linen spot weave. He's an interpreter in the Weave Shop at the Shelburne Museum who is passionate about educating his public, and wanted to stretch into a new challenge. He began his week by learning our multiple spool warping method, and then settled in to experience the joys (and frustrations) of working with fine linen. The particular pattern he was working with was a five-harness spot weave, which proved itself to be a relentless teacher. Lynn struggled with broken thread after broken thread, until finally we switched his tie-up to a four harness basketweave, so that he had a more stable shed opening for simply having an experience of weaving fine linen. Linen spot weave is one of those gold standards of weaving, not unlike the overshot coverlet, which is difficult to master unless one has hundreds and hundreds of hours throwing the shuttle and setting up looms.

Alan, who is one of Kate's nephews, came to learn how to weave, and frankly, took to it like a duck to water. He wanted to weave a long wide scarf, out of Jagger Zephyr wool/silk (warp and weft). The pattern he chose was log cabin. And, in spite of our misgivings about him taking on such complex work for a first project, he did lovely work, and went on to finish a blanket (for himself) up in Kate's studio at home, and is now working on another piece of fabric. It's been great having him around. He crews on the schooner J&E Riggin out of Rockport, ME in the summers, is an aspiring lampwork glass artist, and is going back to art school in Detroit this winter. You can take a look at his work with glass and fiber and photography here.

It's been great having a few guys around to shake up the continuous familiarity of the company of women. Thank you both for your presence and point of view!