Catching up

As in where did this summer go? Since our weavers gathering met at my house in June we have had a couple of gatherings in the park in town and a missed meeting for September cause apparently everyone was as crazy busy as I was.

The Driftless Art Fair was here and gone in the blink of an eye. I am so grateful to have shared the booth with fellow jeweler and good friend Nan Marshall of Nan Marshall Designs. Check out her work, it is both unique and well crafted. Theoretically sharing a booth was supposed to take some of the pressure off of having to build a large inventory of handwovens over the summer as well as craft all of the jewelry designs that I have in my head to create. It still felt like pressure and I didn’t get half of what I wanted done; but come the day of the fair it was just fun to be there. Lots of people were out on what was supposed to be a rainy Saturday. I think everyone was just happy to be at the fair after a two year hiatus. I know that I was.

Now for some serious relaxing. I’m catching up on my blog this evening while taking some time off in Door County, WI for a few days. My girls will be joining us tomorrow so I see a lot of evening games of Banannagrams in my future and lots of laughter around the table. I have a few galleries picked out to drag them to, especially since two of them have taken some pottery classes. And lots more rock gathering along our lovely beach here. It sure is nice to be able to take this time to enjoy the change in the seasons and to just slow down and let myself catch up with what is important to me.

weaving with rainbows

Clockwise from top left: Elin’s rug/ Denise’s first deflected double weave/ Barb’s cowl/ Judith’s color work sampler/ Ann’s wool placemats/ my scarves with barb’s knitting/ Janet’s table runner/tiny us/ Judith’s yardage…ps: unreliable memory so hopefully most of this is correct.

Barb B has been knitting like crazy. And it is always great to see our friend Olga

Don’t tell my DH that I took this while driving:)

Our booth and my lovely booth mate Nan

This deflected double weave may be my new favorite weaving ever

So happy about my blue morning glories

painter Deb Conlon, custom tornados, Lori Hungerholt of Root River Baskets

The emerging artist tent was new this year. Lauren McElroy of Mother of Purl is such an inspiring textile artist and I can’t wait to see what new creations she comes up with. Also oil painter Georgia Kingsly who was recently in an oil and cold wax class with Nan and I. The tent was full of inspiring work

I named these Juanita’s wraps after a textile artist I have admired for years; Juanita Girardin. Her Supplementary weave scarves were so beautiful that they inspired one of my first handwovens many years ago. When I saw that she was selling off some of her yarn stash I “fan girled” and bought some of my favorite colors, many of which I wove into these rose path wraps and top. For her current work in textiles see here. This is a seriously talented lady. I must say these garments look much better on people than they do on Gertrude my mannequin. I tried to get my DH to try one on so I could see what it looked like on someone with arms but he said absolutely no, even when I said that I wouldn’t take his picture. Hm, not sure what his problem was???