Road Trip Report

The following photos were taken with my Blackberry and I still haven't figured out how to crop them so here goes. :)

My trip began with a flight to Birmingham, Alabama. I'd never been to the state before, so it was really nice to have a couple of days to sight see a little. We started with a morning seminar "You Have to be Warped" where I showed how I wind a warp, beam it, thread, sley and tie on. After that several people stayed on to finish getting their looms ready for the Colour Gamp workshop on Friday. They then dove right back into loom set up Friday night to get the Mug Rugs and More warps ready for Saturday. A herculean effort! :D





The workshops took place in the annex of a local art gallery so we had lots of interesting things to inspire us, both on the wall and 3D.

From there I flew to Tampa, Fl. Another state I'd not been to before. This time I was officially on holiday! The weather was lovely, as you can see from this photo taken at Tarpon Springs. The couple in front of the bronze statue commemorating the sponge divers are my friends from England, Jacqui and Eric. The other fellow is an incidental tourist! :D



On Friday I flew to Columbus, Oh and returned to winter, alas. :} It may have been cold weather wise, but as in Birmingham, hearts were warm.




Lots of weaving happened in Pat Bullen's weaving studio at the arts centre so that we could do the wet finishing Sunday afternoon. We were very fortunate in that we could use the wet room to do the finishing so we had lots of tables, huge numbers of sinks, a washing machine and a dryer to aide in the process. People brought additional equipment from home - a marble slab and rolling pin, a small flat bed press and so on.

It was so good to see people look at old yarns through new eyes and begin to understand the transformation.

I'd also managed to get the new bamboo yarns woven before I left home and wet finished one of the scarves to show how a limp fibre given lots of twist will develop more backbone. I had also included warp utilizing both yarns so that they could really compare the two before and after.

My copy of Judith Mackenzie McCuin's book The Intentional Spinner was waiting for me in Florida, and I'll be posting a book review shortly.