Textile Travels

 

Over the course of my life, I've actually travelled a few miles.  As a child we routinely did Sunday Drives wherever we could get to - and back from - home in a day.  Mom would pack a picnic and we would set off.

As a child I needed medical care in Vancouver, and for a number of years we set off on the overnight Greyhound bus (overnight to save a night in a hotel) and we walked and bussed around Vancouver in between trips into the medical office.

At 16 mom put me on the train and I went from home to Montreal and back.  

At 19 I took the train to Montreal again, but this time it was just the jumping off place in order to board a freighter as a passenger to disembark in Oslo, train to Örebrö, Sweden.  While there, I also booked a bus tour of Europe.  That meant another train trip - Örebrö to Stockholm to Malmö to catch the ferry to Travemunde, Germany.  That tour did a circle - overnight in Brussels, then Paris, then Nice where we stayed for a week taking day trips to Cannes and Grasse (to visit the perfumery) and Monaco.  Yes, I 'lost' a few coins in the one armed bandits in the lobby, just to say I'd gambled in Monaco!

The trip back to Travemunde and the ferry took us through Milan, then through the Alps (and I mean through, the bus boarded a train that went through a very long tunnel to get us to the other side of a mountain), then Hamburg before boarding the ferry and taking the train back to Örebrö.

On my travels I met very kind and helpful people, some of whom I stayed in touch with for a number of years before losing track of them.

As a weaving teacher I mostly travelled in North America, but also met kind and helpful people.  Many of them also had interesting travel stories, one of them Winnie Nelon, who will be presenting a Sunday Seminar on May 16.

She has travelled extensively and collected textiles on the way.  In the photo above there is a textile with an interesting story and it is one of the textiles she will talk about.  (If I'm remembering correctly!)

We can learn much about different cultures by learning more about the textiles they make and use, and that is part of the reason I reached out to the people I did - they could shine a light on other cultures and their textiles.

I have begun booking people for 2022.  Zoom isn't the best medium but it's actually quite easy for even 'old dogs' like me to learn 'new tricks'.  And I've been having a great time talking to the speakers as we make our arrangements, then listening to their adventures.

Given Covid and how the pandemic is playing out, I suspect it is going to be another year before travel outside of the North American bubble is really recommended, so I'm looking at booking another 10 seminars for the coming year.  There are names on my list of more people to contact but I'm holding off a bit.  I have three so far with more I need to get in touch with.

I invite you to check out the guild website (link above) and consider registering for one of the seminars.  The prices are in Canadian dollars, so Americans get the exchange rate discount.  :)

In June Stefan Möberg will talk about a project near and dear to his heart and Janet Dawson will share her travels in Turkey.  All are now available for registration.  So far everyone has allowed the live presentation to be taped and made available for 30 days afterwards if you can't make the live date.  Anyone registered will receive the link to the Zoom meeting the Friday before the presentation, then the private link to the recorded meeting.

I've been enjoying my armchair travels a lot.  I hope you are too!