caracolina

As expected, I didn’t finish my rug, but I carried off this awesome inkle loom, a gift from Sharie Monsam, our instructor. I had mentioned I bought a book about inkle weaving because I want to make woven bags and thought inkle weaving would be good for the bag straps and Sharie decided to let […]

Read the rest of Weaving class – My New Loom!!!

We drove up to Nutrioso on Friday night so I could attend a 2-day tapestry weaving workshop with Janie Hoffman. Terri and Dave of Waugh Mountain Alpacas hosted the workshop at their ranch. It was a lot of fun and we met Sandy again, too. I came away with a brand new tapestry loom made out of […]

Read the rest of Tapestry Workshop

Needless to say, John and I didn’t make much progress since last week because of our weekend trip and natural dye workshop, but the fun part of Sharie’s weaving class is the community weaving experience and Sharie’s show and tell at the end of class. Every week she brings some sample rugs to explain techniques, […]

Read the rest of Weaving Class – Show and Tell

Our last day was spent finishing up the sample cards and winding the last mini-skeins before heading home in the early afternoon. We left with over thirty different shades of beautiful, plant-dyed yarns. Here is a link to my Flickr set for the whole workshop.

Read the rest of Natural Dye Workshop – Day 3

After beginning our second day here at the Blue River Retreat with another great breakfast and morning walk it was back to the dye pots for me. Today we focused on post-mordanting with copper and tin as well as trying out a variety of exhaust baths and combinations of them, with exciting results. All of […]

Read the rest of Natural Dye Workshop Day 2

Mr. Wise and I drove up to the Blue River Retreat (near Alpine, AZ) yesterday afternoon. We are staying in one of three Windstream travel trailers so that I can attend a three-day natural dye workshop held by Jane (a.k.a. Janie) Hoffman, an expert tapestry weaver and dye master, with five other women. Two of them I […]

Read the rest of Natural Dye Workshop Day 1

Sorry, couldn’t resist the pun! Since I decided to try a two-faced rug this time I needed to use three heddles along with my shed stick as opposed to only one. Two-faced rugs have a different design or pattern on each side and are thicker than usual rugs (they are traditionally used for saddle blankets). The […]

Read the rest of More heddles than you can shake a stick at

Sonal and her mom invited us to dinner tonight. We couldn’t actually remember the last time we’d been over for dinner, but it must have been 1-2 months. This time we feasted on pav bhaji, one of our favorites, especially the way Sonal and her mom make it. Lucky me also was also able to […]

Read the rest of Dinner with the Patels

We’ve been wanting to check out the Salt River area near Power Road/Bush Highway in Mesa ever since our Navajo weaving instructor Sharie mentioned it would be a good spot to harvest salt cedar sticks. We use these sticks as shuttles and shed sticks in our weaving because they are relatively thin and, most importantly, […]

Read the rest of Weekend Diversions

I spun and plied a batt I made myself at Yarn School in Spring. The thing with this batt was that I already spun half of it but I hated how it turned out so thick. I wondered – can it be respun? And it worked! I pulled it apart in pieces of about 1 […]

Read the rest of Productive Weekend