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May 31, 2022 newsletter

In Case You Missed it!

We thought it was time to think about colourful weaving as we start to see colour finally popping up in our gardens after a cool, wet, spring. Our “wet” coast gardens are still waiting for temperatures to get above 10°C overnight! Tea Towel Time with Jane is a perfect example of “exploding” colour that you can have tons of fun with – as I did weaving them 😉 Scroll to the bottom of this newsletter and you’ll see that we have made Tea Towel Time with Jane, the Facebook videos, available on YouTube. I had so much fun weaving those towels, I wanted to share them with everyone.

We also thought you might enjoy some of our more recent tea towel kits that give you different colours, structures and yarn to play with.


Just Monk’ing Around

C$67.50

Choose one of three different colour schemes, Berry Bowl, Kiwi, or Surf’s Up for your kit and weave 8 towels, using 8/2 cotton, in Monk’s Belt and Plain Weave.


Spring at the Cabin

C$66.50

Spring at the Cabin is woven in a classic Colour & Weave effect on Plain Weave. The kit includes everything you need to weave these lovely towels in 8/2 cotton.


Tea Towel Time with Jane

Original Colourway Kit C$89.00

This is the original colourway that Jane wove live on Facebook (and now available on YouTube!) With this kit, you’ll weave 12 towels in Plain Weave, 2/2 Twill, Basket Weave, Turned Twill, Broken Twill, AND 1/3-3/1 Twill! Now that’s a whole bunch of fun at the loom!


Tea Towel Time with Jane

English Garden Colourway Kit C$89.00

With all the same weave structures as the original Tea Towel Time with Jane above, you can weave these in a different colourway – using the smashing colours of Nile, Navy, Magenta and let’s not forget, Hot Pink!


Tea Towel Time With Jane videos now on YouTube!

Those of you who follow us on Facebook, know that Tea Towel Time with Jane (TTTWJ) was originally done live on Facebook. Since some of you aren’t Facebook users, we thought that it would be a great idea to also make it available on our JST YouTube channel. We’ve added the 16 videos into a playlist, starting by Jane winding the warp and ending with the Show & Tell. If you have ever wanted to be standing beside Jane, watch her wind her warp and put it on her loom – this is your virtual chance to do it. You get to listen to her chat with you through every step of the process!


We offer FREE shipping on all Louet looms within Continental North America. We also offer the option to pay a $1000.00 CAD deposit on your loom with the balance due when the loom ships out to you. This gives you the flexibility to make smaller payments towards your balance, at your convenience.

Here to help

Have a weaving question? Find us on the Jane Stafford School of Weaving Forum and on Weave with Jane Stafford at Ravelry.

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May 24, 2022 newsletter

Unforgettable Sherella!

One of the great pleasures that has come with decades of teaching, has been the opportunity to spend time with remarkable women. I have been blessed with long and lasting friendships and some of them just have to be shared. I’d love to introduce you to Sherella Conley, one of those gals that lights up a room the minute she enters and leaves everyone wanting more.

I first met Sherella in 2008 when she started coming to Salt Spring for our in-house retreats. Her wit, humour and wisdom made every workshop that she attended, richer, like the yummy dark chocolate she is fond of 🙂

I recently reached out to her to see if I could do a wee interview and now I get to share her with all our readers.

Sherella’s Beautiful Tapestries & Shaft Loom Treasures

Units, Blocks & Profile workshop at the studio, 2012

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May 17, 2022 newsletter

Late Spring Weaving

Whole Lotta Huggin’ Blanket Kit

C$185.00

Out here on the “wet” west coast of Canada – we’ve had a spring that hasn’t fully arrived yet! It’s so damp and chilly today that I would love to grab one of these cozy blankets and curl up with a book 😉 Sharon Broadley designed these beautiful blankets for 3 dear friends that needed a good hug. Each kit makes 3 blankets and is a very quick weave – sett at 8 epi and 44″ in the reed. Quebecoise 2 ply is similar to Harrisville Shetland and fulls beautifully!


SweDISH Tea Towel Kit

C$80.00

On this unusually damp and cool day on our coast, when all I really want to do is to get out into the garden and start planting … I need to get my fix of sun and warmth in a different way. These tea towels always remind me of blue skies and warm sun shining down. Stunning towels and so much fun to weave, a blend of Swedish and Huck Lace!


From Our Inbox

Sheila Holland sent a note with pictures of her baby blanket. She wove it in Log Cabin using 8/4 cotton in White and 3/2 mercerized cotton in King Blue and Pistachio. We are so pleased that, from watching the School of Weaving episode on Log Cabin, Sheila was inspired to create and design an absolutely beautiful baby blanket.
Jane, before the pandemic started I was taking a class once a week in Toronto to learn how to weave. When the classes stopped and I relocated to the lake house for the duration of the pandemic, I found myself referring to your tutorials time and again. I’ve kept weaving and learning, making several wool throws and two of your lovely scarf kits.  

This March I decided to weave a baby blanket for my first grandnephew but was struggling with an idea for a pattern until I came across your log cabin tutorial. I ran with it and am very happy with the result! I’ve included two photos.  

I purchased a couple of tea towel kits from you a while ago and I’m currently going through your Swedish Lace tutorials before I start the first set. I hope they turn out as well as my baby blanket.  

While the classes in Toronto have resumed, I’m still at the lake house, so your online guild is the only teaching to which I have access. Thanks for all of it!

School of Weaving subscribed member?
You can watch Jane’s lesson on Log Cabin.
Click here!


We offer FREE shipping on all Louet looms within Continental North America. We also offer the option to pay a $1000.00 CAD deposit on your loom with the balance due when the loom ships out to you. This gives you the flexibility to make smaller payments towards your balance, at your convenience.


Here to help

Have a weaving question? Find us on the Jane Stafford School of Weaving Forum and

on Weave with Jane Stafford at Ravelry.

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May 10, 2022 newsletter

Spring at the Cabin

Whether you are dreaming of a cabin in the forest or one by a lake, these tea towels will feed your imagination. Picture yourself nestled between the trees, and from your window…you see a vast blue sky or lake – or both – it’s your dream 😉 Under the trees and in the grasses, there is a dusting of light purple as the spring flowers enjoy the sun’s warmth, as you are. I can see it all now…..

Log Cabin is such a beautiful, classic Colour & Weave effect on “just” Plain Weave and it’s so easy to weave on a “warp canvas” that is just begging you to explore and create your unique designs.

These Spring at the Cabin towels have been designed by JST Dream Team member, Gail Maier and are simple to weave on a warp that gives you 8 towels to “play” with! Keep on dreaming!!


A few more towel kits

The following towel kits also give you a chance to explore creating your own designs as you go. You can design your own towels using any of the three warps as your blank canvas. Experiment and create your own Colour and Weave, Asymmetry or Huck Lace tea towels while working with “Mr.” Fibonacci to create some full-sized samples.

Sassy Brassy Log Cabin Tea Towel Kit

C$144.00

Organic Cotton Stripes Tea Towel Kit

C$117.00 – C$133.00

Huck Lace Cotton Tea Towel Kit – Pretty Pansy

C$80.00


Ask Jane

A number of you have a new, or new to you, Louet loom living at your house. We thought this might be a good time to share a Q&A from the JST Knowledge Base that Jane wrote about the Louet raddle and how to use it in the world of inches 😉

…..

The Louet raddle has a space every .5 cm.  So do I convert the width of my project to cm, figure out how many threads per 1/2 centimetre and group the raddle cross that way, and for fractions just skip spaces on the raddle every once and a while?

Your Louet raddle has 5 slots in each inch.  Over 5 inches you gain an extra slot (because the raddle is actually metric) so all I do is leave one empty slot every 5 inches.  I always work in ends per inch.  If you have 20 epi you need to put 4 in every slot.  I often use the #5 reed column on a reed substitution chart to figure out have many ends to put in a slot.  The important thing to remember with all raddles is this: If you have warped with more than 1 end in your hand don’t split those ends up and put one end on one side of a raddle peg and the other on the other side.  You are just asking for trouble if you do that.  In the raddle, they should be treated like best friends that need to stay together.

The other thing to always remember about your reed is that it has nothing to do with the pattern, its only function is to help you spread your warp out to the desired width. If you are out by 1/2” it won’t matter, if you aren’t perfectly centred it won’t be the end of the earth. I think it’s good to be a little ‘off’ :^) I like life to be simple so I use two main methods of warping. For 99.9% of all of my weaving, I warp back to front with only one cross because my loom is small and there isn’t a huge reach to my lease sticks. Warping with two crosses was often used because old-style looms were so darn long…..you couldn’t reach your lease sticks at the back without climbing inside your harnesses. Our looms are short in comparison so using 2 crosses is just more work than is necessary (in my opinion and remember, it is only my opinion and it doesn’t have to be yours).

If I want to reduce stickiness going through the lease sticks then all I do is warp with more ends in my hand.  I use 2 or 3 ends and that reduces the intersections on your lease sticks by either half or thirds.  Usually, that is all you need to do and it also makes warping twice or three times as fast. Bonus, bonus! Less work, simpler. If I am dealing with a truly sticky warp, like brushed mohair…I warp a very particular way which is a combination of front to back and tying on.  You can see detailed instructions for that on my Knowledge Base under “Weaving with Mohair”.

If you are a subscriber to School of Weaving, you can watch Jane dress a loom with a Mohair warp and weave it in Season 1 Episode 9 Making a Mohair Blankie Yes!


We offer FREE shipping on all Louet looms within Continental North America. We also offer the option to pay a $1000.00 CAD deposit on your loom with the balance due when the loom ships out to you. This gives you the flexibility to make smaller payments towards your balance, at your convenience.


Here to help

Have a weaving question? Find us on the Jane Stafford School of Weaving Forum and on Weave with Jane Stafford at Ravelry.

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May 3rd, 2022 newsletter

Thinking of Moms!

Mom or Mum’s the word at this time of year – no matter where you live and how you spell it 😉 Every one of us has a Mom and some of us are Moms, “Grand”moms or to a very special person in your life as an “adopted” Mom. We wish you an amazing day of being celebrated or celebrating the woman who is that person in your life.

I know I wouldn’t be where I am today without my Mom. She was my rock.  Happy Mother’s Day this coming Sunday ❤️💐

JST Store E-Gifts

If you are looking for a last minute gift that will give your “weaving” Mom some fun choosing an item that she has been wanting to add to her weaver’s toolbox – these E-Gifts are perfect.


School of Weaving Lessons

Coming up this Thursday is the release of the Overshot episode for this Season’s Units, Blocks & Profile. If you have not subscribed yet and would like to sign up or gift a subscription, click here to learn more!

Our Baby Blankie Collection

For those of you who are “expecting” a new arrival in your world – nothing is better than having a blankie waiting to wrap them up in. The Monte Cristo Blankie has wrapped hundreds of babies and then turned into a most loved “security” blanket as the toddler grew. These blankies have been dragged on lots of adventures and survived as an important part of growing up for many wee ones.

The Canvas Weave Baby Blanket is a newer version with the same comfort and softness of the original. Monte Cristo yarn gives a softness that is hard to beat – but not when you are actually weaving with it 🙂

Monte Cristo Baby Blanket Kit

Canvas Weave Baby Blanket Kit


From Our Inbox

Grand Aunts are so special!

Sharon Allen’s first grand-nephew Kirk just loves his new baby blanket 🙂


We offer FREE shipping on all Louet looms within Continental North America. We also offer the option to pay a $1000.00 CAD deposit on your loom with the balance due when the loom ships out to you. This gives you the flexibility to make smaller payments towards your balance, at your convenience.