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I know it’s only January – but it’s never too early to think about a picnic – so, here is a new kit celebrating Venne’s GOTS certified Linen and Cottolin. 8 glorious towels can be woven on this warp. All you need is a 4 shaft loom with a weaving width of 21″. Twill and basketweave are combined in the threading to offer a multitude of treadling opportunities. 4 towels are woven with a linen weft and 4 towels have a cottolin weft.
We’re so happy to have Rustic Elegance back in stock…..another fabulous towel celebrating Venne’s GOTS certified linen.
Rustic Elegance gives you 4 stunning towels exploring Colour and Weave on Huck Weft floats and a simple 2 stripe design. All you need is a 4 shaft loom 23″ weaving width. It’s time to weave some modern elegant heirlooms!
JST Online Guild Season 5 Kits
We’ve been busy kitting up yarns for the start of Season 5’s JST Online Guild presentations and have plenty of kits for 5 episodes …. well, only a few for Episode 3 but there is a huge shipment of cones on the way.
Do you want to add a dash of colour to your next warp? A splash of something that adds a zinger to your scarf, tea towel or blanket?
The Studio is overflowing with partial cones left over from winding down from big cones. So.….we are offering surprise bags of partial cones at a steal of a price! Each bag is guaranteed to have a certain amount of yarn depending on the type of fibre. The bags will have a palate of different colours in them with no guarantees on what you will get, so.…have fun being surprised!
200g of 18/2 Merino (3-6 cones of surprise colours) C$40.00
150g of 18/2 Zephyr (3-6 cones of surprise colours) C$50.00
200g of 40/2 Linen (3-6 cones of surprise colours) C$30.00
200g of Bambu 12 (3-6 cones of surprise colours) C$28.00
200g of Bambu 7 (3-6 cones of surprise colours) C$28.00
150g of brushed mohair (2-5 cones of surprise colours) C$36.00
Before I turn your weaving world towards laces, I really want to say thank you to all of you who have supported my dream of being able to reach out to more weavers than I could ever fit in my Studio. Some of you stepped into my world at the very first episode and others have joined us along the way. Every one of you has helped me continue my love of teaching and I thank you all from the bottom of my heart. I hope the episodes have brought some focus and relief during this extremely difficult year.
And now it’s that time of year again….time for a wee snippet detailing our programme for 2021. I’ve spent the last 6 months preparing for our upcoming season on Lace and we have the first 5 episodes completed. Once again, I worked with my Dream Team who wove spectacular examples of the ideas presented in the episodes. The Show and Tells are incredible this year.
Before we dive into Lace we will do one more episode on Twills….I just had to tell you about Turned Twill which is one of my favourite weave structures. Then we’ll tackle Canvas Weave, Huck, Huck with Colour and Weave effects, Bronson Spot, Atwater Bronson Lace, Blended Lace and how we can get Lace and Twills all in one piece.
I hope you enjoy our little trailer,
Stay Safe kids. Sending tons of love, Jane
Laces
a study of cloth with holes
Season 5 2021 Release Dates & Yarn List
Episode 1 – Turned Twill, January 21 – Yarn: 7 cones of 8/2 cotton: 3 cones of Taupe, 2 cones of Gold, 1 cone of Red and one cone of White/Bleached. (12 towels) Jane also used lots of bobbins from her 8/2 stash
Episode 2 – Canvas Weave, February 25 – Yarn: 2 x 250 gram cones of 16/2 Venne Organic Linen in White, 1 x 100 gram cone of 16/2 Venne Organic Linen in Light Stone Grey (long sample or runner)
Episode 3 – Huck, April 1 – Yarn: 400 grams of Bambu 7 in Periwinkle (samples and a scarf)
Episode 4 – Huck Colour & Weave, May 6 – Yarn: 5 cones of 8/2 cotton, 2 Black, 2 White/Bleached and 1 Pale Limette (6 gamps)
Episode 5 – Swedish Lace, June 10 – Yarn: 2 cones of 8/4 cotton in Nile Green and 1 cone of 8/4 cotton in Denim (long sampler or runner)
Episode 6 – Bronson Spot, July 15 Yarn: TBA
Episode 7 – Atwater Bronson Lace, August 19 Yarn: TBA
This month we’re shining the weaver’s spotlight on Rebecca Logan from Stony Plain, Alberta. Rebecca is a fabulous weaver, an animal lover extraordinaire and I love her for her gardening skills. I love how she takes the seeds I sow and grows an entirely different garden from each packet of weaving seeds 🙂 Yes, we sow weaving seeds at JST and the end result is why I love to share ideas….it is such a joy to watch gardens spring up all over the place. Important take away…..be inspired by things you see around you and then take those ideas and gently guide them to your happy place.
I hope you enjoy Rebecca’s take on Tea Towel Time with Jane….
Sending tons of love Jane
When I saw Jane’s Tea Towel Time towels, I was immediately hooked. They were all so beautiful and colourful, and yet each was uniquely fascinating. I had to try them!
Although Jane’s colour choice was gorgeous, I was feeling spicy at the time, and substituted hot colours for her cools, sticking with similar values. Her black became my chocolate, the light bright green was substituted with cayenne, and the purple and peacock became merlot and magenta.
I made a mistake while winding the warp chains, missing a few repeats of the four-end sequence, so then had to repeat the error with a later warp chain for symmetry.
A run of twelve towels, each different, was like freedom at the loom. With each towel I could try something completely different, or play upon something I liked about an earlier towel. For example, I wove three towels with the same border sequence, one in straight draw twill, one in basketweave, and one in turned twill, just to be able to enjoy the subtle differences.
Another favourite was what I called the wiggles. Jane wove them as point twill treadling, but I wanted them to be more wiggle than zigzag, so played about in my weaving software to find the correct rosepath treadling that gave me those desired wiggles. That towel was so much fun I wove it twice, with different weft colours.
That towel was so much fun I wove it twice, with different weft colours.
Everyone who sees the finished towels understands how much fun they must have been to weave, although that may be my gushing enthusiasm in talking about them. I know that such long warps (12 yards, as long as I could make) no longer intimidate me. Now I see them as an opportunity for play! And maybe that was Jane’s intent – to encourage the freedom of playing at the loom.
I was lucky enough to have five different in-person classes with Jane before she went digital, and consider those weeks some to the most important in my development as a weaver. Now that the guild is available, I’m diving even deeper into the most joyful details. Weaving is a gift that will keep me interested for a lifetime, and hand woven dish towels have become my art form.
It’s so wonderful to once again be able to share another weaver’s exploration of the lessons learned in Colour and Design. Gail Maier has taken that knowledge and layered structures from Twills on Four to create her own unique cloth. It makes my heart sing 🙂
Check out Gail on Instagram @nesthandwovens to see more of her amazing work.
Jane
My name is Gail Maier, and I live in Victoria, British Columbia. The weaving “bug” bit me about 7 years ago – when I was lying on a woven beach towel and noticed that it was completely different on one side vs. the other. My curiosity was triggered, and I had to learn how to do that – my passion for weaving was launched!
I have been a member of the Online Guild from the start, and I have also been fortunate to take several workshops on Salt Spring Island with Jane in the past. But that didn’t include twills on four, and I was super excited when this season began.
Both threading gamps were my inspiration for this project. I wanted to show pattern possibilities by using multiple threadings in one project, without it getting too busy. So, I went back to my all-time favourite lessons from the Online Guild, Colour and Design, Jane’s first lessons. I wanted to use a strong graphic to organize the different twills and chose a three-stripe design with wide-ish borders and edges. My studio shelves have been recently restocked with luscious Venne organic cotton, and I wanted to use some of my new stash. The warm warp colours I choose were havanna, brick red and brass, set off by frames of curry which resulted in some good colour play.
I knew I wanted to fill each big stripe with a different twill, and I also thought it would look cool if the curry-coloured edges and borders could be a different twill too. So, after studying the gamps I chose 3 different point twill threadings and a straight draw threading for the borders. This allowed me to make the intersections where the twills meet have clean, sharp lines.
Twill sett used was 20 epi; I find that I can beat this sett at 20 picks per inch consistently and the resulting cloth is still sturdy enough but also has some nice drape.
The point twills are my favourites, and I selected these – #4 and 5 from the small threading gamp, and M’s and W’s from the large threading gamp. So I then figured out threading repeats by section and drafted so that the big stripes were as equal as possible in size. The warp was 450 inches long, 474 ends, enough for a dozen towels that are 33 inches on the loom and 23 ¾ inches thru the reed.
Weaving the first towel as drawn in is a great place to start. Treadling each section trompe as writ, or following the threading, resulted in some interesting different patterns. I especially liked the design created by treadling 1234 – 321 – 234 – The “wall of troy” threading. I knew I wanted to play with lots of variations, so I decided that when I overlaid ideas from prior classes I should keep one treadling throughout. Otherwise it seemed the design would get too busy.
In the next few towels I used just one treadling sequence, except when I was adding framing borders in the warp colour, curry. In these cases, they were also treadled in a straight draw, which made the frames and borders more distinctive.
My favourite technique to play with is to use colour and weave sequencing options to produce some horizontal stripes, using Fibonacci sequences. This created some really interesting variations, making the cloth look totally different – almost as if I had rethreaded it. Very cool, and this effect was most interesting when the treadling sequences were an odd number, like #5 (1234-1-4321). I used either 2 or 4 picks per stripe so two shuttles were easy to manage – one on each side of the cloth. These stripes inspired me to use this idea in a plaid, and it worked well. The resulting patterns are not traditional plaids, but it’s still plaid-like. These are some of my personal favourites, especially the purple one.
I switched out colours and pushed the combinations so that the cloth wasn’t warm anymore, using purple, deep red and turquoise weft colours.
Lessons learned from this project include the following:
small twill patterns need to be “held” in a strong graphic to make them more interesting and sophisticated looking.
proved to myself (again) that purple and turquoise can work with almost any other colour – magenta too
applying Jane’s concepts in the Colour and Design lessons are the most important to me. Learning weave structures is interesting and gives options to create cloth with different hands and for different uses, but the design lessons are always my foundation.
This was a really fun project and the resulting dozen kitchen towels are lovely; a great study in how simple little twills can make big bold statements. Great learning, and I look forward to doing another 4-shaft twill project very soon!
This month I’m happy to introduce you to another member of our Online Guild – Arlene Kohut. Arlene is a wonderful weaver who enjoys the design possibilities of layering elements into the fabric that she weaves. You may recall Season 2’s episode on Stripes where I showed you 2 tea towels that Arlene designed layering striping and Bronson Lace. In this blog post she takes us on her journey exploring this season’s Twills on 4’s Simple Two Stripe sample.
If you would like to see more of Arlene’s weaving, you can follow her on Instagram @inkohootsweaving.
My name is Arlene Kohut. I live in Victoria, British Columbia. I started weaving 10+ years ago after my son’s Grade three teacher brought a rigid heddle loom to class for the students to weave a class project. I was able to weave a couple of inches since I was a class parent helper. Once I realized that cloth could be created from fibre woven on a loom, I was hooked.
In the past I had taken ‘Twills on Four’, the in-person class with Jane. So in January 2020 when Jane posted her first Online Guild class of the year, Season 4 – Episode 1 – Introduction to Twill & Simple Two Stripe Sample, I watched the videos and took notes. Once the video session was complete I reviewed my notes and doodles and had an ‘a-ha moment’. I kept seeing “borders” and I was intrigued with mixing plain weave and twill together. I just wanted to play on a warp ASAP.
I decided to skip the samples for this guild session and go right to weaving towels. My stash did not have enough Charcoal 8/2 Cotton but there were two cones each of Olive and Natural. My brother is having a big birthday later in the year and he likes green so why not make towels? I made the warp wider than suggested by Jane and wove a couple of inches of each technique that she demonstrated on her loom video (so I would have a condensed sample for myself). Then I started playing with what I learned from this episode.
My first sample where I could see borders and different patterns that I could incorporate into a towel.
Then a towel woven in Olive and using a fibonacci stripe sequence, continuing in the 2/2 twill pattern throughout. Just the colour changes in the stripe sequence:
2 Natural 3 Olive 5 Natural 3 Olive 2 Natural
Another towel using Olive weft and a natural for the border. Then changing the twill direction every one inch for the centre part of the towel and finishing off the towel with the same border on the other end.
This towel has the same border as the towel above but I used natural as the main towel colour. In the centre of this towel I used a direction pattern change every four picks creating a zig zag effect in the centre of the towel.
For this towel I played around with colour and design. I have a graphic below in my notes.
Lastly, I found some matching 2/16 cotton in a similar dye lot and switched to a slow clasp weft weave. This idea came from a fellow weaver, Kathy Ready. The two us throw ideas at each other so I gave Kathy’s idea a try. I found this design appealing and it gave me more ideas. So………
I made a second longer warp of 2/8 cotton. Going back to my stash I chose Chocolate for the dark side and a strand of Ivory and Beige alternating for the light side (because I only had a cone and a bit of each). Then I started to play again…….
These are some of the towels from this second warp. I used basket weave for the border on the top left towel, which I will try again. I like the colour that was created by using a strand of the Ivory and Beige. Unfortunately, I could not capture this colour on a photo. So you will have to take my word.
AND I played some more. I am not use to just weaving with neutral colours so I had to add some colour in this lot of clasp weft towels.
What have I learned from this session? Weaving these towels were fun while trying to decide where to put a border and what type. I love the texture that occurs when using plain weave in between four picks of 2/2 twill. Changing twill direction makes its own zig zag pattern. Basket weave for a horizontal border, who would have thought. This session has given me lots of new ideas to play with and I still have more ideas to try in the future.
Below, I have included my rough notes for the second sets of towels and a photo of three stripes that I wove on the last little bit of warp. I will keep this bit of weaving for future reference.
Hi kids, it’s that time of month again when I have the privilege of featuring a member of our Online Guild. This month, I’m delighted to introduce you to Kate Watt, who lives and weaves in northern Maine. Kate has given us a window into her story and her journey using “what if” as her guide. I was delighted to find her posts on Instagram where I could see the imaginative structures she has created combining Clasped Weft and Log Cabin.
My name is Kate Watt and I live in northern Maine. I became mildly interested in weaving about 10 years ago. An attractive online ad for a used 4 shaft counterbalance loom caught my eye and I jumped at the opportunity. I didn’t live near any guilds and I didn’t know anyone who could teach me to weave. Instead, I started learning what I could through books, videos and online forums. There were many frustrating moments, but there was something different about weaving. With weaving, both sides of my brain are in full use. I love the math side of weaving but I also get joy from playing so creatively with color! I was puttering along trying to learn the basics, but still feeling like I was “playing” and not actually weaving. I averaged about one warp per year. That all changed after joining the Online Guild. I now feel like a real weaver. I’m still playing, but it’s with a lot more skill thanks to Jane! I never realized how much fun and excitement I could get from plain weave!
One of the projects that I particularly enjoyed was one based on the Log Cabin samples featured in Season 3 Episode 3. I wound the warp with 8/4 cotton, as Jane did in her samples with colors I had in my stash. Clasped weft has always intrigued me, especially after watching the Parrot episode (Season 2, Episode 5). Jane demonstrated how to get a clean line with clasped weft and I had never thought about using it in that way. I had this beautiful warp in 8/4 cotton and matching colors of 8/2 cotton. Then I started asking myself “What if?!?!”
I started with the idea of just weaving the log cabin on the one side of the warp and leaving the other side all one color. In order to do this, I wove one pick natural 8/4 cotton. The next pick was black 8/2 cotton clasped with natural 8/2 cotton. In order to keep that clean line, I made sure to beat on an open shed and pull a little to the right or a little to the left to get that clasp to line up just under the red divider line. Jane demonstrated this really well in the Parrot episode. I continued to alternate the 8/4 pick with the clasped pick in the log cabin pattern. This was slow weaving, but it was so exciting to get a pattern like this with “plain weave”.
If it worked so well on the log cabin section, why couldn’t I do the reverse? This time I wanted to weave the solid black grid lines, but keep the log cabin side all natural. This was easier than the log cabin sequence. It was just 5 picks with the clasped weft followed by a square woven of 8/4 natural, repeat.
I used both clasped weft experiments on one of the samples. It’s not the best division of space, but I can see several ideas I would like to explore in the future.
A third section of clasped weft that I experimented with is my particular favorite. I wanted to incorporate the log cabin with a similar spacing to the black grid lines. I started with a pick of 8/4 black. Then I clasped 8/2 natural on the left with 8/2 black on the right, hiding the clasp under the red divider line. I repeated these two picks to create a log cabin block on one side and a solid black line on the other side. Then I did a section of natural in 8/4, and then went back to alternating the clasped weft pick with 8/4 in black.
After looking at the finished sample, I think this clasped weft section would look great on the end of a scarf. I think I would widen the black stripes in the warp to match the log cabin squares. There are really so many possibilities.
The selvedges are a little uneven in the clasped weft section, but with practice I think they could look better. Or if you were using the end fabric for something sewn, it wouldn’t matter what the selvedge looked like. The clasped weft technique really slows the weaving down, but it opens up so many creative options. And because this was all “plain weave” it could easily be accomplished on a rigid heddle loom as easily as a 4 shaft loom!
With the rest of the warp I played with sequences from the Colour and Weave gamp: DDD/L, 4D/4L, DLDDL. And for the last little bit of warp I wove 2 samples with 8/2 boucle.
Most of my weaving with the guild projects are just samples for my education in weaving. All of them could be functional, but they are really just experiments. If I were to weave them again I would be more careful about planning my division of space. I find them a little busy for my style, but there is so much potential for future projects contained in these sample. I’m trying to add to my “body of work” as Jane has referred to it. This keeps me from looking at a project and being disappointed, but rather I am still trying to find my unique “style”. I’m getting closer with each warp!
You can see more of my Guild projects on Instagram @worrywattweaving.
Hi kids – it’s time again to introduce you to another weaver who has delighted me by taking lessons learned from our Online Guild and turned her cloth into her own unique design. This month, please meet Linda Fleming from Texas. Linda’s shawl incorporates Log Cabin, Clasped Weft and Colour and Weave – all from Season 2, Colour & Design. It is indeed a wonderful amalgamation of techniques representing one Online Guild season. Thank you for sharing your process with us Linda – the results are stunning.
I have always been fascinated with weaving; however it was not until about 15 years ago that I met someone who knew how to weave. I learned to weave from her and once I started, the weaving bug hit me hard! I love to see the pattern develop on the loom when first starting to weave a project. It always feels like magic.
I was inspired to make this shawl after watching Season 3, Episode 3 on log cabin. I had woven a shadow weave baby blanket in the past, but had never woven log cabin. I was intrigued by how simple it was, but what an impact it made. I chose some yarns from my stash that were just looking for a project. They are 8/2 American Maid Naturally Colored cotton from Lunatic Fringe. I love how the colors darken over time with each washing. I used the dark brown and the natural with a sett of 18 EPI.
I made a sketch of what I wanted the two ends of the shawl to look like and then I was going to just wing it for the rest. I divided the warp into sections with log cabin on the ends and the stripes in the middle. I also added a purple zinger on each side of the stripes.
I started weaving using my schematic and then I thought, hmm, what if I do some clasped weft?
I wove further and decided I really like an asymmetrical look on scarves so I started putting in small stripes using the weaving sequence dark, dark, light, dark. They were so much fun that I just finished off the shawl with the stripes.
This warp was so much fun that I was sorry to see it end! This is what I have enjoyed the most about the Jane Stafford Guild. I have realized that I do not have to follow a pattern to the letter. I can play with the warp, and it makes the final product so much more interesting.
This month we shine the weaver spotlight on Jae Koscierzynski from Michigan. Like so many students that came here over the years, Jae was an inspiration to me. Throughout my career as a teacher I have been so blessed to have such wonderful students.
Doing towel or sample exchanges was always a big part of the retreat scene here at JST. When students did exchanges based on the overlaying of ideas in the workshops the results were fabulous, unique and so inspiring. The whole was always greater than the sum of the parts.
Thank you to Joan Sheridan of Heritage Spinning and Weaving for being such a wonderful friend and for sending me so many talented students. You must be so proud of Jae, I sure know I am.
I was introduced to weaving several years ago by Joan Sheridan. She owns Heritage Spinning & Weaving where I teach knitting. As an engineer by trade, she thought I would enjoy weaving. I’ll admit I didn’t take to it at first. I loved everything about weaving a project except the actual, well, weaving. Figuring out the amount yarn needed, love it! Warping, beaming, threading, sleying, and hem stitching – love all that too. It wasn’t until I took Jane’s Colour & Design class that I learned to love throwing the shuttle. Until then, I couldn’t follow someone else’s pattern without boredom setting in about 2 inches into the project, but I didn’t know where to start or have the confidence to try my own ideas. After Colour & Design, I am always weaving. I now have more ideas to try on my loom than I will ever be able to weave in my lifetime!
I wove this scarf after a sample exchange with several other class members from one of the last in-person Pushing the Boundary with Plain Weave I sessions. We had been together the year before in Colour & Design and did a towel exchange. We enjoyed taking what we had learned from C&D to make towels and wanted to do it again. However, we admitted that perhaps Cramming and Denting, Rep weave, and the like weren’t well suited for towels. Instead, we all committed to providing 3 samples at least 24″ long. The “rules” were to take something from Colour & Design and combine it with something from PBPW.
I gave away my samples and apparently did not take any photos before I did! The scarf is warped with 16/2 cotton – black. It is sett and woven at 20 epi/ppi except at the edges which are crammed at 40 epi. This sett is the same as the warp that is used for Season 3 – Episode 8.
I used 30/2 Bombyx silk for the supplemental threads and for the warp, Black Magic, Violet Ice, Ariel’s Voice, Lime Light, Gold Rush, Tiger Lily, and Persophone’s Pip.
The ratio of each color for the supplemental threads is based on the Parrot Sample from Season 2 – Episode 5. I started with colors I had in my stash to create a color gradient, similar in concept to the Parrot Sample as well.
I originally thought of using black as the dividers and natural as the back ground. I’m glad I went the other way as the bright colors pop more against the black background. If I were to do it again, I would perhaps pick a different color for Gold Rush or Lime Light. In the skein, they look distinct but in the actual warp, the colors are very close and I would aim for more contrast.
I chose to keep the middle section simple since that portion is scrunched up around the neck and isn’t easily seen.
From my sampling, I also realized that the floats had to be kept short to avoid snagging while wearing.
At each end I wove the colors to be square – one with a pattern of “bricks” and the other solid colors with small dashes from the supplemental warp. Choosing how to weave the ends was the hardest part. I had several more ideas that I wanted to try using this graphic and warp structure. As always, the warp ran out before my creativity did!
With every episode that Jane presents, I learn something new. But the best lesson she has given me is to be fearless and just see what happens. It may not turn out as I expect, but I still end up with a piece of cloth that has something to teach me.
For the past few months we have been busy working on the program for 2020. Twills on 4……Oh My, Oh My, Oh My……it is so exciting. In January of 2020 we start diving into the world of twill structure and will overlay it with everything we learned in Colour & Design and Pushing the Boundaries of Plain Weave. This strong foundation will allow us to take 4 shaft Twills to a new level.
We start the year off learning to draft on graph paper and then we weave a sample exploring our 3 standard twill tie-ups and bring all the repetitive sequences we learned in Colour and Design to Twills (yes, Asymmetry, Plaid, Parrot and Colour and Weave Sequences start playing on Twills).
Episode 2 is very special because we have Bob Keates co-creator of Fiberworks PCW presenting his programme for Mac and PC.
In addition to building on our Colour & Design gamps, this year includes 4 amazing twill gamps: one using small threadings, one using big threadings, one exploring point twill and an awesome colour and weave gamp on twill that will blow your mind. Each of these gamps explores tie-up possibilities, treadling techniques and colour and weave ideas in the weft.
We also delve into the power and beauty of Basket Weave. One entire episode explores Basket Weave as a vertical design element with other twill threadings. This allows us to frame our twills or just have 2 different structures vertically in our cloth…..so many ideas. Twill and Basket Weave are a fabulous combo, they are like an awesome bottle of wine and a great chunk of cheese. Yep, everything still revolves around food 🙂
Towards the end of the year we will apply the rules of Shadow Weave to all the twill threadings we’ve learned and then we’ll do the same with Weft Faced Twills.
Weaving is all about systems and this year we’ll be looking at twill as a system. It is very liberating to look at it this way….to learn that we can use all this theory to create new, stunning, modern renditions of old classics. The twill family is a big happy family and they all like to party together.
If you haven’t guessed it by now….I LOVE WEAVING…..and I LOVE SHARING IT ALL WITH YOU!
Come for the ride….we’re going to have a blast.
Twills on 4!
To learn more about the JST Online Guild click here
I do believe Spring is here to stay. In honour of her return and because we’ve had so many requests for this colourway… we’ve done another small run Playing with Pastels and Cheryl, our wonderful hand dyer, has created a very small run of West Coast Wonder inspired by the water that surrounds and nourishes us.
New 16/2 Linen from Venne
Last month I dropped in on René and Mischa van der Venne in the
Netherlands and spent a wonderful couple of days hanging out with two
marvellous people AND exploring a warehouse of organic yarn. We are
committed to expanding our line of organic yarn. This month we have
added 16/2 GOTS certified organic linen in 21 colours. GOTS stands for the Global Organic Textile Standard.
The aim of the standard is to define world-wide recognized requirements
that ensure organic status of textiles, from harvesting of the raw
materials, through environmentally and socially responsible
manufacturing up to labelling in order to provide a credible assurance
to the end consumer.
The process of making our sample cards
Why do we charge $5 for our sample cards? We thought we’d better explain why and the reasoning behind it. All sample yarn is cut by hand. All the sample cards are punched by hand. The length of the yarn is such that you can compare, side-by-side, any thread with any other thread. We don’t use sticky tape to adhere our yarn to the sample card – tape stiffens and becomes brittle over time – we thread the yarn into the sample card. Two Salt Spring gals are responsible for constructing our sample cards; let’s here it for Christine and Susan! 🙂
The JST Helpline is dead, long live the JST Knowledge Base!
If you’ve not used the JST Helpline before, it’s a compendium of as much
knowledge about weaving as we could squeeze onto the interwebs. But it
hasn’t been used as often as we thought it could be. So we’ve
relaunched/revamped the JST Helpline. It is now called – cue drumroll –
the JST Knowledge Base.
Or try searching the knowledge base. You should see suggestions appear and become refined as you type.
If you find the article useful, give it a thumbs up. If you felt like
the article didn’t hit the spot, click thumbs down. Either way, leave
some feedback and we’ll be able to refine the article for other weavers.
Linen spring cleaning
Spring is a great time to have a linen sale. The following are all 10% off, whilst stocks last…
And, we have some large cones of 5/2 warp twist cotton
that need to find a new home. These are 10% off too 🙂 There is a lot
of yardage on these puppies, it is a fabulous yarn but unfortunately we
have to buy it on these huge cones and that seems to put weavers off… so
if you’re interested in any type of production work that requires a
lovely natural cotton at 2100 yds. per lb… this yarn is for you.
Warp Faced Weaving is up next on the Online Guild
You don’t want to miss the next episode which airs May 23rd. Warp Faced Kits are available on our website!
