A Flurry of Weekend Fiber Activity

Pluckyfluff

Here are a few collage photos of the adventures had this past weekend. Above, and in the center of the spinning group is the wonderful Lexi Boeger leading a class at the Textile Center in Minneapolis, MN. At top right is a picture of her book, Intertwined. It is a great resource of creative endeavors in the spinning of art yarns. Great fun to sit in on Sunday and watch the creator of some of my favorite novelty spinning techniques. Very happy to have picked up a few new tricks too! I'm sure this artist has many future suprises up her sleeve. (The big, blue "Pluckyfluff" lettering under the photo is a link to her site.)

Great fun as well to meet some of the handspinning folks from down south. Well, Minneapolis is a good distance south of my turf anyway. I met a fellow silkworm gal (for lack of a better title) and learned a bit about how to process my spent cocoons. Much to play at in the days ahead...degumming the cocoons, stretching out and dying the wonderful silk, harvesting eggs and refrigerating them for next year...

The above is a closer view of the yarns that this gathering of wild spinners created before I even got there. All of this lovely, lovely, fibery yardage... (Imagine the earflap hats one might knit up if one were to possess such a stash!) These people are exacerbating my terrible fiber addiction! Sunday was a great day to be a spinster-woman (again, for lack of a better title).

And, SATURDAY was all about needle felting (was I in Heaven this weekend or what?).  I tell you, offer a class about jabbing and stabbing wool with extremely sharp and brittle needles and you WILL meet creatively adventurous folk. Below, a collage of woolen works-in-progress. These photos definitely do not do justice to the unique details that each doll-maker put into her project:

So, you see I do actually put shoes on and leave my woolen fortress of solitude from time to time. Of course I'm packing along several pounds of wool and fiber equipment but, it still counts as getting out-and-about.

And, from both adventures I returned with less fiber stash! That's right. Nary a new purchase was made and I actually returned home with less of the precious, precious woolen supply. This is true progress on the addiction front and I boasted to Claxton about how these gatherings with other fiber enthusiasts were actually self-help wool-anon meetings of sorts.

He mumbled, "If you believe that you're just kidding yourself."

Great big thanks to Shannon Cousino, Education Director of the Duluth Art Institute for again extending to me the opportunity to teach the felting class. What a resource we have here in the DAI - for sharing, learning and creative expression. And parents, the DAI offers opportunities for children to jubilantly try their hands at everything from painting to pottery.

Thanks as well to Linda Hansen, Education Director of The Weavers Guild of Minnesota for bringing Camp Pluckyfluff and Lexi Boeger to Minneapolis last weekend and for mailing my forgotten coat and mittens back to me. Oops.