CENTERING WITH FIBER: January 2013

Thursday, January 31, 2013

Saori Santa Cruz Teaching spinning on several wheels this week

The flu hit me last week but I am back catching up on my weaving and and back to my scheduled spinning classes!
This week was learn to spin on different models spinning wheels class. a new student said " I havent spun for over 20-25 years!" Lets look and see how this spinning student did and what she accomplished .

The first hour we practiced drop spinning, and plying .With that accomplished brilliantly.......

......we moved on to the spinning wheel number one......

FANTASTIC EVEN SINGLES !

Then we moved on to the louet wheel and some finner fleece fibers......

What a joy to see that usually our hands do not forget even after many years of absence . spinning is therapeutic , rhythmic , calming, peaceful.........

It is time for my annual self imposed challenge , my weave a yard a day for 30 day at this time of year. I take this all very seriously, and if I am busy one day unable to weave, i must weave ahead the previous day so I won't get behind. It becomes a integral part of my life. I may weave most days but something about focusing on this yard a day and always being prepared to weave is very centering.
i will need to wind several more warps to get my 30 yards besides dressing and threading the loom to keep up.

Winding my dragon"s scale cotton warp.

warp wound

warp chained

warp sleyed and threaded

warp beamed on

Tied on, Header woven , now I am ready to start to weave tomorrow my yard a day for 30 days .

peaceful weaving and spinning in the redwoods
jill nickolene

www.saorisantacruz.com
my etsy shop

Saturday, January 26, 2013

My textured hand woven baby blanket Saori style

the very moment you are sitting at your your loom creating /weaving, especially with saori weaving , you never strain or over think but let the centering of the moment lead you. Saori weaving philosophy is not over thought and controlled or planned, it is a meditation in letting go and allowing your inner creativity to emerge at the loom.
All the memories, and current thoughts , or no thoughts , translate right into your weaving, never to be reproduced. They captured my love and affection, wishes , hopes and dreams for my soon to be one year old grandson. This is Jeremy's special blanket.

I normally use one of my Saori looms in my studio. My glimakra counter balance loom needed a warp so that I could replace the treadle , tie up cords and heddles to new texsolve cords. The blanket warp helped me address this task of balancing/ adjusting while actually dressing this loom for the Saori blanket.. Right away I noticed it took me much longer to thread this loom compared to the Saori looms. But I enjoyed creating and weaving plain weave and applying the Saori philosophy.

Cut the two woven sections apart after it came off the loom.

sewing the two sections together, twist fringes, then washed in the hot water and hot dryer.

Not your average weaving for a baby. I wove in soft cotton chenile raised areas, and puffs of natural textured yarns and some cotton sakiori cut fabric strips in the wefts. a feast for tiny hands awaking from naps to explore , feel,touch with short tidy twisted fringes to suck.

Jeremy's first birthday , blanket.

peaceful weaving

peaceful baby breaths

jill nickolene

www.saorisantacruz.com

my etsy shop

Monday, January 14, 2013

Learning to spin wool into a rainbow skein

This past week at saori santa cruz I was busy dressing a loom for a cotton saori woven baby blanket.
A new student Susan came to learn to spin. She brought her wheel, and her basket of fibers.
We started with a drop spindle and moved up to her wheel after about only 15 minutes of pratice. She caught on quickly to drawing out fibers . Soon she was plying her single yarns into a colorful two ply yarn, full of fun and color.