Busy Hands

snow drops in January

By late January the urge to get busy overcomes most of us.  The first symptoms usually involve removing holiday decorations and eating up all the leftover goodies.  The second stage involves remorse for eating up all those goodies and a need for activity to counter act the remorse.  That can escalate into a cleaning frenzy, coupled with a strong desire to discard something.  The fourth stage emerges as the cleaning frenzy subsides.  It is the need to make something (that does not involve baking as we still remember where that led us).

And so by early February most of us are back in the studio or looking at yarn or fibre samples the way a gardener looks at seed catalogues.



At our first guild meeting of the year we saw what some of the "busy hands" in our guild were up to.

Anita's hat

The knitted hat with dots of colour is a reminder that it isn't spring yet in spite of the hardy snow drops.  It was inspired by the passing of a dear friend who used a similar technique to knit mittens.  The colours dots look like gum drops.

ikat style shawl

The ikat style shawl in the photo was acquired during a winter holiday in a warm climate.  What will it inspire in the future?

fancy twill scarf

The lovely tencil scarf was woven using a fancy twill draft.  The central motif has a "rose" like appearance, as if the scarf was dotted with flowers.  It is most appropriate for a valentine.
 

crackle sample

The Exploring More Study Group are learning about Crackle, a versatile weave structure that can have many different iterations.  The sample shows a traditional approach while the shawl is not traditional.  The threading was derived from a random approach that might be similar to creating a name draft.

non traditional crackle shawl

The final photo shows a derivative of honeycomb that was woven with miscellaneous bit of yarn as the pattern weft.  It is a history of thrift shop purchases that were never used up.

honeycomb scarf

Our guild efforts are now concentrating on finishing the work on our guild booth.  Our studio looms are warped for "trees" and the felters are busy with rocks and we have a sea gull in the train station loft.  Sounds weird? It will all be revealed at ANWG in Victoria.

Next meeting is Monday February 27th at 10:30 in the Baptist Church across from the Train Station in Qualicum Beach.  Visitors are welcome.