Las Arañas Past Workshops

The workshop is complete and all had a wonderful time. The scarves were absolutely gorgeous and the instructions was excellent. We all went home with our heads crammed full of new information.

Judith McKenzie McCuin.

Everyone had a great time at the workshop!

Susan Wilson

Discover the magic of color-and-weave!  Turn plain weave and basic twills into charming repeating patterns by alternating dark and light colors in both warp and weft.  In this round-robin workshop, students will learn color-and-weave drafting and designing and explore traditional 4-shaft and 8-shaft color-and-weave effects: gingham and houndstooth checks, log cabin, pinwheel motifs, and Scottish district checks.  Block weaves, such as shadow weave, laces, diversified plain weave, and deflected double weave, that create pattern with color-and-weave will also be sampled.

The samples that came off the looms were amazing! Everyone went home with a book of wonderful samples and lots of great ideas.

Jennifer Moore.

Jennifer Moore received her MFA in Fibers at the University of Oregon. A weaver for over 20
years, Jennifer has taught doubleweave workshops across the country including Convergence and has received numerous awards for her work. She has been featured in "Handwoven," "Shuttle Spindle and Dyepot" and "Weaver's" magazines, and in the Fiberarts Design Books Three, Four and Seven. Jennifer lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and travels throughout the world to study weaving and teach. More can be found on her web site www.doubleweaver.com.

It was a great workshop! We were all amazed with what doubleweave can do. It will be great to refer to the samples we brought home when trying some of the doubleweave techniques.

Liesel Orend

Learn the basics of using natural dyes to color wool yarns.  The properties of well-known dyes such as osage orange, cochineal, cutch, logwood and madder will be introduced, and students will learn a simple indigo recipe. In addition, we will discuss dye plants that students can gather or grow themselves.  This class will cover safe mordanting procedures (very low toxicity), dye bath preparation and use, and record keeping.   Students will make a rainbow of samples to keep, and will be able to go home and begin dyeing their own yarn!

Liesel Orend, BFA, studied weaving and natural dyeing at Northern New Mexico Community College in El Rito, NM.   In the past year, her naturally dyed tapestries have captured a silver medallion at the Taos Wool Festival and a first place award at the Albuquerque Fiber Arts Fiesta.  She gathers and grows many of the dye materials for her weaving, and makes her naturally dyed yarn available for sale as well.  Liesel is passionate about natural dyes!

Another great workshop! It was amazing to see the colors that came off the looms!

January 23rd – Friday - Wool Spinners Tune-Up Although most of us learn to spin with wool fibers there are many different techniques to explore and master. This class is geared to teach the wide variety of skills needed for spinning wool. These include choosing and scouring fleece; carding, combing or flicking the fibers; choosing the drafting style for the size and twist and finishing your yarns. It will help you explore and understand the decisions you need to make as you spin. The newly revised "Wool spinners Tune-up" Booklet is included in the fees. Materials fee $12

January 24th – Saturday - Woolen & Worsted Do you look longingly at other spinners soft, fuzzy knitting yarns and wonder how they are created? Or do you envy their perfect smooth worsted yarns? We will work with different varieties of clean fleece as we practice worsted and woolen techniques. Each student will be challenged to work toward creating yarns of three different sizes and three different amounts of twist. You will learn the secrets to producing those soft fuzzy yarns that create lightweight warm knitted garments or smooth faultless yarns that are perfect for weaving or intricate knitted patterns. The "Woolen and Worsted" Booklet is included with the fibers in your fees. Participants are invited to bring wool fibers or projects that are giving them difficulties. Take charge, and learn to spin the yarn that you want now. You will need to bring handcards. Materials fee $12

January 25th – Sunday - Blending Basics & Recipes Work through the variables involved with blending fibers and colors on hand or drum carders. The class works with fibers of different colors, lengths and properties. The importance and ease of record keeping is stressed. The Miss America plying is taught for easy evaluation of your yarn. The "Blending" booklet is included in the fiber fees. You will need to bring handcards, and if you have a carder, please bring that as well. Materials fee $15

January 26th – Monday - Color Options for Spinners Spinning painted rovings can give unexpected results. This class will explore the wide variety of pleasing and coordinating yarns that can be spun from a single painted roving. The "Color Options" booklet is included in the fiber fees. Materials fee $15

Biography - Patsy Zawistoski enjoys all the possibilities of creating with handspun yarns. She has enjoyed every facet of textiles since learning sewing as a 4th grader and weaving as a new bride. Twenty-some years ago, she taught herself to spin and has been spinning ever since. Patsy earned her COE Certificate of Excellence in Handspinning from the Handweavers Guild of America (1985), plus a Master's Certificate (1987) for her study "Spinning Novelty Yarns for Use as Warp." She is constantly exploring and refining her spinning techniques. She was recently named "most excellent spinnin' guru.calm" by her students. For more information, check out her website: http://www.spinninguru.com/

For Beginners To Advanced Spinners - (Students must know how to use their wheels)

PRIMARY GOAL: To show students how easy it is to dye and spin cotton into designer yarns and use them in weaving and other needle crafts.

Day 1. DYEING & BEGINNING COTTON SPINNING The first morning will be dedicated to dyeing cotton fiber. Using cold-water dyes (procion) students will each paint their own roving and learn how to dye lint. The afternoon will introduce basic carding and cotton spinning techniques. Students will learn how and why to adjust their wheel for this fine, short staple fiber and will be spinning everything from the cotton bolls to the commercially prepared cotton roving. Dyeing your own cotton Carding cotton and making punis. Adjusting and understanding your wheel. Techniques of spinning cotton from the cotton boll to commercial sliver.

Day 2. SPINNING & DESIGNING WITH DYED COLORED COTTON This class reviews day 1 and reinforces proper spinning techniques for cotton while designing novelty cotton yarns at the same time. This will require learning good cotton- plying techniques. Students will plan a project and design the yarn for the project they chose. Carding colors to make designer yarns Good Basic plying techniques Designing yarn for a project.

Day 3. USING HANDSPUN COTTON for weaving and other needle crafts. The third day will include warping a demo loom with yarns designed by students. Selecting yarns already spun and spinning additional yarns to fit the needs to produce a weaving or knitting project that each student plans for in the future.

BRIEF BIOGRAPHY: Ever since Joan returned from her one year visit in New Zealand in 1973, she has been demonstrating and teaching spinning classes throughout the U.S. and New Zealand. She has owned and operated fiber art shops in both Florida and Arizona. Most familiar is Spin’n Weave, which she operated for 12 years in Tucson. Presently she writes articles and has produced an educational video called Cotton Spinning Made Easy. As a member of the local and regional spinning and weaving guilds in New Mexico, Florida and Arizona she does “on the road workshops” around the country. Joan helped start Southwest Regional Spinner’s Retreat in New Mexico, began Southwest Corner in ‘89 which was a teaching retreat in Historical Bisbee, AZ, coordinated the Annual Bisbee Fiber Arts Festival for 16 years and was President of the Florida Tallahassee Weaver’s Guild before moving to Arizona in 1980. Presently Joan is teaching at the Bisbee Fiber Studio and supplying shops with Easy to Spin cotton sliver that has been specially carded for handspinners. For more information see her website: http://www.cottonspinning.com/

SNAZZY YARNS: HOW TO USE THEM, NOT LOSE THEM! Do any of these situations sound familiar?

• You ransomed a glorious, fancy yarn at a conference, now what?
• You have mastered spinning and have a luxurious yarn, now what?
• You have learned to dip-dye yarns, now what?

If you recognize yourself, this is the workshop for you. In it, we explore the structures which will allow you to show off your special yarn instead of obliterating it as it is woven. We consider structures with detailed instructions about how to tailor them to your application which will allow the fluffy yarn to be fluffy in the cloth, allow the yarn which changes color over its length to be seen, allow the thick and thin yarn to be a star. As is always the case with Sharon's workshop although this time the subject is structure, fiber choices, yarn styles and color choice information is woven into the topic. The 3-day weaving workshop is in round robin format.

9:30-4:30, Oct. 23-25 with Celia Quinn At the home of Georgia & Ted Pearson

An intensive class to increase your knowledge of fiber properties, fiber forms available and spinning techniques suited to each fiber. Fibers included are wool, silk, cotton, flax, cashmere, yak, alpaca, mohair, ramie and many more. Students will learn to construct yarns of appropriate fiber, diameter and twist for the desired end use. We spin approximately 65 samples. Cost: $150 Fiber Fee: $45, payable to Celia Quinn Class Size: 20 max. Please bring lunch if possible. Dinners will be optional. Celia Quinn has taught workshops extensively across the US since 1983. She knits, weaves and crochets, with an emphasis on garments and household textiles. She has spun everything from rope to sub-sewing thread and still holds Spin-Off magazine’s fine spinning record for cotton, at approximately 83,000 yards per pound. Her thoughts on spinning can be found in many back issues of Spin-Off. She calls Alaska home.

Will anyone believe that 85 different samples were handspun during the three day workshop with Celia Quinn? Even the 18 participants were amazed at what they had accomplished from October 23 to 25. The group met at the lovely home of Georgia and Ted Pearson, who were also the hosts for Celia’s stay in New Mexico. New Mexico Las Arañas members from far and wide were joined by new members Linda Ellis and Barbara Kinney from Oklahoma and Susan Morrison who returned from Connecticut just for the event. Celia, from Homer, Alaska, was totally organized and had the group enthralled with her depth of knowledge and down-to-earth good humor. Topics covered, included: construction and adjustment of various types of spinning wheels, fiber characteristics, fiber preparation, adjusting wheels and spinning techniques to match fiber type and type of finished yarn, worsted and long draw spinning, twist analysis, plying techniques, and spinning cotton on a charka and takli supported spindle. Fibers spun included various wools, silks, cottons, flax, jute, angora rabbit, alpaca, llama, mohair, camel, goat, horse hair, cashmere, yak, buffalo, musk ox, rayon, acrylic, polyester, corn fiber, nylon, tencel, and soy silk. No one was too intimidated to try any of the fibers. After meeting the first spinning challenge of making yarn using a length of coat hanger with a bend in the top, anything seemed possible. Thank you, Celia, Georgia, Ted, and Susan for a most enjoyable and educational workshop.

This is a hands-on mini workshop on how to turn painted skeins into painted warps. I will plan to have a painted skein available to demonstrate. If you have a painted skein of your own that you want to turn into a warp, plan to bring it and we will work with it. If you bring a skein, it would be helpful if you could also bring a warping board and perhaps a swift to use with your skein.

Linda DeBlois and Robin Pascal will do an in-depth workshop on judging handspun yarn on Saturday, February 20, 2010, from 10 to 4. The cost is $50.00. Please bring lots of skeins of handspun yarn, good ones and not so good ones. The more the better. You can also bring items woven or knitted from your handspun yarn. We will each practice judging skeins of yarn using the scorecard that Linda and Robin brought from their workshop in Tucson on judging handspun yarn last year. We will talk about the importance of use of the skeins of yarn. We will compare notes with each other and strive to come to an agreed score on each skein of yarn. This workshop is intended to make each attendee a better spinner, whether they choose to compete or not.

This 3-day workshop will demonstrate how to create a box loom from an appropriate sized cardboard box, how to warp it, weaving techniques, yarn choices and how to remove the tapestry from the box and finish the tote bag/purse/briefcase (depending on size) properly. This workshop is designed for beginning through experienced tapestry weavers.

Diane will bring a partially pre-warped box for everyone in the class. Each student will then bring a sturdy cardboard box to warp after working on the first box. A list of supplies will be emailed to each student prior to the workshop.