Buellwood Holiday Luncheon 2019

If you missed it we had our annual Christmas Luncheon and 'Dirty Santa' exchange of handmade items. Participation is optional but it seems everyone who came got involved. I have to say if you have been to a 'Dirty Santa' exchange it can get quite rowdy. But not with this group! we only had about one steal and the gift exchange ended rather quickly. Everyone was delighted with what they received or they were too polite to steal a gift from their neighbor.

So this is how it went we each got a number and Dawn was number 1 so she started by taking a gift. She chose a Inlaid Transparent woven wall hanging by John.

  Then it was Mary's turn and not wanting to take the lovely wall hanging away from Dawn she opened Marilyn's beautiful first hank of hand spun yarn. What a beautiful job Marilyn did with this.

Marilyn's first spinning attempt

Next Denise chose a gift and she got the hand felted mittens made by Dawn.







So on it went Donna opening her gift. A knitters dream in just the right colors for Donna.

Until we got to Maddie she chose a pillow case wrapped gift and to her surprise it was a beautiful cutting board, too nice to cut on was created by Jon.

Maddie showing off her prize!

Nice work, too bad my turn has passed!

Then Kathie being the nice person she is and finding out that maybe she can buy one in the future from Jon. She opened another gift. A beautiful scarf in her cute package. Then on we go all of us waiting for a steal to make the game interesting! or get a chance at another gift.

Jon liked this funky wrap

Jon liked the funky wrapped package and chose it. In this package was a beautiful hand knit green cowl that his wife Marilyn was eyeing up as soon as it was opened.

 But still no steal!

Well that was until Anita got her turn and she immediately went for the cutting board so poor Maddie had to choose again.  This time Maddie chose a conventional package and ended up with

 a 'Dead Fish Hat'.

I know I missed a couple of gifts as there were a few more.

Jay went last and he decided to open the last package so it was the end of our Dirty Santa Exchange.

I hope we all are friends still???

the Buellwood Group at our Holiday Luncheon.

'Show and Tell'

 is always a must with this group and today it was included. 

John just finished weaving this Mohair Prayer Shawl it has a cotton warp and every other weft  thread is silk, it really turned out beautiful. He also brought in an Inlaid Transparent weaving of a pair of Tango Dancers. John has been exploring this technique for a couple of years now. 

Lastly he finished a sample that was on the loom at Finlandia, where he is auditing Phyllis's class. 

Inlaid Transparency weaving

The sample reminds me of the Weaving with Echo and Iris which is a network draft study by Marian Stubenitsky. I believe his is woven on 8 shafts.

sample woven in class

Anita shared a book she bought twice with a member of our guild.

Maddie shared some gifts she received from her mom Lorraine Marley, a past member of our guild. She reminded us to treasure those handmade gifts from our loved ones. The Christmas Tree runner with the matching china was a favorite.

Lorraine's cross stitch work

 
Denise brought in her finished tablet weaving she started on our retreat this fall. The black and white really made the design stand out.

Mary has been weaving a heart pattern for her new grand daughter's Baby Blanket. The hearts are very small as she used 10/2 cotton and were a bear to weave as it was impossible to see any mistakes. She used a pattern online for a 4 shaft loom.













The Porkies Folk School classes will be posted on the web site in January 2020. Keep an eye out for these classes as a couple of our guild members will be teaching there. Poppy, Karen and Dawn will have classes in July and August. Donna Kallner will also be back as well as Gary Olds and Cynthia Cote. Check out Porkies.orghttps://porkies.org/events/ for the dates and registration . Some of them are already listed but registration will open in mid January.

**Our next meeting will be at Gloria Day Monday January 20th Debra will be demonstrating Paper making for our guild. 

Wishing you a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year.

Houghton Carolers at Joey's

Buellwood Best -- May 2018

Buellwood Best Projects 

May is our annual 'Buellwood Best Share'. We had a good turn out this year, the challenge was to use the natural dyed wool form our 2017 fall retreat workshop given by Dawn. If you did not take the workshop then we asked you bring your best project for the 2017-2018 year. 

most of our members used our dyed yarn to create an item for the B Best Share. Our future hopes are to display these works in a local public building. 

Dawn is wearing her hand knit shawl, check with her on the exact pattern but it looks like the wingspan pattern or one of Steven West's https://www.ravelry.com/designers/stephen-west. 

She used yarn dyed with Buck horn and Lichens.

close up of shawl

Dawn decked in her shawl

Anita did not take the dye workshop but took a 'Sweet Water Grass Basket' class with the Calumet Art Center and made this lovely basket.

Anita and Karen

Sweet water grass basket by Anita

Laura used wool she dyed at the natural dye workshop to create these lovely Wool Appliqued pieces with stitching and embellishment. She used un ply-ed silk thread to sew the Applique onto recycled wool from her stash.

Laura's stitched pillow

Laura's stitched picture

Clare did a weaving with open spaces on a rug warp which she found gave her better tension for weaving this open design. Which she called 'Early Spring- Colors have Arrived'.

Clare's wall hanging

Clare's"Early Spring"

John continued with exploration of Transparent weave and created this window piece of whales. Using the dyed yarn for the weft pictures.

John with his transparent woven piece

Mary created a tunic using 46 balls of 20 yards of natural dyed yarn from two workshops she attended in 2017. The woven pattern was a Triple Draught Birds Eye which was my inspiration from a MLH swatch. The left side of the garment was a simpler birds eye pattern. For the weft she used a black Alpaca wool. The pattern was from the book 'Weave Knit and Wear' by Judith Shangold. Thank you to Melissa for modeling the tunic on a very hot day in May. Not that we have many hot days.

wool tunic

close up of tunic

 Melissa wove a number of runners with her dyed wool. In I believe a Summer and Winter pattern. if this is not correct it is because I was taking pictures and trying to listen and take notes at the same time. A lovely combination of all these colors we got from the natural dye workshop.

summer and winter close up.

wool woven runners in the lovely dyed colors

our guild admiring Melissa's woven runners

Karen is new to knitting but look at these mittens she has made from her 20 yarn balls. Karen said she is really enjoying knitting and is letting the colors flow as she knits. She has advanced to adding cables and patterns to her knitting. She has enough yarn to make a 5th pair of mittens.

4 pair of mittens in beautiful color

 Show and Tell 

If this above was not enough we also had some show and tell from our guild members.

Karen found these lovely Bow woven bracelets when she was out east and she promises to look into how these are woven for a future meeting.

knit mitttens

 Mary knit these cozy mittens using wool roving for the inside and used handspun alpaca wool mix for the body of the mittens.

woven piece from workshop warp

Melissa took an 8 shaft 'Weaving in a Parallel Universe'  workshop from Linda Harshorn  this winter in California. She brought in her amazing samples from this workshop. Many patterns to weave with parallel threading to create a variety of structures including shadow weave, four color doubleweave, echo weave twills, and turned taquete. She also shared a sampling loom from Purl and Loop. She claims she will try to sample in the future....

Echo weave sample

Phyllis brought in some items she gave away to family and they have been returned to her. lovely to remember the joy they gave her parents. A runner made from Seersucker P.J.'s in which she twisted 2 colors of weft to create the design. Place mats that were rag woven for her mother many years ago.

rag woven placemats

felted pill box for her dad

runner woven with Seersucker weft from P.J.s

Sarah had a bead woven piece which was very well executed and interesting.

Laura told us about a new rug hooking book she heard about in 

a class this winter.' Fancy Fibers' it is a beauty! and very 3 dimensional rug hooking.

Maddie finished her first scarf from the rigid heddle loom that her mom Lorraine Marley helped her warp. It is wool with the Scottish green color. Thank you Maddie and everyone for bringing in your lovely fiber pieces.

Scottish green

Maddie with her scarves.

We want to thank Clare for all the cutting and sewing on our MLH swatches due this month. Thank you to all who wove on this beautiful warp with the natural dyed yarn from Dawn. We will miss Clare, as she is spending next year out East closer to family who she will need around when they have their first baby in September. She is glowing! please keep us up to date when you can Clare.

Our next meeting will be June 18th  we will be showing how plan and wind a warp for towels. In July or September we will warp a 4 shaft loom with this warp. Now is the time to be there to see how many different methods of warping we use to do this. Bring questions and methods to share.