SpinnySpinny

It’s time for another get-together for crafty stuff. Bring your project, come on over and for lunch we can head across the street to the neighborhood taqueria. Saturday 28 November, the Saturday after Thanksgiving. 10am until dark-ish. Casa Feorlen is located near 22nd and Bryant in San Francisco (a couple blocks from SF General Hospital.) Email for directions.

This is a casual day of hanging out and working on that project you’ve been meaning to pull out. No drama, no agenda and barely a schedule. Show up, do something.

What to bring? Anything portable enough to get here that won’t destroy the place, snacks and suchlike, things to show off. Knitting and spinning in the living room, sewing in the kitchen, who knows what on the kitchen table. I have several spinning wheels, two sewing machines, a drum carder and a ton of other random fiber tools. Let me know in advance if you are interested in dying.

Yesterday afternoon was setup day. I didn’t have to wrangle the giant knitting needles, but I had my own area to set up. I warped the rigid heddle loom and tried to guess at how I wanted to arrange my display. It will get re-done this morning I’m sure. Here’s a photo of the disarray, including the partly-warped loom:

I spent the weekend in Ottawa and while blowing off some Saturday afternoon conference sessions I wandered into an indie craft fair: Tarts N’ Crafts. It was your basic assortment of crafters, sponsored by a womens’ art and music group. There was candy, snarky screen printed clothing, stuffed toys, recycled jewelry, handbags and so on. Only one spinner, who had some chunky handspun yarn and knit items.

It generally isn’t my sort of stuff, but I do like to see what other people are interested in. And I randomly found it walking around the city in the rain.

I’ve gotten farther on doing a Maker Faire demo. I am working with some folks who have a commercial booth and want spinning and weaving to show off what you can do (and, naturally, who can supply you with the materials and equipment.) They have a plan that has worked before, with CD spindles and weaving on rigid heddle looms that even fits well with the recycled them of the event. I’m fine with working on somebody else’s project if it furthers my goal of getting spinning and weaving in front of people.

This means the BFL goes to something else, which isn’t a big deal. It’s fiber that has been sitting around and the yarn I started is fine for another project. I haven’t done anything irreversible. This also means I have no deadline to finish it. More on the significance of that point in another post.

I do need possibly one more volunteer, which I will bring up at the guild meeting tomorrow. The exact details are still being sorted out but it won’t involve much setup in advance, just spinning and weaving on-site with everything provided (with the possible exception of a spinning wheel, which I’ve certainly got covered.) With commercial support we can do a better looking demo and have nice educational materials to hand out.

I’m working on another Maker Faire project. The deadline is at the end of the month so I’ve got some time to pull things together. I have fiber and one volunteer, I need a larger loom to borrow and a couple more people. Depending on what happens in the next couple weeks, I’ll adjust the scope of the project. I am talking to some people about getting educational materials to hand out.

The idea is to show the process of creating fabric from raw fiber, with carding, spinning and weaving. I have additional fiber and fabric samples as well as a simple loom and spindles people can try. I don’t intend to make it a spinning lesson, the size and noise level of the event make focused teaching difficult, but an active demo with several different stations showing the process.

Check out the project page if you are interested. If you are a Bay Area spinner and want to participate, let me know. Maker Faire is a hard event to drop in for a few hours, so I’m looking for people who can commit for at least one full day. I’d like to have at least 4 people each day, 5 would be nice so there is more time to see the rest of the event.

There may or may not be free parking but the nearby parking is not free. If you can go both days, I can collect your spinning wheel in advance and bring it to the fairgrounds. Maker exhibits get free badges, if I don’t get enough it would be nice to have people who can help cover the expense. (But we’ll see.)