Two Hole Andean Pebble Weave

I just spent 4 days up in the Portland area for OFFF - Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival or as I call it Flock & Flea. I took a one day workshop in Two Hole Andean Pebble Weave which is tablet weaving or commonly called card weaving. This is my sample. It's a very fun technique that I'll use in the future when I have a use for a band with letters or designs in it. I'm hoping to get some time this winter to explore it a bit more. I wasn't totally happy with the class, there was another class in the same room with only moving blankets hanging in-between us - we in the back of the room had a difficult time hearing our instructor due to the chit chat of the spinning class behind us. And sadly instruction in my class was vague at times and sparse, and many students in my class were talking so much and so loud it bugged the heck out of me. I can handle chit-chat, we all do it, but it was out of control. I paid a lot of money for a class and was there to learn and found it difficult to concentrate. No surprise, I was the only one who finished my band.

Driving to and from Portland is always fun as we shop our way north and south on I5. Fabric shops are the big draw as we don't have any down here with the selection of the big city, and certainly not all the fabric for clothing, our few local fabric shops focus more on quilt fabrics. We stopped at the Corvallis Fall Festival on the way home, a nice quality art/craft festival. I hadn't been in a few years so it was very fun. Another great thing about the long weekend is the food as there are restaurants up there that we don't have down south. All in all a very fun weekend spent with my fiber friends.

The high today is supposed to be 97 - still dry as a bone, whatever that means..........hoping the temps cool and we get rain in the not too distant future so there can be an end to fire season for the year. It can rain between now and the middle of next week when relatives come to visit, the chalk festival is that weekend, and the Hugo Ladies Quilt show which is mostly outside - after that it can rain again.......  I hope the rain goddess is listening........

Speaking of rain - my heart goes out to those in the Midwest dealing, once again, with torrential floods.

Re-entry is always tough........

Re-entry into the world here in the valley from the world on the coast is always tough. I won't go into the mundane details but it's a killer sometimes.....but we had a nice 5 days on the coast even with the torrential rains for 2 of those days. Bailey didn't have such a good time - the front steps 'bit' him - we're still not sure what happened but we think he dove off those 2 steps to rush over to the fence to see the neighbor dog and had a tumble. He's been pretty hurty but today is starting to feel a bit better, he either wrenched his back, pulled a muscle or sprained something.......and I have to say he's quite the weinie when he's hurting.

I brought my little cardweaving loom along and did get one warp on it and woven off on Monday. I chose a very simple pattern as I wanted the change in color to be the highlight rather than the patterning - I used 6 colors plus black. This is destined to become a strap for my camera which only has a wrist strap on it.

What I love about this pattern is that it looks like knit stitches - not sure if it's that noticeable in the photos or not - it's created by alternating Z twist and S twist threaded cards.

Shells from the first day's walk on the beach. This was a good haul of snail/hermit crab shells. We ran into Loren, my favorite old beach guy, he gave me some yellow agates and tidbits of info on all sorts of things beach related - I really enjoy him. We were to stop by his house at some point to see all his 'stuff' but after Bailey fell we decided we'd do it next time.

Cardweaving

If you get the opportunity to take a cardweaving workshop from John Mullarkey I highly recommend it. Not only is he extremely knowledgeable, well organized, easy to understand, has a calm go with the flow personality but he's funny too. I learned so much this past two days and now I know that cardweaving will become a regular part of my weaving repertoire. Not that I haven't done any cardweaving over the years, I love the look but I hated the idea of  being tethered to table/post, using up a loom for cards or using C-clamps on a table - it should be portable but not cumbersome. Well, enter this cute little cardweaving loom that John designed - I love it. If I need to weave really long bands I can use my floor inkle loom but I can see myself using this cute little loom quite often, even while riding in the car.

I forgot to bring my camera yesterday so no pic of the warping for the band above - there was lots of playing taking off from the original design.

Here is the loom after warping for today's weaving - different style of warping than we did for yesterday - nice to learn two techniques - yes, that's my yummy cookie snack to keep me fortified for the workshop......there were lots of snacks all weekend.....lots......

Today's weaving were Egyptian diagonals - very fun (that little block was not a part of this class but John demo'd it on my loom - I'll be trying this out in the not too distant future)

More of the diagonals - this one a snowflake pattern

 

I don't remember the name of this pattern but I love it - it's included in a book John sells on Egyptian diagonals.....

 

.....as is this pattern.  Very fun workshop - learned so much and am now enthused over cardweaving