Blogging is lagging behind actual events these days, but I am trying to keep on top of it! Right after we got back from our road trip, I plunged into a 3-day workshop at my local guild’s room (Methow Valley Spinners and Weavers). That was the weekend before last.
And what a grand time we all had! We were lucky to get Ruby Leslie from Vermont to teach us her workshop titled “The 3D’s of 3-D: Deflection, Differential Shrinkage & Doubleweave.” It was all about how to get texture into our weaving, but it being Ruby Leslie, there was also a lot of color!
Ruby with 2 sides of the deflected doubleweave sample
It was taught in a round-robin format, which means each of us warped and prepared a loom for one of the samples, wove the initial sample, and then over the 3 days everyone got a chance to weave all the other samples on the other people’s looms. This was the first time I have participated in a round-robin, but it went very smoothly and we were all done by the morning of the 3rd day, leaving time for cutting the samples off the loom and a wrap-up.
Ruby was extremely organized and a great teacher. She had wound our warps for us and sent them ahead of time with very explicit instructions. The workshop handouts were also well-organized, with lots of information packed into them, but she went over everything very thoroughly, so together with the actual samples we have all the information to move forward with any of the weave structures we explored. Some of the weave structures were set up on 2 looms (perhaps with some minor variations) which helped avoid bottlenecks as we moved through all the weaving. I can’t recommend her highly enough as a teacher and all-around great person to be with.
Ruby was the keynote speaker at the ANWG conference in Spokane in 2009 (Association of Northwest Weavers Guilds biannual conference), where she also taught a 3-day workshop called “There Must Be 50 Ways to Use Your Color.” I blogged about it back then: my half-day class, and her samples in the classroom. I still hope to take that workshop some day!
Twisp of Fate 
Have fun!