Twisp of Fate

My local weaving guild, Methow Valley Spinners & Weavers, is affiliated with a larger organization called ANWG, or the Association of Northwest Weavers’ Guilds.  This is an association of fiber arts guilds located within the Pacific Northwest area of the United States and Western Canada.  Every 2 years there is an ANWG Conference with seminars, fashion show, exhibits, vendors etc.  The first one I went to was 4 years ago in Spokane, Washington; then 2 years ago in Eugene, Oregon.  This year the 2013 ANWG Conference will be at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington – June 17-23.

In a moment of perhaps temporary insanity, our little guild decided to make something really nice for the “goodie bags” they hand out to conference attendees.  We decided to weave earring hangers with an arrowleaf balsomroot motif, that being the signature flower of the Methow Valley.

arrowleaf balsamroot

We committed to ANWG last fall to make 400 of these, and they have to be done and sent off by April 20th.  Since then enrollment at the conference has exceeded expectations, being past 500 now I believe.  However, we do the best we can.

We have done 430 of them!  And that’s with only maybe 10-12 people really working on it.  Besides warping and weaving, we must wash and finish them, serge them apart and sew a hem for the dowels, cut and sand the dowels for the hangers, make cording out of brown yarn for the hangers,  and finally we will roll them up and put an informational wrapper around each one.

They are all a little different

Big pile of finished hangers

47 of them hanging to dry in my shower

I personally have woven more than 100 of these over the last 2 months.  Most of the weaving was done at the guild room on a Baby Wolf devoted to the project.  Fortunately, one of our members has been a production weaver for decades, has a big warping reel, and was able to put 30-yard warps onto the loom for us as we went along.

Another member designed the wrapper:

I think that it’s pretty cool that our little guild pulled this off – and so ready for it to be done and over with!