Its 9.20am and I am sitting here at my computer feeling the icy bite of winter creeping in, that time of year when it feels like all my bones are frozen and there is always that annoying gap at the back of my neck that my scarf didn’t cover, and the ends of my sleeves not reaching down past my wrists far enough. My nose is cold and I am resorting to huddling over my coffee to warm up. Yes, the heating is on, somehow I dont seem to be feeling it though. You might be asking yourself about now, ‘is this post going to be one long complain time about the weather?’. And while I would like to say, ‘why no, no it’s not, because I have other actual important things to tell you’,  in fact, if I think about it honestly, it really is all about the weather. Sorry. Here is more : well it would be if my fingers werent frozen to the keys. Ok I am exaggerating. I have been weaving this week, perhaps an attempt to create warmth in wooly cloth 🙂  What I have done this week is completed two woven objects, one an experiment in double heddle weaving on my Majacraft loom, which turned out to be really interesting to do and with results I really like! I will be writing some more about this in a later post, because, theres quite a lot to say that goes beyond just ‘double heddle weaving rocks’.   and the other, a circle weaving. Partly it was to test out the tutorial I have written to accompany the Golden Fleece Fiber Creativity Course. There will be a task at the end of the course for using the yarns created in each module, and I am hoping that most people are going to choose to make that a circular woven item to the guidelines we will be suggesting.  So I have made a little tutorial showing how I use my circular loom. I have added lots of photos, so I hope its clear! Here is the piece I made this week, complete with shinys and yarn with lots of angelina combed into it 🙂 This one I am planning on adding onto a bag, I think it would suit a nice rich brown leather, so I just need to find one to suit! I am really enjoying my circular weaving, its meditative, simple (or more complicated if I want it to be), its easy to pick up and put down and even take out places with me, something I have missed since I am not a knitter able to take my hobby with me in a...

First I want to talk about pre-conceptions, or as the Dutch would say, voorordelen – pre-judgements. Something that fascinates me about people in general, is the multi-facetedness of individuals, and the communities we create. Because there are communities inside communities, micro-cultures to which we either gravitate to or are repelled from. Its part of how we find our places, how we feel belonging, and how we reciprocate with others. It seems to be a natural order within most modern societies and an important part of how we structure our understanding of the world and the people around us. I also find it fascinating to apply these thoughts to the fiber community. I see that there are many levels to this. Firstly the overall, global population of spinners and fiber artists, all the people who spin and create with fiber. We all have this in common and can identify ourselves as being part of this community Inside this global community, there are many  sub-communities, each with their own culture, beliefs (about fiber) and what they consider to be, to put it simply, right and wrong. I can make some basic divisions here. A straightforward one is traditional spinners, and ‘art’ spinners. And this is where I come to my observations about preconceptions. Something I have noticed during workshops and spinners gatherings, listening to discussions and opinions, joining in the facebook groups, is that these two communities have quite a few preconceived ideas about each other. I prefer not to generalise, however some assumptions can be made when hearing or seeing the same ideas and opinions expressed regularly, so this is what I am doing, generalising based on things that seem to commonly take place within the fiber world. Why am I thinking about this? Well one of the overriding reasons is that I am looking at directions for myself in spinning. I am looking at what people are doing, what has been done, what people are enjoying. I notice stuff 🙂 I have noticed that within this culture of ‘traditional’ spinners, there is  a sub-culture who tend to look upon ‘art yarn’ spinning as something of a low-skill activity, as only big bulky ‘beginner yarns’ or simply thrown together fibers that are far too random and chaotic to be considered either good or well spun. I am sure that in some cases this may be the case. But from my own experience, I can say with much conviction that I put a huge amount of thought, planning, and design elements into the yarns I create, which are clearly not ‘traditional’ yarns and fall much more fittingly into the art yarn category.  In my search for new things, I have moved...

wow Wow WOW! What an adventure this is turning out to be! Our Golden Fleece Course launched today and I can tell you, this has completely exceeded even my wildest anticipations 🙂 Thank you so much to everyone who has enrolled for this course, Arlene and I were sitting at our computers, skype running, just staring at each other as the enrolment confirmations poured in,  stunned and grateful at the overwhelmingly positive response! One of the reasons why this has become so astounding is that, a driving concept we had right back at the start, was the  development of our global community. We started out talking about just how excited we were with the international connections we could see happening, and which we could imagine happening more and more around the fiber world as people come together and link up, via the internet, and become part of this amazing movement of creativity. We both found it a very exciting development, making the world both a smaller, but ultimately more exciting and connected place. We talked about the idea of literally linking up pieces of art made by fiber artists from all over the world, not only bringing the art together and joining it up with literal threads, but also connecting the people together, to share cultures, experiences, skills, and inspirations. We really hope our Fibery Goodness website will provide a space for this to happen as we get to know one another through the Heros Journey we are about to embark on, together. It is fantastic to see we have students enrolled for this course, from: Sweden, Norway Denmark, The Netherlands, The United Kingdom, Belgium, France, Germany, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand…  It is awesome to see one of our big goals being realised in this exciting way. Now that our launch is achieved, and we have set this ship sailing, its time for us to take stock a little, set up the next part of the journey, and prepare for the exciting things to come. Arlene and I would like to thank the people who have supported the adventure so far, our Fiber Sponsers, the Module testers, and of course our Majacraft friends. All these wonderful people have kept us going with their enthusiasm and interest along the way to date, and this has helped us maintain our motivation and momentum throughout the development of the course. I can say for myself, personally, this is a dream that is now becoming realised, and I absolutely could not have done this on my own. This is another reason we wanted to create this course and the connections we hope participants will make through it, together we are mighty! And if...