WeaveCast: Backstage

Last sunday I taught a rigid-heddle class at Weaving Works, and it was a blast! The students were great, many of them learning to weave for the first time, and the enthusiasm in the room crackled with "aha!" moments. Judging from the anonymous feedback forms, they had a grand time as well.

I was teaching my "stash-busting" scarf technique (essentially a random warp, with symmetry.) Everyone brought yarn from their stash and we put it in a big pile in the middle and then began pulling out color groups to plan warps. I'm sure this is an un-vention, instead of an invention, as it's so obvious. To make the class easy and fun, I taught the peg-warping method I learned in Rowena Hart's book.

Because I didn't want to buy 8 warping pegs (one for each student), I clamped a warping board horizonally to a table and had each student use pick a different peg to work off. This worked well, but had the unintended consequence of making a huge spider's web in the center of the room. It made navigating around a bit difficult (occasionally I had to crawl under the warps to reach a student) but I loved the imagery of weaving all the students together.

I stood on a chair to take a picture, but still wasn't high enough to get everyone in, so you'll have to imagine a weaver at the end of every warp.

Big fun, I love teaching weaving!

Which is ironic, really. As a child, both my parents were college professors. I swore that I'd never teach. In college, I ran away screaming from the few labs-classes I had to teach to pay my way through. Twenty years later, I'm loving it. I guess breeding will out!