We’ve redecorated at sutherland

Barb and I (with Pattiy’s assistance) were busy rearranging the furniture at our studio today to make the shop more comfortable for shoppers and make room for more looms and students.

Even stripping a screw that held our scarf rack to the freestanding wall couldn’t stop us. Pattiy and her vise grips to the rescue. Then we hoisted the large, heavy angled wall through the studio, out Pattiy’s door and into the CURVE space next door that will soon be occupied by encaustic painter Constance Williams. We moved the bookcase of yarn to the open corner, the secretary (our office) into the corner where the bookcase was and a new three-sided wire display rack into the space where the secretary was.

A little vacuuming and merchandising later and our new look was ready for business and classes. It’s a good thing, because three new looms are on the way for the three Weaving I students who will start class on Monday afternoons this month. Whew!

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And We’re Threading…

It’s the second session of the Weaving I Three Warps Three Towels class at sutherland, and three of the four students are here threading towel 1 today in a straight draw.

We hope to get these warps wound on the beam, and tied onto the front by the end of the day. Our students could even be weaving later. Welcome to Lennie, Donna and Martha. Our fourth Weaving I student will rejoin the class in a few weeks after a little vacation.

Making room for more students!

Our Weaving I class began last Sunday with a full roster of students, plus one! All three studio teaching looms are in use, and a fourth student brought his own table loom. I was so excited to have so many students and so busy getting them started on their first warps that I forgot to take pictures, but I’ll get some next week.

Welcome to Donna, Lennie, Martha and Hardy! You’re making nice progress already.

We are also working on starting a second Weaving I class on Monday afternoons starting Feb. 1. Two other students called about joining the class, and fortunately they were both available Monday afternoons. This means we’ll need to order more teaching looms to meet student demand. What a nice problem to have!

Pictures next week, I promise!

CURVEilinear reception invite, revised

This includes a little clarification of the directions. Hope you can attend.

CURVEilinear exhibit includes sutherland

How exciting. We just opened our handweaving gallery & teaching studio in CURVE Studios & Garden in Asheville’s River Arts District, and we’re just in time for an exhibit at the Haywood County Arts Council’s Gallery 86 featuring all the artist at CURVE!

The exhibit runs Jan. 11-Feb. 6, 2010. Gallery 86 is at 86 North Main St. in Waynesville, NC. Hours are Monday-Saturday, 10am-5pm. Greg Vineyard, one of CURVE’s artists, is curating the exhibit. He stopped by one day last week to pick up pieces from both Barb and Karen.

The artists reception will be Jan. 16 from 6-9 pm. Everyone is invited!

Web Chats AT sutherland on Monday

Just a reminder that the inaugural meeting of Web Chats AT sutherland – face-to-face networking for weavers—will be this Monday, Jan. 11 from 4-6 pm. Area weavers and weaver wanna be’s are invited to join us in the sutherland handweaving studio for conversations about what you are weaving, why you’re not weaving, what you’d like to show off and what you’d like help with.

We’ll keep everything informal and casual, but hopefully you’ll go home with a tip or lesson you didn’t know before. If you can join us, just contact Barb or Karen at sutherlandstudios@gmail.com so we know how many to expect.

Hope to see you Monday afternoon!

Love this structure!

Looking through Sharon Alderman’s book Mastering Weave Structures for something squishy and stretchy, I came across a waffle-weave variation she said was called Brighton Honeycomb. What a fun cloth it makes when woven with sock yarn. When I decide what exactly to make from it, I may enter it in the Handwoven sock yarn challenge.

It’s easy to weave with a straight 8 threading and straight twill treadling. Try it, you’ll like it. Email me if you can’t find the tie-up.

sutherland in the News

We’re introducing sutherland to the local media and received a nice story in The Laurel of Asheville announcing our January classes and events. Scroll to page 25. For those unfamiliar, Barb is in the picture foreground and Karen is behind her.  Asheville has welcomed us warmly. We even had a story on the local TV news during our grand opening in December. I’d post a link to that, except while they found us interesting enough for the Sunday evening news, we didn’t make the website. It was nice, nevertheless.