It's time for another jaunt back to the west coast from the Big Apple! Ah, homeward bound where I will reunite with family and friends once again, AND for the first time in years my dear friends Ana, Sasha and I will be in the same place for an extended amount of time with our three toddlers!!! I can already smell the ocean, and hear the crying (of two-year olds... and maybe us too). I can hardly wait another minute. My mom has not made the wait any easier by announcing that the summer theme will be wine sangria and wood-fired pizza. My parents are master chefs (don't try to deny it, mom!) and my dad is a stone mason, so it was only a matter of time before he built a brick oven in our back yard. I'm not sure they've mastered the art of pizza making in it yet - so this is the year! I wonder if my mom will curse me for writing this? My parents' house has always been a bit of a neighborhood gathering place, so I'm thinking there might be a few people who after reading this will decide to 'happen upon' our particular part of town this summer. Something I always get up to at my parents' house in the summer is indigo dyeing and then some general textile studio time in the carport. Last year we made a few saw horses so I could make a printing table with them, some foam from the Sally Anne, a piece of plywood and a duvet cover. That was were I did some further exploration and eventually teaching with natural-dye printing. This year the theme will be of course indigo dyeing (there will always be indigo!) and my most recent textile love affair, a return to tapestry weaving. I'll be weaving samples of my own as well as teaching some one-on-one classes on Mirrix looms in the Greater Vancouver area. In the next couple of weeks I will also announce some group workshops that will occur on the Sunshine Coast, most likely on Friday and/or Saturday mornings. The group classes require that students have their own Mirrix Loom (I offer a $25 student discount) and the one-on-one class does not (you are still offered the $25 loom discount, though). Soon I will be doing a post or perhaps a video detailing why Mirrix Looms are the best. They really are. If you're interested in one-on-one lessons and have any questions feel free to email me anytime janna(at)vancouveryarn(dot)com Have a couple of friends who want to learn too? Ask me about the group rate. ![]() For more information on these workshop opportunities visit the Vancouver Yarn online shop and sign up for the newsletter. I'll be sending out an update when I have group workshop dates lined up soon. Also follow me on Twitter or Facebook for updates on free-skill shares that I'll be holding around BC this summer, too. For fun pics there's always Instagram. Janna
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For the past year I’ve been offering free weaving, knitting, embroidery and natural dyeing workshops in public spaces in Manhattan. Most of time I am weaving since people seem to really respond to my lovely Mirrix loom, and I love any excuse to weave so I’ve planned a lot of tapestry skill-shares. They have taken a few forms: Public interventions I weave/knit/dye in public spaces, usually on the subway or in a parks and invite people to join me, usually with a sign. These are an attempt to thwart people’s tendencies to isolate themselves, usually via digital devices, with the hopes of complicating their ideas of how public space is perceived and used. My goal is to encourage people to engage, and even learn something instead of tune out of the world around them. Admittedly, I too am often one of these people engrossed in my book on the subway. So, I’m not saying there isn’t a place for tuning out – everyone needs their personal time, and God love you if for you that time occurs on the subway. I do however think it could be good to interrupt people’s habituated actions from time to time. Public performances These are usually the result of no one joining me to learn the respective craft of the day, and this usually happens on the subway. I’m not disappointed about having the skill-share concept morph into a performance in this way, and am still grappling with the ideas that occur as a result. But, so far it means I feel I’m being perceived as more of a spectacle than an educator or artist, and because it’s such an unlikely place to do this sort of thing I sometimes feel a bit awkward. In my first attempts I even felt kind of pathetic, forgetting my purpose and instead imagining what people must think of this crazy girl with a textile contraption and sign inviting people to join her. But one day, several days after one of my first subway skill-shares, a woman approached me on the street saying she’d seen me weaving on the subway and wondered what I was doing. She hadn’t seen the sign inviting people to try, nor did I make eye contact with her (something I sometimes do so I have an excuse to smile at people in an attempt to invite them to comment on my actions). Her genuine interest helped me forge on and remind myself of my purpose during future attempts. Planned mini-workshops These are workshops that I advertise on mine and Katie's Everlea Textiles Meetup group. They are essentially craft groups, where I organize a public location for people to gather, hang out, chat and knit/weave/etc and as an added bonus I offer knitting and weaving instruction to anyone interested. All these formats allow me explore my personal goal of making handwork skill development as accessible as possible. As a new venture Katie Earle, my partner at EVERLEA TEXTILES, and I are working to gain funding in order to hold free day-long workshops in the future. Thanks for your interest in my practice! I hope months from now I can say I’m still going strong with these skill-shares! FYI:
A post similar to this originally appeared on the Mirrix Looms blog.
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About me:
I'm a west coast Canadian gal who after completing a BFA in Fibres at Concordia University in Montreal moved to the New York metropolitan area where I am pursuing my art practice while learning the ropes of motherhood.
June 2021
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