Wild and Crazy Weaving Debut

Posted on September 28, 2025 by Robin

I just listed the Wild and Crazy Weaving class on my website. I’ve been thinking about this awhile, but finally got it done just in time to advertise it at Lambtown coming up October 4-5. I met the creator of Art Fiber Frenzy yarns a couple of years ago at Black Sheep Gathering in Oregon. It turns out that she lives in Sacramento, not far from me, and she will be at Lambtown again this year.

When you closely at this yarn you will see that the random lengths of yarn are tied together. I don’t think the intent was to use this for warp, but that is all that I see. I have figured out the method to turn this into a warp.

The first step is to wind a ball.

This is a step where you don’t want to be sloppy. It was manageable, but not as fun to work with this yarn after my ball turned into many connected balls.

It’s the step of winding warp for which I have developed the best way to deal with the yarn–not just the knots, but all the yarns of different character.

And there is the consideration of sett and weft yarn.

Purchase a skein of yarn from Art Fiber Frenzy and sign up for my class to learn how to weave with it. I have listed one class to teach about a month after Lambtown but plan to teach other sessions of this next year.

CNCH 2025 – Asilomar

Posted on April 30, 2025 by Robin

I spent many days (weeks, months?) working towards going to CNCH (Conference of Northern California Handweavers) as one of the teachers at this retreat-style conference held at Asilomar on the California coast. I have taught Learn to Weave many times and can do it without thinking, but the prep is different when I am not teaching at home and when there will be so many people in the class. This is a class presented to people who may have some weaving experience but not enough to warp a loom themselves, people who may have woven long ago but need a refresher, and those who have never woven anything. Many don’t have looms or at least not looms that are portable.

Fifteen people signed up for this workshop. Five of them were bringing looms, five looms were borrowed from local guild members, and I provided five. That’s not just the looms–five warping boards, benches, and all the equipment that goes along with winding warp and weaving. I also supplied yarn, and not being someone who wants to tell people they have to choose only one or two colors, I brought plenty of choices…and in wool or cotton–their choice. This is where I staged what I was to put in the trailer. It doesn’t include the grid wall that was already in the trailer. You’ll see that in use in some of the photos.

I got the classroom set up by Thursday evening. Many thanks go to the person who organized the conference and made sure that I would have two helpers. My two requests for teaching the class were space (this room was great!) and another person (I had two!). With a beginning level class there are a lot of questions along the way one person can’t provide all the answers in a timely manner. There was also the issues of unfamiliar looms getting them set up to work with the class.

Samplers in wool on the left and cotton in the center. On the right are some of my shawls.

One of the perks of teaching this class was staying at Asilomar. My room was at the end of this building.

We set up grid wall to hold warping frames on this side of the room.

The looms were near windows on the other side.

Close up of weaving in purple, blue and gold.

Close up of weaving showing purple and white stripes woven with pink.

These are only portions of the samplers people could weave.

The workshop was Friday and Saturday with finishing up on Sunday morning.

This is a photo of most of us. Thanks to all of the participants and the helper weavers! I hope to do this again. When I teach this class here at the farm I take three to five people. The class is described here.

Part of the prep for this workshop was planning for farm chores. My husband had a knee replacement only a few weeks before and there were limits to what he was supposed to do. Thanks to a good friend and my brother who handled a lot of that.

When I got home Sunday there was a new lamb which was not a complete surprise, but that’s another story.

Convergence 2024 in Kansas – Day 2

Posted on July 13, 2024 by Robin

While I’m writing this it’s actually my 4th day in Kansas but I feel good that I’m not leaving all of these blog posts until I get home. It’s going to be hectic then. So here is the post for the first day when I explored the surroundings. On Thursday I taught a workshop on Clasped Warp using a rigid heddle loom. This is the description of that class on my website. I plan to change that a bit now that my article about clasped warp on a multi-shaft loom is published in Handwoven.

Handwoven scarves draped over a table as examples of the clapsed warp project.

These are the scarves I brought with me as examples of the final project. With clasped warp the loom is direct warped with two different colors at a time. One yarn is attached to the peg and one to the loom. They join or clasp in the middle and you can create many different designs.

These are three going on the looms. I did not get photos of all. It difficult to get decent photos of this process.

Warp yarns in yellow, red, and gray threaded through the heddle of a rigid heddle loom.

Here is one more.

Room with several tables and weavers at their looms.

A view from the back of the classroom. Fortunately we had plenty of space for everyone to spread out. There were 9 people in the class (and a service dog!)

A handwoven scarf just off the loom is spread on a table.

This is the first scarf off a loom. It was the only piece finished during class. There was no rush for most of the others because they were all taking their looms with them. Two people needed to finish the project that night and warp the looms for the next day’s class, but the weaving goes fairly quickly on this project.

People in a weaving class holding their looms with projects in progress.

At the end of the day. This was a great class! I hope to see future projects from all these participants.

The fashion show was Thursday evening. It was a professionally presented show and I was lucky enough to have a front row seat, thanks to friends at Lunatic Fringe Yarns!

Weave Like a Viking

Posted on March 10, 2024 by Robin

Lambing is over as of two days ago. I will talk some more about lambs, but right now I want to share today’s class, Weave Like a Viking, taught by Farm Club member Siobhan…with a little about lambs.

Siobhan started figured out how to weave Vararfeldur, a pile weave using wool locks interspersed in plain weave or twill. Siobhan previously presented a class here in felting that results in a piece with a similar appearance at first glance, but is much different.

This is an example of the “sheepskin” from Create a Vegetarian Sheepskin.

These are the pieces of Vararfeldur that Siobhan brought to share. The pillow in the center is an example of the piece the students would weave today.

Siobhan started with a demonstration of the technique.

Six students brought rigid heddle or table looms already warped and ready to weave.

They weren’t expected to finish the weaving in this half day class but got well underway in the pile weaving.

The intent is to weave a pillow front with the wool locks and then finish the weaving in plain weave or twill to complete a pillow cover.

Half way through the weaving the class took a break to feed the bottle lambs.

We will offer this class again in May. You’ll be able to visit the lambs but by then none will need a bottle.

Overshot Explorations and More

Posted on November 20, 2023 by Robin

I tried a new class last week. I used overshot as a way to guide weavers through exciting discoveries of sampling treadling techniques, choosing colors, and changing yarn sizes.

Two weavers came on Thursday to warp their looms. On Friday they were joined by two more weavers and they all wove overshot samplers.

This is the Sample Wall with examples of the drafts and the variables they could try.

I didn’t hang the “orange peel” sample but had it available. This is a good example of the effect of sett on the appearance of a piece. These are woven on the same warp of 5/2 cotton. The one on the right is sett at 12 epi (ends per inch) and the one on the left is sett at 15 epi. With the warp threads that much closer together the orange peel pattern is elongated and the circle becomes an oval.

The next photos are some of the weavers’ work on the looms near the beginning of class.

Two weavers chose black warp as in the samples. One weaver used white warp. Those are all cotton but the bottom one is wool because I already had that on a loom. That is white wool warp with gray tabby weft. It is so interesting to see the differences.

This was the first time for this class so I over-estimated how much warp would be woven. Two people have come back to continue work. Here is the sampler one of the students finished the next day. I will wait to see what others finished at home.

I hope to offer this class again but its not scheduled right now. Look for Overshot Explorations.

Lambtown 2017

Posted on October 14, 2017 by Robin

Lambtown was last weekend. A lot has happened since then–I’ve been on a little get-away to Lake Tahoe while at the same time there are still terrible fires raging to the west of us. But this post is to share some photos from Lambtown.

This is one reason that I looked forward so much to my Lake Tahoe trip. The Lambtown weekend was non-stop and those of you who go to shows as vendors know that it’s not just the event, but the time leading up to it and the time trying to get organized afterwards. One vendor described it to someone by saying, “Imagine packing up everything from your living room, loading it into a trailer, setting it up in a new location, two days later taking it all down and loading the trailer, then unloading and setting up your living room again.”

The morning of the vendor set-up day I taught a class, “Getting Fancy with the Rigid Heddle Loom”.

This is the booth, taken by Dona the next day. The wall to the left showcases the yarn that I’ve been dyeing for the last couple of months along with some of the finished pieces.

This is some of that yarn. I’m still amazed that the peachy looking yarn is the second batch through the coreopsis pot that produced that rust colored yarn next to it.

I don’t have many photos of anything else at Lambtown because I was so busy either in the booth or teaching or at the end of Sunday, in the barn showing sheep.

On the second morning I taught a class called Warping Your Loom at Warp Speed. I didn’t want to teach longer than an hour Saturday morning because the point of having a vendor booth is to be there and sell things. In the class showed how I can wind a 5-yard chenille warp, get it on the loom and ready to weave in a short time. At home I can do it in 50 minutes. In this case it was about an hour and a quarter and I hadn’t tied it on to the front bar. But I had been talking and teaching through that time. I think that wasn’t bad. The one thing that I forgot to bring (after remembering at 11:30 the night before that I should have packed the warping frame) were the ties to secure the warp chain. I used up what extra thread was around and then someone pointed out that I had baling twine hanging out of my pocket. That worked.

I had also brought a few things to enter in the fiber arts show. That is one of the ponchos that will be in the Artery show.

Sunday morning I brought a sign for Buster’s pen.

Then I taught a three-hour class on learning to use the rigid heddle room and learning to work with rags (fabric strips) at the same time.

It’s fun to see how the fabric looks when it is cut and woven.

Don’t you love how this fabric works up in a woven piece?

I’ll do another post about the sheep show.

Meridian Jacobs' Blog

Life on the farm and at the loom.

Tag Archives: Weaving class