Have you ever learned something new and then got to travel and continue your education? What fun that would be. Janis Johnson our speaker got that opportunity. Janis’s life-long hobby has been learning how to make things. She started weaving on a rigid heddle loom in 2001, learning from books. Janis didn’t start weaving on a floor loom until 2010 during her second term as president of the Portland Handweavers Guild, when she thought it would be a good idea to understand what people were talking about. Little did she know that it would become an obsession, with learning opportunities for a lifetime.

Because Janis had taken a guild workshop on weaving velvet with Barbara Setsu Pickett, she received email about an opening in Barbara’s program through the University of Oregon to weave on manual Jacquard looms at the Lisio Foundation for Silk Arts in Florence, Italy. Janis had first learned about Jacquard looms in an early computer science class and found them fascinating, so she jumped at the chance.

Please join us in the afternoon November 18th to hear about Janis’s adventure.