I have conducted some very interesting research into various aspects of weaving and textiles and fibers and all the attendant concepts that come along for the ride. I have become quite taken with the journal Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture. It offers strongly researched articles, from across the fiber spectrum, written with depth, making connections to many of the concerns of contemporary life. I have saved all the articles I have read and have gone back to reconsider more than once. As a student at Evergreen, I am able to access it easily as a digital archive. But it is rather obscure otherwise.

I just discovered that Textile is celebrating its 10th anniversary and are offering ten of their articles free to all to read, without need for subscription, so I can share that with you all.

The link to the articles: http://www.bergpublishers.com/Portals/0/journals/2012_10articles_TEXTILE_website.pdf

They selected one article from each year of publication and include the following topics:

Webs of Wrath: Terrible Textiles from the War of Troy, by Lois Martin
Wearing Propaganda: Textiles on the Home Front in Japan, Great Britain, and America during the Greater East Asian War, 1931-45, by Jacqueline M. Atkins
Collecting the Contemporary: “Love Will Decide What is Kept and Science Will
Decide How it is Kept”, by Sue Prichard
Hiding the (Fabric) Stash: Collecting, Hoarding, and Hiding Strategies of Contemporary US Quilters, by Marybeth C. Stalp
Needled Women: Representations of Male Conduct in Mapula Embroideries, by Brenda Schmahmann
Pecha Cucha: Lace, by Catherine Harper
The Interpretation of Surface: Boundaries, Systems and Their Transgression in Clothing and Domestic Textiles, c.1880-1939, by Victoria Kelly
Women, Cloth, Fluff and Dust in Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South, by Elodie Neuville
Touching the Hem: The Thread between Garment and Blood in the Story of the Woman with the Haemorrhage, by Barbara Baert
White, the Color of Whispers: Concealing and Revealing Cloth, by Kathleen Connellan

I hope you all enjoy the articles as much as I have.
-Sarah

The list of the Instructors for the 2013 ANWG Conference is out and it is a great line up!

Here is the list directly from the website.

The following instructors will teach seminars and workshops at our 2013 conference. Click on the instructor’s name to jump to that instructor’s bio.

Instructors:

John Beard
Kay Faulkner
Laura Fry
Bonnie Inouye
Bobbie Irwin
Daryl Lancaster
John Marshall
Anita Luvera Mayer
Marilyn Moore
Rosalie Neilson
Terry Olson
Seiko A. Purdue
Marilyn Romatka
Pat Spark
Makiko Tada
Jannie Taylor
Madelyn van der Hoogt
Diane W. Villano
Laverne Waddington
Liz Walker
Heather Winslow
Rebecca Winter
Michele Wipplinger
Bhakti Ziek

I spent the morning at Fido’s Farms, not far from me…a place that trains herding dogs. Hansen School had organized a field trip to see the new lambs, watch herding and agility exhibitions and become herders themselves (of ducks). I demo’d spinning and weaving with a friend. For my efforts, besides lots of smiles, I received “as many fleeces as I want” – and came away with 2 coopworth fleeces. They have LOTS of white fleece, ewe and lamb hogget (first clip, usually considered the finest). It is long medium crimp, not exactly skirted to a spinners specification, but wonderful stuff as best I could quickly determine. Chris Sonderson runs the farm and always has fleece on offer to anyone that wants to use it. Such generosity needs to be taken seriously. I need more fiber like a hole in my head and I have 2? No control.

Google Fido’s Farms to see their website…

Lana

Dues may be paid at the May meeting or the June Picnic.

Dues are deliquent after June 30th. Your name and information will not be in the Year Book. (no phone calls to remind you)

Each person paying dues needs to fill out COMPLETELY the Application Form.

At the last meeting, the weavers voted to continue listing equipment and areas of expertise. In order to update our Year Book, we need you to complete the form (not “same as last year”) Only that information will be used to update.

Thank you for paying your dues on time.

Membership Chairman

In the 21st Century, an on-line presence is vital to every organization, to help members and others find current information. The Olympia Weavers Guild (OWG) is no different. For several years, OWG has had a custom web site, with a simple content management system to enable the web committee-person to change or add certain information on certain pages, with the system taking care of a lot of the formatting issues.

Unfortunately, such a custom system has a fixed number of pages with a lot of fixed data on them, requiring the services of a web programmer to make any major changes. For this reason, many organizations have all but abandoned their traditional web sites in favor of using a social networking site like Facebook for dynamic data. Facebook, however, has some drawbacks obvious to anyone who uses it to keep track of friends and relatives that makes it unsuitable for running a business or organization.

But, in recent years, a class of commercial and open source content management systems have become available that allow anyone who can use a word processor to edit every page on a site and add new pages as needed. Some of the automated formatting features of a custom content manager are no longer available, but there are other features that are very useful. In addition to nearly unlimited freedom in content (and style as well, if the services of a web designer or programmer are retained, or one of the hundreds of freely or commercially-available “themes” is acceptable), the popularity of these systems has been due to the blogging feature included in some of them. A blog (short for “web log,” a type of diary or journal) allows the site owners, members, or subscribers to post essays, including photos and other media, and for responses or comments to be posted by other members and subscribers (or, if you are brave, the general public, which includes off-shore knock-off shoe and handbag factories as well as other types of spammers who are trying to drive up traffic to their sites by getting their name on yours). But, the latter issues are controllable through privacy and policy settings.

OWG has converted their web site to run under WordPress, one of the most popular of the new systems. Many individuals have blogs hosted on http://wordpress.org, but the WordPress software is freely available for anyone to run on their own web domain, and can host a traditional web site as well as support extensive blogging abilities. This move was instigated by the need to make a few changes to the old web site that weren’t included in the content management framework of the old site, but offers the ability to add more pages and photo galleries, including private areas accessible only to members, and the option for each member to contribute their own articles through the blogging feature.

In the near future, all guild members who want one will be given a subscriber account on this system, which can be upgraded to “author” for those who wish to post their own articles in the blog. Members can still contribute photos, event schedules, and news items to be posted on the public pages, by emailing them to the web editor.

We hope you enjoy the new look. [Helpful] feedback and suggestions welcome.