AiR – now day 15…

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The Artist in Residence days have been floating and flying by. I just had 4 wonderful mornings in the studio with people here to learn and to share – I love that so much!

may11_2013_06 the-unveiling

Today was a quiet day doing some weaving in the studio. On Monday, I had been showing one of the weavers how to put on a pre-wound warp and we started putting on the conference silk warp – how luscious! I finished putting it on and started the weaving – so far just using silk as weft too…

blue-silk

Also today, I went to see the new Yarn Shop on Salt Spring – Elderberry Yarns – for their Grand Opening day…

elderberry

…they have “Handspun, hand dyed, locally made, locally grown, fair trade, luxury and quality yarns, fibres and accessories from around the world for knitting, crochet, felting, spinning,
embroidery and leatherwork” – nice!

elderberry-2

and I stopped at the Gulf Islands Spinning Mill to drop off my fleece for washing.

I could get used to this :)

Happy Weaving,
Terri

My website: www.saorisaltspring.com

AiR – Warps, weaving and fleece

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What grand days these have been – the weather just couldn’t be better and I’ve had lots of fun exploring and being in the studio!

AiR – Days 6, 7 & 8

I continue with the weaving of the bobbins to empty them – now on the yellows – photos to come at the end of the bobbins!

The making of warps…Tara’s obi warp…

obi_warp

Weaving …Tara’s obi weaving…

obi_weaving

Visitors to the studio – Tara, Marie & Jay!

Then the unexpected arrival of some local Icelandic Fleece put out in the sun to dry…

icelandic

inspired me to do some weaving with wool roving that has been on my mind for a long time…

wool_roving_loom

wool_roving

Happy Weaving,
Terri

My website: www.saorisaltspring.com

AiR – Weaving in the Community

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Sunday was Ruckle Farm Day – a gathering of community to celebrate the heritage of the Ruckle Farm, the farming community and traditional hand crafts – from churning butter to sawing logs, blacksmithing and many others incluing of course, weaving and spinning. As Mihoko said in a post on Facebook – SAORI – a new tradition!! I love that :)

So the “Blossom Banner” was out in the public once again for one and all to try weaving….

ruckle-weaving

The spinners were also there showing people how to turn fleece into yarn ….

ruckle-weavers-spinners

Facepainting…

face-painting

…and more.

A great time! And then off to a new discovery – Kizmit Cafe – way in the deep south
of the island…a funky, truly Salt Spring experience…

kizmit

kizmit-mirror

kizmit-terri

Happy Weaving,
Terri

My website: www.saorisaltspring.com

AiR Day 3 – Does time exist?

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Have you ever noticed how the hours speed by when you are working on something in the studio? A funny thing happened this week…my clock in the studio stopped…it needs a new battery.

time

And then my watch stopped. Unfortunately it needs more than a new battery. So, what is this all saying to me? How interesting that time stopped at the start of my Artist in Residence. I guess I have ‘all the time in the world’… :)

Day 3 in the studio…

I continued work on my ‘Gathering of the bobbins weaving’ – black into grey into white into purples, next is blues…

And then to do some clothing design. Lynn and I had looked at a piece on my dress form on Wednesday and it all came clear to me and so I got sewing…

Front one way…

pink_front

Another way…

pink_front_2

And a close-up of the fabric – and yarn with beads…

pink_close-up-beads

This top can be worn in different ways – and I don’t think I’ve discovered them all yet.
My design of the finished top all revolved around having that grey stripe (which I wasn’t sure about when I was weaving the cloth) as the featured piece down one side.

In the afternoon we went for a coffee at Fernwood Cafe down by the water – it was such a beautiful day! And then stopped in at the farm just a short walk from our place – the sheep have been shorn.

farm

Happy Weaving,
Terri

My website: www.saorisaltspring.com

Artist in Residence – First days

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Day 1 – Lynn came over from Victoria on my first day of the AiR. How perfect! We had a mini-SAORI kai and shared things that we had each been working on talked about some design and works-in-progress. We also did some planning for a Bengala Dye workshop coming up in August – in Victoria and on Salt Spring Island. We are just working out the details and I’ll announce it as soon as things are finalized.

We also talked about life, family, etc. while we had tea and gluten free raspberry muffins. Lynn brought a fabulous quinoa salad chock full of veggies for lunch. Wonder-full!

I also spent some time on this first day looking a warps that were still on inside sets as I’d like to finish all of these off – and start some new things. One that I pulled out was from 2011! Inspired by the Pics to Picks 2 challenge I had made another warp to try using a combination of wool and bamboo to get collapsed weave sections…

p2p2-inspiration

Now I don’t have any of the yarns – so time to explore this in a new way!

I also took some photos of some of the flowers in bloom for inspiration…

white_blossom  rhody

Day 2 – Today I started out by warping up a 100 x 20 metre SAORI black cotton warp for experimenting.

And then I gathered up all the bobbins in my studio that still had yarn on them…

bobbins

and started weaving.

The rest of my day was preparation for the Workshops on the Rock brochure launch party. Alan and I are both listed in the brochure of doing workshops and retreats. I took my loom with the Blossom Banner on it and invited people to try out SAORI weaving. I met lots of the other artists on the island as well as others that attended the event.

wotr

Now off to the studio for Day 3…

Happy Weaving,
Terri

tcb

My website: www.saorisaltspring.com

Artist-in-Residence

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I’ve always wanted to do an ‘Artist-in-Residence’ program. I’ve thought how lovely that would be – to have some time to just focus on weaving, working with other artists, working in
community. I’ve read about ones all around the world – most recently in Iceland!!

Then one day I came across a couple of posts about an “In House Artist Residency”….doing an Artist-in-Residence program in my own residence and studio. Perfect I thought….and saved these posts (which of course link to many more so I’ll let you explore and discover new things through these)…

Posts:

2011 art fix in-house residency
In-house artist residency literally
DIY Artist Residency
Marketing Mondays – DIY

And planned…..

And now the time has come! Hooray! Starting on May 1 – May Day – I am going to be doing an In-house/In-studio Artist-in-Residence program.

saorissi_studio

Here are some possibilities of things I’d like to think about and explore…

  • making weaving the first priority of my days
  • weaving with others – classes, workshops, retreats, open studio times, weavng with community and continuation of the “Blossom Banner”
  • meeting other artists – inviting them to my studio, visiting theirs,
    seeing more possibilities and connections
  • exploring through reading, writing, photographing – but mostly weaving
  • having one professional photo shoot of my work
  • taking in-progress photos
  • blogging about my experience
  • creating a newsletter/mailing list

And then there’s the weaving…

  • finishing existing warps and weaving, making clothing, etc.
  • exploring all kinds of fibre – silk, jute, local wool, finer threads, stretchy threads, it’s endless…
  • pulling threads
  • felting and weaving
  • clothes making
  • and so much more…a lifetime of possibilities…

And the SAORI philosophy…

  • Someone interpreted one of the SAORI slogans as “Explore with all your might” – that is what I hope to do – while also considering the other slogans too. I want to enter this
    Artist-in-Residency with no expectations and just be open to where things go!

And of course I have to consider my health in this and do everything in a SAORI way
- including boosting my immune system, drinking more water, green smoothies, new recipes and so on.

This doesn’t mean that I won’t be looking at Artist-in-Residence programs in other places – Iceland, Norway, Japan, Peru, etc. That is still a dream of mine…but for now I’m just going to start where I am!

I invite you to join me on this journey as “we learn from each other…”. I’ll be posting here and on Facebook and you can also find me in my studio :)

And a big thank you to those who inspire me and support me!

Happy Weaving,
Terri

My website: www.saorisaltspring.com