Sadly, Sturt Winter School has finished for 2015. It was a totally brilliant experience for me and I hope for all the participants. A very great group of humans!

My post title about the flow of our waters is taken from a song by Howqua from Melbourne who performed at Flow Bar today.

“Where the ocean well it turns into the river, And the river well it turns into the creek ”  City Sounds

These lyrics reminded me of how people interact with each other, all of us with different strengths and histories, different experiences, different luck and lives. The way the Saori approach so overtly invites all to weave despite any lack of experience or previous exposure to the craft is part of its ‘seductive’ success. A couple of weavers were established with the Saori style and others had never touched a loom before. One weaver wanted to practice warping which she did for two separate pieces and another was blind and used touch to explore texture and yarn within her woven pieces. In the project time one weaver had a quite detailed creative image of what she was weaving and another took a dramatically different tack with her second textile. The comb reed was used to create curved rivers in the warp and reedless weaving, as the ultimate adventure, produced some exceptional work. Another weaver introduced macrame into his textile weaves, and another went home to create a great garment for her daughter!

The energy and flexibility of the Sturt group and the way they worked the looms was impressive indeed. In total over the five days they wove near 35 metres between eight participants. Of course, output amount isn’t important at all, but if there was a prize for it we might have won.

A very warm thank you to all the weavers – Carolyn, Jen, Renee, Edmond, Louise, Ruth, Maria and Georgie.