Last month I had the pleasure of being with Saori weavers at Morisset Spinners and Weavers in NSW.  A few of the weavers had already ‘caught’ my Saori addiction and the cloth discoveries were so interesting.  Two full days of weaving and getting to know each other eventuated in metres of expressive cloth destined for clothing, wall, warmth and just plain ‘looking at joy’.

Here you can see Carolyn weaving away.  Loads of shuttles and bobbins awaiting their turn through the warp.  I wonder what makes us pick up one colour or texture in preference to another??  

The Morisset weavers are a growing and particularly keen group of weavers. They seemed to lap up everything and their interests in different types of weaving are diverse.

Morisset weavers have a dedicated storeroom and a space to meet and learn weaving and spinning.  Many small places in Australia have these and I’m always heartened that handweaving opportunties survive in pockets everywhere. We’re all thirsty for hands-on craft skill learning and doing it in happy, supportive and conflict free social gatherings. Morisset is managing this well. The historical basis for these groups is the guilds system from England and although this has greatly changed in that the guilds aren’t like unions or political like in previous times, it’s spirit of teaching and passing on skills remains. This history is a very significant one and perhaps one that we don’t promote enough. 

You can see by the photos that weaving metres in a few hours was normal and we went beresque with the wavy thing again too. A warm thank you to Lyn, Carolyn, Maria, Ken, Carol, Marie and Lorraine Banks.