Category: Saori

  • To teach…or not

    To teach…or not

    Just what is teaching? It means different things to different people. Seeing weavers and weavers-to-be coming to my studio is more like greeting friends and giving them the opportunity to ‘remember’ how they can create with yarn and thread.  Isn’t opportunity and exposure the first aspect of learning. Finding out what you like to do…

  • Getting beyond at Sturt Winter School 2016

    Getting beyond at Sturt Winter School 2016

    Off and away again at Sturt Winter School just keeps getting better. This year we were in a larger room within the Frensham Girls school rather than the traditional, once was a, weavers studio in the Craft centre. It seems a long time since I’ve posted up new pics but I seem to have been…

  • Saori in Tasmania – Hobart

    Saori in Tasmania – Hobart

    The Hobart workshop was hosted Joy (and John) Rees of Nandroya Vineyard. They make Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc wines which really go well with weaving! Again I couldn’t have dreamed up the hospitality I received and can’t thank everyone enough. As the workshop was held in Joy’s weaving studio it enhanced our connection to the long tradition…

  • Saori in Tasmania – Poatina

    Saori in Tasmania – Poatina

    Over the last few weeks I have been travelling and teaching workshops in Tasmania. Every single workshop I do, is a privilege. To be with others as they encounter weaving for the first time, or how participants share their skills and experience of weaving with me, thinking up ways of creating in amongst the warp.…

  • The imagined and real – or East Timor and Brisbane

    The imagined and real – or East Timor and Brisbane

    A couple of big ticks last week. I’ve actually and finally been to Brisbane. It’s shameful to admit that I’d never been there. Just skirting around it over my lifetime. But now it’s done! and I’ll be back. I had the most glorious week weaving everyday under the extraordinary tutelage of Kay Faulkner in her…

  • Pre wound weaving

    Pre wound weaving

    Somehow I’m not really a wool weaver. Never have been. I’ve always enjoyed cotton, silk and cellulose and bast fibres generally. Don’t get me wrong, I love wool and like to spin with it and am into the history of wool and its success in Australia. It’s just that I didn’t have early success with it…

  • A sentient cloth?

    A sentient cloth?

    I know that handwoven cloth isn’t sentient but sometimes it seems ‘alive’. Vibrancy, texture and a sense of spontaneity in the yarn usually mix in such away that the cloth becomes far more than its collection of yarn. At least it seems like that when weavers take to my Saori looms. Pictured here is Christine’s cloth, but…

  • Saori in the Australian bush

    Saori in the Australian bush

    As experiences go, almost nothing can beat a weaving weekend of relaxing creativity, conviviality, alpacas and the most beautiful Australian bush surrounding the town of Braidwood near Canberra. It was a small group of five weavers, some experienced, all textile lovers, a textile student and raw beginners. The perfect mix of a range of people…

  • 57 – and the little snippet project

    57 – and the little snippet project

    Guess what! I’ve turned 57. In Saori weaving this is a bit significant. It is the age when Misao Jo, the founder of Saori in Japan, started weaving by herself. Her sons all married off, and now for time where she could focus on her journey in weave. In a typical course of events, we all…