Fall Craft Fairs

Cariboo Handwoven has lots going on during the rest of 2017. I'm really looking forward to two fantastic craft fairs. First, on October 28-29 next weekend is the University of Northern BC's Artisans of the North event. This will be my second year there and my booth will be back in the spectacular administration building - yay!

Hours both days are 10-4 with free admission and free parking in UNBC's big parking lots. Here's the website for more info.

Next will be the annual Medieval Market in Williams Lake at the Carson campus of Lake City Secondary School. This is a favourite event for many. The dates are November 25-26 and doors open at 10:00 am. The small admission fee goes towards the students' fundraising efforts.

I'll have lots of wool blankets, big and small cotton blankets, cotton towels in hand and bath sizes, along with some sets of hand and bath towels.

I'll also have blankets and towels for sale in local venues, and I welcome studio visitors if they contact me to arrange a day and time.

This is a fun and special time of the year. Enjoy!

Towel Sets

Continuing on the topic of towels ... my original order for two bath and hand towel sets as a wedding gift created a lot of interest in similar towel sets. I also received an order for hand towels and a fair bit of support and interest that I was finally back in the studio. Of course I promised myself not to try to make up for two months away, but it's hard to stick to that. The fall craft sale season is coming up, I have tons of ideas swirling around in my head, I've been thrilled to be back, and I'm seeing several studio visitors every month while making plans for more.

The original requestor of the towel set received seven bath towels to view and select from,  then I wove the 'closey-matchy' hand towels. Here's a bath towel next to a hand towel being woven. The stripes matched perfectly when the hand towel was finished and washed.

More bath towel photos went out by email to the second interested person, and same thing:

Finished set of one hand and one bath towel

Accompanying set of hand towel and bath towel as a second set, with test hand towel on right

The towel with the brown on the right was a test for a bathroom of blues and brown, but we decided it was a bit of a red herring so it's available on its own.

Here's what the latest recipient of towel sets said:

I was just thinking today that I wanted to send you an email to let you know we love the beautiful towels. The blues are going to be absolutely perfect in [the] bathroom. 

The sets are fun to make, especially when I know interested people are waiting to see them. No one is ever obligated because I do not want pressures or expectations for the potential buyer or the weaver herself. But I do get great ideas through the process - thank you all!

A Special Towel Order

A long-time friend - gee, we go back to our university days working together as summer students in our forestry jobs - well, she has been a big fan of my towels. After I blogged about being back in my studio, what would appear in my inbox but an order for eight towels.

She wrote:

If you have any tea towels similar to the ones below I’d like to get 8 of them please.  Or you could send pictures of what you have in inventory, and I’ll pick from that.

I plan to wrap them with some black currant jelly I made as Christmas gifts.  

All of the towels in the photos she pasted in from my past blog posts had some bright red. So my interpretation for the order of eight was to include bright red in each one. Totally cool idea to wrap homemade jars of black currant jelly in a towel!

I didn't have too many towels left that were that bright and I'd just begun a towel project, so I decided to weave all of them at once for my friend. All her gifts would come from the same warp, which I suppose represents a certain unity from the giver to her recipients.

Here are the towels on the front beam of the loom and then unfurled on the floor.

Little bits of bright red are visible on the edge of the cloth near the centre of the front beam

Unfurling the warp - always a delight for the weary weaver ...

I asked my friend if she wanted photos of each towel to approve of it before I sent it. The response?

Jane those are beautiful! I love them, and don't need to review them.   Please just send the 8 you are thinking of.  I am very excited to get them. 

And this was my way of integrating bright red differently into a variety of towels.

Update:

And here's what my friend wrote to me when she saw the towels with her own eyes:

What gorgeous colours you picked. Some more blue, some more green, and all with some red. You are a Master to create all those variations at one time.  There's even one that sure looks like Christmas trees in the pattern.  Couldn't figure out just how you did that,  but then saw the pictures on your post tonight.  What timing!

That was a special towel order indeed!  Thank YOU!