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okay we’re gonna get started hello everyone and welcome to our workshop weaving language with kim mccollum my

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name is michael magnuson i’m the new public program and outreach coordinator at the art gallery of alberta to start

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this program i would like to do a land acknowledgement the aga is located in edmonton which is

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on treaty six territory the traditional land of our diverse indigenous peoples including cree

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blackfoot metis nicotisou iroquois denae inuit and ojibwe salto anishinabe we

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acknowledge nixon gratitude to the many first nations metis and inuit whose footsteps have

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marked these lands for generations and who continue to call this place home today

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this program will start by having kim introduce their work in the scene exhibition then ken will introduce the weaving

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activity and teach you how to make a simple lumen weaving at the end of the program there will be a few moments for a q a with kim

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also feel free to ask uh questions or if you have any things that you like kim to troubleshoot throughout the

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workshop uh this event is part of the public program for the exhibition the scene at the aga curated by lindsey sherman

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and danelle siemens the scene celebrates what’s happening in art right now in edmonton this exhibition presents exciting

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experimental work from artists based in or closely connected to edmonton the scene puts the spotlight on

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emerging to mid-career practices while presenting a cross-section of the city’s art scene it’s currently

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currently on display so you can check it out at the aga whenever you have a chance this program

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is being recorded and will be shared at a later date if you don’t want to be recorded you can hide your video if you’re comfortable please have your

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video and mic on during this workshop uh before we get started i want to thank our sponsors our public programs are

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made possible in part through support from the heart and soul fund by epcor

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now i would like to introduce kim uh kim mccollum’s work explores relationships between digital and analog old and new hand and

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machine as technology advances and our world shifts towards the digital society is losing the tactic and

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material knowledge formed by making things by hand mccalm’s work explores how ancient craft

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practices in contemporary technology are linked mccomb holds an mfa from the

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university of alberta and is a creator of networks within a local craft and arts community in edmonton

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connecting people and ideas through her work as an artist event organizer and as an educator she

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co-owns gather textiles a workshop space and community community building initiative

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without further delay here is kim

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hi everybody thank you so much for being here and thank you to michael

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for that introduction and to helen for getting us set up with all the tech today and thank you to the aga for having me

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um it’s so exciting to actually be able to do a workshop even though i

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realize it’s not quite the same as having something in person i appreciate you taking the time to be here with me

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um so without any further ado i think i’ll dive right in um so i’m going to start by sharing a

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bit about my work at the aga and some reasons why weaving has captivated me personally

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and then i’ll show you how to create your own weaving use using things that hopefully you have

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with you today and you might have just had lying around the house you might not finish your entire weaving today and

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that’s okay but hopefully you’ll have the skills you need to finish it on your own afterwards

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so in the exhibition the scene i have both weavings and paintings on display and in this image here you can see the

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weavings are on the left of the screen and a cluster together and then there’s three large paintings and in the next

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slide you’ll see that these paintings are quite large they’re 72 by 80

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inches and they really came out of my experience learning to weave so i’ll start there um when i was first

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trying to figure out how to weave on my own i was doing things like looking on youtube and trying to learn online and i really

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found that it wasn’t the best way to learn it was a great way to learn some really basic skills

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but with weaving the complexity of it the reality is you really need to learn

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in person or you need to learn from an expert and those kinds of things are really hard to find online

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leaving can take a lifetime really to explore the complexities of it and um learning from other people really

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became the one way for me to kind of dive deeper into that so i started collecting things like

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books and old samples and things that were passed down to me through members of the edmonton weaver’s guild

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and i have some of those samples here today that i’ll show you um let me just see which um

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can people see this camera too oh yes i’ll hold some things up so weavers like

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to trade patterns and they do that often either with paper patterns or by

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um actually making little samples and sharing them with each other and these are some samples from old

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books that have been given to me and these little samples hold a lot of

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knowledge once you know how to kind of read them i’m not sure what the light is like i’m

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hoping you can kind of see these

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so these i started learning how to understand about weaving by taking these things apart

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and while i was collecting these samples i was also collecting stories that came with them

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and so certain patterns are often associated with certain things and handed down and shared kind of like recipes

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um the diamond shapes are often referencing things like protection houndstooth is a symbol for

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wealth and it’s a tradition to trade these sorts of things or even trade full tea towels in weaving communities

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and gifts are all often given of hand woven baby blankets or wedding blankets or tea towels and there’s different symbols

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that are associated with different patterns that are given um and often people talk weavers

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talk about the idea that each thread is touched by the weaver in the process of making

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a textile um so we’ll just hop back to the paintings

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just for a second helen um thank you these these three paintings are based on the structure of

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overshot and that’s the weaving term to describe how the threads hop over more than one

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thread at a time and it’s quite complex and i won’t dive into too much of how they’re actually made

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but the history of overshot um was used to create coverlets so these paintings are about

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the size of a bedspread and because the motif was symbolic

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for things like protection and comfort with these particular overshot

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structures there’s a center point so the idea is that the pattern can kind of expand and repeat

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indefinitely so these paintings were made originally by dissecting some of the little samples

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like i showed you that were handed down to me and uploading them into a computer program to help

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expand them it can also be done by hand and then eventually translating those

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expanded patterns into something in paint and so the actual

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little sample that i had didn’t look at all like the paintings but they were kind of like a small key or code um for what the paintings

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ended up being so overshot has its roots in european weaving but became popular in the u.s

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and canada in about the 1700s i also just wanted to mention a bit

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about my personal connection to textiles as a child when my mom would add things to my hope chest so i don’t know if

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if people have heard that term before but i come from a mennonite family and a hope chest was a box or a chest

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that was used to collect linens that would be given to the daughter usually it was the eldest daughter which

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is me and my family when they go out and get married and there’s a lot about this tradition that

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i don’t necessarily hold like i kind of wholeheartedly reject the idea of you know

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collecting linens to be doing the dishes and making the beds etc etc but i think there’s also something

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beautiful about that too about collecting these handmade things that are from my family and these textiles

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that were really valued as symbols of of care and love being passed down

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so that was kind of my personal connection to collecting these things like these small samples and

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like hand woven tea towels so the paintings i make are made in the effort to understand or visualize

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weaving as a form of communication or language and as a way of holding the language of women that is passed

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down and evolved through generations it’s also a way of bringing attention to knowledge that i feel is slowly getting

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lost but also bringing attention to ways that it is very much present in society which i’ll talk about a

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little bit later so we can move on to the the weaving drafts on the next slide

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weaving information is passed down in the form of paper patterns called drafts

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and they can be read in any language because they’re made of shapes some that are similar across cultures so

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these are just two examples in these images here um i’ve been trading drafts recently

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with a moroccan weaver that i met when i went there in 2018 and although he doesn’t speak english

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and i don’t speak arabic i think it’s a really interesting way of being able to communicate back and forth just based on these codes

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and so there’s this kind of really exciting moment when these codes are passed to me via email or in

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the mail and then i can weave the actual fabric without having seen the fabric being made

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in morocco so that’s just an example to kind of share how these patterns are something that are

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able to be passed and they are language in and of themselves without needing to be translated in any way

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these particular samples are by margaret willers she was a weaver at the bauhaus and

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they’re currently in an archive at the met museum so i think for me one of the beautiful

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things about weaving is that it’s the result of this collective work of people primarily women around the world who

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have built up this body of knowledge that over time has this incredibly powerful way of thinking

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and understanding the world and on the next slide here you can see

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a close-up of one of the paintings and each square represents one intersection

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where one vertical thread meets one horizontal thread and so in a way these paintings are made

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like the weavings are that you’re going to make today in that there’s this horizontal and vertical

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structures that are connecting in order to make certain patterns

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in the next slide there’s a quote um from a really fabulous book that i’d recommend to anybody interested in this

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topic um for my first direct evidence 20 000 years ago cloth has been the handiest solution to conveying social

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messages visually silently continuously and i really like this quote i think because

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it really seems to emphasize the fact that communicating through cloth isn’t something that’s necessarily very

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um noticed it often goes unrecognized because these messages are silent they are visual

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um and it’s something that i think we’re just as a society starting to recognize and understand and learn more about

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now as the work of particularly women artists are starting to get recognized on a larger scale

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and then in the next slide here um i love some good etymology so i had to just

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throw a couple of words in here um the etymology etymological traces of the connection

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between weaving and writing or language is evident in numerous languages and cultures and you can see in english here

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how weaving and fibers and textiles has really made its way into our language

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and we’ve probably used many if not all of these words um in your day to day especially

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now thinking about things like the net the internet and how there’s this relationship

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between textiles and the digital world which i’ll talk about a little bit in a moment

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we’re going to move on to some some basics about looms because the looms that we’re going to be making

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today um are these tiny little things and you can yes and i put our little photo of this little guy

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on the far left and it’s almost to scale but if i actually made it to scale you wouldn’t really be able to see the

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one that we’re using um so this is kind of the most simple loom

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that you can possibly use but i wanted to share just a little bit about what looms are out there so this is just

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a tiny sample of the huge number of looms that are being made now and that have been used in the

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past um the second from the left is a rigid header loom and that means that it just has two sets

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of threads that are what has one set of threads that’s able to be either raised or lowered in a

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really simple kind of way and then in the one to the right of that it has a four different shafts

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and i can’t don’t have time today to get into how the mechanisms of that work but it allows you to create all sorts of

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different kinds of patterns like in this example this is a four

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shaft weaving pattern and you can see that it’s quite a lot more intricate than what we’ll be doing today and then

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furthest to the right is a punch card loom which is an early jacquard loom um and it’s a

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type of loom that uses cards to raise and lower different shafts so it makes the loom work in a

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certain kind of way and it’s it’s um was a stepping stone towards the first computer and the first computer used

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punch cards that were inspired by the weaving loom and that’s a connection that i find

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really interesting and important because i think often the contributions of women to this part of technology go um

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unnoticed and untalked about or not talked about and i think this is kind of a really

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important moment in history when um this kind of collective knowledge that has been created by generations of

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primarily women weavers just kind of takes off and becomes this

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incredible force in the development of humanity in terms of computers and then eventually

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the internet um i think i won’t get too far into this

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or else i could go on about this for quite a while but i just like the the idea of how

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it gets really complicated when this way of thinking of either over under or if the thread goes

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over another thread or under another thread and weaving yes the answer is either over or under but there’s also a lot of

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in-between things in the way that you know a fabric can spread out it can squish it can form to

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your body but then when this way of thinking got translated into computer technology it’s either a zero

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or it’s a one in computer code and there’s no room for that kind of in between and so i think that’s kind of

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an important distinction between um what happens on a weaving loom and then what happened with this

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transition of technology to computers i’ll leave i’ll leave that there for now

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but if you’re interested in that kind of thing let’s talk later about that

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all right weaving 101 this is going to be the fastest like how what is weaving that i’ve done okay

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so you have your warp and you have your weft on our little loom here the warp is this

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brown hemp thread that’s going vertically and it’s held under tension and it’s

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represented in blue in this image and then the weft is what you’re going to be using to go over and under each

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warp thread back and forth horizontally on your loom

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so the process of weaving involves the interlacement of those two sets of thread and the second set of threads that’s

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called the left is manipulated by the weaver after the loom is set up and the most basic of weave

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structures or interlacements is called plane weave and that’s just over under over under like is shown in this image and that’s

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where we’re going to start today um and plain weave is the most strong and the most stable of weave structures

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and is the basis of all weaving so if you are a total newbie today this is exactly where you should be starting

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so we’re going to go ahead and make a loom together and you don’t need a lot you need a

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cardboard box um the lid of a shoe box works really well but the actual shoe box works too

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i like to have something that’s fairly sturdy because i don’t want my loom falling apart and you’re going to need

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to put some kind of tension on your loom as you use it so you don’t want it totally caving in on

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you so the example when i did is just a tiny little box like this the one that i’m going to

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be using today is a bit bigger um and the first thing you want to do

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is you need to cut little spaces for the thread to fit and i’ve done one side already and i’m

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going to just hold this up so you can kind of see oops other side

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okay so i’ve made these little slits in the top of my box and the slits go down about half a

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centimeter and they’re about just under a centimeter in terms of width this isn’t an exact

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science it kind of depends what kind of yarn you have but that’s a good place to start if you have thicker yarn

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wider spacing is better if you have thinner yarn thinner spacing is better but if you do these spaces too close

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together you’ll find that the cardboard won’t be strong enough and things will kind of start to cave in on you

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so for the purposes of today i’ve made about between 10 and 15 little slots here and

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i’m going to make 10 or 15 little slots on the opposite side of my box that line up as closely as possible so

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you can see i have an open box here so if you have a box that’s closed all the way like if you’re using a cereal

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box or something you’ll want to make sure that you open one end of it so you have a top that’s open

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and i’ve cut the sides kind of out of this one and i’ve done that on my sample one too

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but a lot more subtly you can kind of see the side profile here just subtle it’s just enough so that the

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sides of the box stay out of your way while you’re weaving so as you kind of work on that i’m going

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to be cutting the slots in my box on the other side

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and maybe i’ll go over here so you can kind of see from the top down what i’m doing

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i’m going to count to make sure i have the same number on both sides

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so i’m just going to kind of keep powering through here and if you’re still making your loom

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while i’m doing this next part that is totally okay

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so weaving can be done with just about any kind of yarn but some yarn is better than others and

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for your warp yarn so if you remember that’s the yarn that’s going to be held under tension on our looms

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we want to find something that’s fairly strong and not too stretchy cotton is ideal for new weavers but

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because we’re just kind of using whatever you’ve got around the house that’s what we’re going to use the warp is held under some tension and so it

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just needs to be strong enough to be able to handle being abraded as you weave so

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warp yarn is more picky and weft yarn you can use pretty much anything so if you have some yarn in your stash

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there that’s strong and that it can with hand a little bit of an abrasion that would be a great choice for your warp

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and you also need to have enough of it to kind of go back and forth back and forth between 10 or 15 times so you need a

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good chunk of it so what i’m going to be using is this

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twine i have here and i’m going to leave it on the spool

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and just work with the end attached because i’m not sure exactly how much i want

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i’m going to need and i’d rather not have to cut it and tie it together although you could do that if you needed

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to so when you’re ready to attach your warp yarn to your box loom you need to tie a knot

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on the end so this is just a regular overhand knot

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and i might just make one more on top of that so it’s nice and big and not going to go anywhere

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[Music] and then i’m going to start what’s

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called dressing my loom it seems like a bit of a fancy term for what we’re doing right now but if you

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start using more complex looms and you can really see that the dressing your loom process is actually quite

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intense and can take several days depending on what you’re up to but not to worry

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this is going to be nice and quick and painless i hope for our cardboard looms so i’m going to show you this part here

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um you can start dressing your loom on any of the corners that you

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have created with your slots here so it doesn’t matter i usually start in the bottom right hand

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corner just out of habit so that’s what i’m going to do here and i’m going to come under i’m hoping

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you can see this well on this camera here and slide the thread

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into that first slot

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the knot is holding it from going through there and the tail is just sticking out and that’s fine

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i can see a couple of people with boxes that look good thank you

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and then you’re going to bring your thread and put it through this far

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right slot on the top

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so while you’re doing this you want to use some tension so you want to have as snug tension as

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you can that’s not going to make your knot slip out or make your cardboard box collapse or break your

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thread but apart from that nice and snug is great so i’m gonna go around the box now

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and then when i come up again at this same spot i’m going to go through my second slot so what these

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slots are really doing for us is i’m going to come over here so you can see me a little bit better

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is separating the threads so that they’re about evenly spaced

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so we’re going to go around again

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okay

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so if you can see i’m going all the way around and it’s not perfect on the bottom it

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doesn’t not have to be as long as it looks pretty good on the front

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and then you keep going all the way around you might have seen if you’ve done any googling about

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looking for cardboard looms you may have seen some that just kind of wrap around the edge and come back so all the yarn is on the

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surface and you could do that too but why i like to go all the way around is so then

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i have extra yarn at the edges that i can use for fringe or to tie knots it’s nice not to have to kind of

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fiddle with the little bits at the end so wrapping all the way around gives you a little bit more leeway there

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so keep going until you’ve wrapped around and used up all of your 10 to 15 slots and i’m gonna do that now

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you’re probably going to get ahead of me because i’m talking and distracted

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if while you’re doing this if you have any questions about how to set up your loom or how to dress

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your cardboard loom you’re welcome to ask those questions

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one thing that i get asked quite a bit is what do you do if you want to change colors or what do you do if you run out of thread and i’m going

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to show you that now um just because well we’ll have an easier time later if

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that happens so what i’m going to do is imagine that this is the end of my thread here and i want to change colors or change

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materials now i wouldn’t recommend changing from like a linen that doesn’t stretch at all to

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say a wool that stretches a good bit because then it’s going to be difficult while you’re weaving to kind of manage that change in

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tension so i’m choosing to change from kind of a hemp linen blend to another linen and

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neither of those stretch hardly at all so that way my warp will be consistent but i’ll still have a bit of a change in

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texture which might make my weaving kind of fun so i’m just tying a knot

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tying them together at the bottom of my box because i don’t really want the knot as part of my loom just a simple knot

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there you can see it’s just at the bottom of my box out of the way and then i’m going to continue as i was

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doing

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before

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if you’re noticing that you’re getting a lot of sagging at the top like you should you should see them

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fairly straight like i have a little bit of sag in this very first one which i’ll adjust later but it should be fairly taut and nice and

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straight across

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so

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okay so i’ve come to the end here so i’ve got all my

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slots are full and i have changed colors in the middle or changed the colors the same i’ve

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changed materials and now i’m going to tie a knot at the end to stop it from unraveling so i’m just going to

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cut my edge i gave myself enough of a tail that i

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can tie a knot it’s no fun trying to tie a knot with a tiny little piece at the end so be generous with yourself

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and then i’m going to actually tie this to the thread beside it here and maybe

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i’ll go over here again so you can kind of see how i do that i’m trying to maintain as much of the tension as i can

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so just going under that one beside it

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and through and then again

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to make a knot you could really make a knot any kind of way that you want as long as

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it’s not going to slide out of there this isn’t really a magic knot per se but it works well for me

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okay now

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i’m taking a look at it it’s not perfect perfect perfect but it’s good

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enough for me to start weaving and you can see what it looks like on the sides there

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so does anyone have something that’s starting to look like a loom okay okay we’ve got a couple

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very nice all right

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i want to say a couple things about materials well while people are finishing up making their looms

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um and that is that one of the exciting things that can happen in weaving is the change that happens

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once weaving is off the loom and washed and we call this wet finishing so some weavers believe that cloth isn’t really

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cloth until it’s wet finished and that’s because this process makes the fibers bind together

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and truly join to each other and that’s when the web of a weaving really becomes

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cloth so that’s one of the reasons why weavers generally really like to use natural

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materials so things like cotton or linen or wool and that’s because when you decide to wash your project

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after you can get all sorts of beautiful effects that are purposely made through the combinations of different

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kinds of materials and for the project we’re doing here today you may not want to wash it maybe you want to put it

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in a frame on your wall maybe you want to use it as a mug rug maybe you want to throw it out because

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you’re embarrassed and start over any of those are totally okay or if you like you can come

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visit me at gather textiles on a tuesday or thursday or sunday and show it off to me that

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would be fun too so for the purposes of what we’re doing today the wet finishing doesn’t matter

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much but if you were to make something like a blanket for instance you’d really want to consider how the fibers will react when they’re washed

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and so you’ll need to think about things like how much do these different fibers shrink

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do does my work shrink a lot but my weft knot and how will that affect the size of my finished piece

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and also it’s great to use things like natural fibers compared to acrylic yarns because

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they’re better for the environment and will degrade after the fact which even heirloom pieces that last generations

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eventually we do want them to degrade although there are times in places where acrylic is great

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and one of those places is when you’re finding reused things around your house that you can make

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um into a secondhand weaving that holds different pieces of your own story that

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you found from around your home and so i definitely would encourage you to use anything that you’ve got

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today okay so we’re feeling the tension as we go we

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think that our warp is ready and we are ready to start weaving

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so i hope that you have something like a tapestry needle with you today and that can be a tapestry needle that’s

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a big wooden one like i have i like this guy because it’s nice and

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big and i don’t lose it and it has a nice big hole so i don’t have to

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worry about threading it very much but i also often will use this little guy

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and this is probably what i imagine many of you might have and this is great too if you don’t have

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a tapestry needle at all you can use your fingers or you can cut something out in the shape of this out of some stiff

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cardboard if you’re feeling crafty so either way you will be able to weave today and

32:59

using your fingers is a great place to start especially if you have some thicker yarns to use

33:05

so i’m going to start with some nice chunky yarn that i dyed ages ago

33:13

because it’s i think quite easy to see and the first step is to thread your

33:18

tapestry needle and you want a piece that is i like to say between maybe

33:25

30 and 60 centimeters or so with weaving you can add yarn quite

33:32

easily so you don’t have to worry about cutting and having to add more later so

33:38

this is my piece that i’ve got and i’m threading my needle here

33:44

i’m glad i can thread it sometimes when people are watching me i just can’t thread the needle but so far so good

33:50

all right now i’m going to move right under this

33:56

camera so you can see me well over here and this is the very

34:01

first part of part of my weaving and so i need to do something to make sure that my weaving just doesn’t fall apart

34:09

so to do that i’m actually going to start weaving not right at the edge but near the edge with my needle facing

34:16

towards the right hand side now if you’re left-handed you can start on the other side if it’s more comfortable

34:22

for you it really doesn’t matter which side you start on but we’re going to start in plane weave so what that means is over

34:28

under over under and i’m going to start about four threads in here

34:34

under over under and it could be you know you could do a

34:41

couple more stitches in you just want to have a couple and once you see the next step i think it’ll make

34:47

sense why i’m doing this i’m going to tuck the tail out the back

34:52

of the weaving and then now i’m ready to start my first real row so this is just kind of an anchor point

34:59

and now i’m going to start my first weaving row so if i’m ended up going under my last warp thread

35:04

i’m going to go over it on my way back so over under over under over under

35:13

until i get to the end and then pull through

35:20

and then here is where you can use your your fork if you’ve got a fork with you i have a kind of fancy little thing

35:26

that’s called a beater but it’s essentially a glorified pretty fork

35:32

and you can use this tool to pack down your thread

35:40

all the way to the bottom of your box

35:48

that looks pretty good now i’m just going to show you that very

35:53

first part one more time because it’s often somewhere where i find people kind of get stuck with how to start the thread

36:00

so i’ve threaded my needle i start with my needle pointing to the

36:06

outside edge go a couple of threads in over under

36:12

over under pull my thread almost all the way through but not

36:18

and push the tail out the back and then since i went over this warp thread on

36:24

the edge i’m going to go under it on my way back first and then alternating over

36:29

under over under over under until i get to the edge of my weaving

36:37

i’m going to be careful not to over pull it or it’ll come right out and then you pack it down with your fork

36:44

or your your beader tool

36:49

and when you’re ready for your next row you want to make sure you’re paying attention to the very edge here

36:54

and if your thread went under the last warp thread if your weft thread went under the last warp thread

37:00

then on your way back you have to go over but if yours is the opposite say you’re you end it on top then you start

37:06

by going under so it’s important that it’s the opposite so that you catch this edge thread which in weaving we

37:12

call this the selvage thread or the selvage edge so now i’m going back

37:17

same idea over under over under over under over under

37:25

now it’s tempting to pull this really snug because it can be kind of satisfying to pull it snug

37:30

however if you do that you’ll find that your weaving gets narrower and narrower and narrower all the way up to the top

37:37

and then you will have a very skinny weaving at the top which maybe that’s what you want if so

37:43

great but if you want a more even weaving i recommend trying to keep that nice and loose and

37:48

using this little angle here to make sure that there’s enough weft yarn to really go over and under each

37:55

warp thread there you can pack it in so if you’re using a

38:00

really fine thread it can take a few passes back and forth to make it look like you’ve got anything

38:06

and if you’re finding that’s a situation for you one trick is to double or triple up your thread so if you just have

38:11

something really fine you can use several pieces together to make it bigger that’s often what i do if i’m near the

38:18

end of a workshop and people are having a hard time finishing then all of a sudden we just start using

38:24

a lot thicker thread and it goes a lot faster so it’s a quick little trick if you’re um wanting to

38:30

speed things up a little bit but on that note um i do think that weaving is one of the

38:37

few things in life that’s allowed to be slow and that is just totally fine i think

38:43

it’s kind of a way of engaging but also engaging with the making of a fabric but also resisting kind of that

38:50

idea of mass production and so if you’re um finding yourself feeling like you’re not making things

38:56

fast enough try and just kind of reframe how you think about um weaving and see if you can find

39:03

some enjoyment in the actual process of it because hey if we wanted to make cloth as fast as possible we’d be

39:11

you know ordering something online or using some kind of fancy tool and we’re just making cloth by hand

39:17

today so the same thing i’ve got a bit of an angle here

39:23

over under over under packing it in and you can see it i have something that

39:30

almost looks like cloth now and i’m coming near the end of

39:35

my tail so when i get to the end of my weft yarn here i’ll show you how to

39:42

transition into a new piece of yarn

39:56

okay so i know i don’t have enough to go all the way back with this tiny little piece here so what i’m going

40:01

to do is just go back as far as i can go and i’m just going to use my fingers because my needle would just get in the

40:06

way at this point and then i’m just going to push it down and tuck the tail out the back

40:14

and then i’m going to get my next piece so i’m going to decide to use a different

40:20

type of yarn this time and cut another piece maybe just a little longer than the one before but

40:27

you can choose whatever length you want based on how much of that section you want to weave

40:41

so i’ve threaded my needle and i’m ready to start weaving again now i want to overlap that part that i

40:48

just did by about half an inch or an inch or so that way it doesn’t unravel there’s a

40:54

couple different ways to start new threads i could start a totally new thread on the opposite side if i wanted but i’m just going to show you the very

41:00

simple way of just overlapping about an inch because i find it’s sort of the easiest and what i end up

41:06

doing most often myself so i’m going to start this row following the same over under pattern as

41:13

i was using before so i’m following the exact pattern of that thread that just ended there

41:21

but then i’m going to keep going with it

41:26

and then when i pull this thread through

41:33

i’m gonna leave it overlapping just a little bit there so when i pack

41:39

it down you can see there’s this one or two

41:45

threads where i have both the blue and the new white one going the same direction so i’m hoping

41:52

that you can kind of see that um but i’m going to hold it up to the bigger i don’t think the camera is

41:57

bigger for you here too so you can kind of see how i’ve doubled up in that spot right

42:03

there

42:09

and then continue as you were going so i’m going over this selvage thread so

42:15

my next row goes underneath you can see i’m using my needle kind of in the center

42:21

here and then packing it down and i’m doing that because in the center is where the warp threads

42:27

have the most give um and so it’s easier to get my needle

42:34

through it can be tempting and i’ve seen lots of people um they put their needle right

42:39

above where they want the thread to be and that actually puts extra strain on the warp threads and can

42:44

end up making things stretch out more

42:52

so does anyone have anything weird going on any problems any

42:58

funky things that we should look at feel free i have a quick question i

43:04

don’t have a problem but i grabbed a big piece of thread and i don’t know how

43:10

when i’m done it do i tie do i make a knot i missed that part yeah great question okay let’s just pretend

43:17

that mine ended again and i’ll show you

43:24

okay

43:33

all right so this is going to this thread is going to end really quick here and i think i have enough for maybe one

43:40

more row let’s see

43:50

i’m packing this down fairly tight so i can barely see my warp through it but depending on the the

43:56

[Music] size of your warp and weft you might be able to see your warp more or less

44:01

it’s just an aside um okay so i’m getting towards the end of this

44:07

thread and this one’s going to end just right in the middle

44:13

and so when i add my next one in say i’m going to use more of the same

44:19

thread here i’m just going to start about an inch

44:26

back so i overlap a little bit

44:33

i’m going to not pack them in just so that you can see better visually kind of how i’m adding this next one

44:48

so both tails get pushed out the back of the weaving and the threads overlap by about an inch

44:56

and that’s enough to be strong enough to hold the weaving together

45:02

now it definitely depends on the materials you’re using if you’re using a really slippery silk this might not do

45:07

the trick and you might need to overlap more or use a different technique but for most fibers and for what we’re doing

45:13

today that should be strong enough

45:21

if you’re using wool wool really likes to cling to itself quite well and so you can get away with

45:27

quite a lot but with more slippery kinds of fibers they don’t always

45:32

want to hold together quite the same now when you’re beading down you can get

45:38

all sorts of different kinds of effects so i’ve used a fairly light beat up

45:44

until now but i could really squish these in like crazy and make a much more tightly packed

45:50

weaving if i wanted to it really depends what you are trying to make

45:55

generally um in weaving you aim for what’s called a 50 50 weave which means that the density of

46:03

the warp and weft are the same but often with the tapestry style of weaving

46:08

you use a lot more weft than you do warp and that’s just because it’s often a way

46:13

to use um to make images and where you want to be changing what the warp or what the

46:19

weaving looks like throughout the process so you don’t want that consistency of the same color

46:24

everywhere but for what we’re doing today if you have a 50 50 kind of balance or if you have a lot

46:31

more weft facing either of those is

46:40

great

46:45

so after you feel like you kind of have the hang of plain weave it’s a great opportunity to

46:52

start changing some things like what if you were to change your material start using

46:59

something a lot finer or a lot thicker or what if you were to start changing

47:06

the way that you go over and under the warp threads maybe you go over two warp threads then under one

47:13

over two under one then you create a different kind of pattern

47:21

depending on the material that i’m using i will often change the weave structure so i’ve been using

47:27

plain weave up until this point but soon i’m going to add in some fabric

47:33

strips that i had lying around and i’m going to use a different

47:38

weave structure there because it’s going to be a really thick piece that i don’t think would work very well in plain weave

47:48

you can see this this weft thread that i’m using right now is kind of a thick and thin

47:53

so some areas are really poofy and some areas are really fine and so it’ll kind of

47:59

change how my weaving looks throughout but that’s okay i know it’s going to kind of even out as i go

48:07

if you’re finding things are starting to slip around like sometimes as you weave your

48:14

warp threads will get a little bit looser or they won’t seem to be holding together as well you can adjust things by just pulling on

48:21

your warp threads on the side of your box and then just doing that a little bit

48:26

right now to make sure my tension is still good and it looks like it’s okay

48:39

there are lots of different ways to make this kind of weaving more efficient and lots of different

48:45

add-ons that you can use to a simple loom and i’ll show you one of

48:50

those little tricks

48:58

okay so one of the little tricks to be a little bit more efficient is if you have

49:03

an extra needle or if you have a popsicle stick or if you have a pencil

49:09

or something that’s long and skinny what you can do is weave it in over under over under

49:16

all the way across and then turn it so you have a little bit of a space

49:23

between the sets of threads kind of push it to the back of your loom i’m just going to show what i’ve done

49:29

here up close so you can see

49:34

you can kind of see how that creates this space it’s called in weaving we call this a

49:39

shed between the sets of threads so now when you use your tapestry needle

49:46

i’m going to switch to my finer one here because i used my other one

49:54

then you can pass it through easily without having to go over under over

50:00

under every time it’s just a simple pass through so it’s a great little trick however

50:06

it’s not perfect because it doesn’t work going the other direction so it only really helps you

50:12

out for every second pass or in weaving we use the word pick every second pick

50:18

because i can’t use it to go back this way so i would have to still kind of normally go

50:23

this direction but it’s a the tool that speeds things up i think

50:29

maybe 20 percent or something so it can be helpful

50:36

as you’re designing your little weaving here to keep in mind that although we’re

50:41

starting right at the very base here we’re not going to be able to weave all the way to the very top because once

50:49

you get to near the top it starts to get really tricky to get your needle in there it’s not impossible but it’s just not

50:55

comfortable and i usually find when i get about you know three quarters of the way up it’s time to call it and so i’m going to

51:03

use this little trick again here by passing through this space makes it a little bit faster

51:11

and then i’m going to take that out because you’ve seen how that works and i think it’s a little bit easier to show you what’s

51:17

going on without it okay i’m going to tuck this tail in here and then i’m going to show you

51:24

what i’ll do with some fabric here

51:29

all right so you might have a strip of fabric like this that you

51:34

have or that you can cut or you might have just a really chunky piece of yarn that you want to use for

51:41

this or you might have something like a chocolate bar wrapper or something

51:48

creative you want to feather i don’t know something that you want to try incorporating something that you have

51:54

lying around the house and you can use your tapestry needle if

52:00

it’ll fit but i’m just going to use my fingers because i don’t think that i’m going to have room in my tapestry needle

52:08

and for this part i’m going to actually not go over and under one at a

52:14

time but i’m going to jump over two at a time so i’m going to start by going under one to just secure it then i’m going to

52:22

go over two threads under one thread over two threads

52:28

under one over two under one over two under one

52:36

and you can see that it’s going to show this warp here

52:44

which is fine because i kind of like how that looks i think and then i’m going to cut this

52:49

tail you could i’m going to leave a bit of it hanging because it’s kind of what i feel like doing

52:55

today but you could cut it fairly close if you wanted

53:01

and i’m not going to beat this in because it’s going to get squished in by the next row that i use

53:08

so i’m going to cut a bit more yarn and i’m going to start weaving on top of that row

53:13

now the over two under one thing is just kind of an arbitrary choice that i made you could try all

53:18

sorts of things you could go over six under two you could um kind of do whatever you want

53:24

maybe even changing it as you go to kind of see what happens when you change how you’re interlacing the

53:32

warp and the left together

53:39

okay i’m going to um

53:45

start again on top of this so because i’m starting a new thread i’m starting with my needle facing out again

53:51

i’m going to tuck that tail in

53:56

so at this point you can feel free to start experimenting with different ways

54:03

of going over and under each warp thread or you can stick kind of following along with me whatever you prefer

54:13

all right and as i beat this piece in i’m going to squish this fabric down a bit too

54:19

and that’s going to hold it in place and also kind of make it pop out a little and it’s going to do that a

54:26

little bit more every pass that i do here for the next little bit

54:47

so using things like rags that you have around the house is something that weavers have done for generations

54:54

making rugs out of rags is a really popular weaving technique and it’s something

54:59

that we’ve been doing in the shop at gather textiles a lot lately so if you’re interested in that you can come

55:06

check out what we’ve been working on

55:13

there’s also some really fabulous rag rug weavers that are part of the edmonton weaver’s guild

55:19

and so once they start to open up again hopefully in the fall i think

55:25

um it’s worth going in and meeting some of the weavers there

55:30

and seeing what they’re up to because they’ve always got something new and exciting

55:45

okay so now that this fabric is pretty securely put in there you can kind of mess around

55:52

with it like maybe you want it to kind of bubble out a little more

56:00

you can play with that if you want or if you like it as is great you can keep weaving

56:18

there are so many different kinds of tapestry techniques one thing that you could try if you have

56:24

extra tapestry needles is weaving with two different needles at the same time

56:30

um i’m not going to demo that today but that’s something that you can do by

56:36

using two different colors together and alternating say like white blue white blue white blue

56:42

and you can get different kinds of effects that

56:57

i’m way to show you though how to do a technique called a riot making a ryan knot um

57:04

i think quite a few people lately have asked me about making wall hangings and making ryan

57:10

knots is a really popular technique used for making wall hangings because it adds

57:16

extra fringe um so if you notice what i just did there my weaving got a bit too tight so

57:23

i just kind of took it out and then putting it back in because i saw it sort of pulling in on the sides it’s really tricky not to

57:31

get your weaving to pull in on the sides it kind of wants to do that so if you’re finding yours is coming in on the sides

57:37

don’t give yourself too hard a time about it because it’s just a part of the process

57:46

all right ryan nuts so i need something that’s nice and easy to see for you so

57:53

i’m going to choose my blue again okay

58:09

so this is a little tricky to learn via a screen i’m sure so i’ll do it a couple

58:15

of times and you can see if you can follow me here so you can choose any spot where you want to have

58:21

a little bit of extra fringe and for this example i’m going to try and have it in the middle of my little weaving so

58:27

i’m going to see where is the middle here okay it’s about right here so i’m going

58:34

to choose these two warp threads and just so you can kind of see which two i’m choosing i’m going to

58:40

put my little beader there then i have this these two short pieces of yarn here

58:47

and you could use more than two or you could just use one it doesn’t matter i’m just using two to get a little bit more bulk

58:54

and what you do is take each tail and bring them up behind the two warp threads that you’ve

59:01

chosen behind and through the center

59:08

coming from behind through that center and out

59:15

kind of makes this lululemon shape you could say then

59:21

pull it nice and snug and you’ve got yourself a little ryan

59:27

knot and you can cut your fringe right away if you want

59:35

so this is how the whole rugs are made using this technique

59:44

that’s just one little baby ryan knot i’ll show you another time because it’s

59:50

a little bit tricky to follow

1:00:05

and then we’ll see if anyone can show me orion not after this for a gold star okay so

1:00:14

picking your two threads somewhere in the middle of your weaving if you like

1:00:20

or three i’ve got three this time taking the tails coming up through the center

1:00:28

and to the outside

1:00:33

and then doing the same thing with the other side around and through the center

1:00:41

to the outside and before i tighten it i’m just going to hold it up to the camera so you can kind of see the shape

1:00:48

maybe let me try that again

1:00:57

and then you can pull it snug

1:01:15

all right so you can do a whole row of those if you like

1:01:20

or you can choose not to do them at all i’m going to take mine out just so it’s easy for you to see the rest of my weaving here

1:01:36

do we have any other any other questions about weaving or about your warp tension or

1:01:42

about changing colors or about using different materials or about orion’s or any of the above i feel

1:01:50

you’re welcome to type a question in the chat or

1:02:04

ask i have a quick question about knocks

1:02:09

sure are there other knots that people use for a woven like a weave like this or is it

1:02:15

just that one style of knot that works oh there are there are whole books

1:02:21

written on weaving knots and on nox in general um in fact if you’re really interested

1:02:28

in knots i would actually recommend looking at the artist lise silva is her name

1:02:34

l-i-s-e-s-i-l-v-a she has a whole book on um she’s written on different kinds of knots and their

1:02:40

history and their use and their meaning that’s really fantastic one of the first

1:02:46

knots that i always teach in my weaving classes is a slip knot because it’s such a handy knot to know

1:02:53

that will undo itself um it’s not really used for like this specific kind of weaving that

1:02:59

we’re doing right now but it’s such a handy thing i just think it’s handy kind of in everyday life to know a slip knot

1:03:05

so many of you probably already do um but if you don’t

1:03:12

do a little slip note slip knot demo for you so you have a loop of thread across

1:03:20

and then you pull the thread from behind through

1:03:26

and what makes it great is that you can just undo it and there’s nothing there

1:03:34

so you have your loop of thread cross it reach back

1:03:41

to the thread behind a little knots like this are really tricky to to learn via um screens

1:03:49

so happy to show any passer by a slipknot at any time and i’m sure

1:03:56

there’s probably a good a good google um image search for this too but

1:04:03

super handy in the loom setup process slip knots are used all of the time and

1:04:09

in weaving there’s a saying that i think is was started by a weaver named laura fry

1:04:15

and it’s that never tie a knot where a bow will do and i think it’s used because in weaving

1:04:21

you never really want to have to deal with knots and getting scissors near your warp and worrying about potentially cutting your warp that can

1:04:28

be one of the most frustrating things as a weaver broken threads and constantly fixing

1:04:33

broken threads shout out to erin if she’s listening to this we’ve had a lot of

1:04:40

um

1:04:45

lots of times when new weavers are using complicated looms threads are just kind of snapping everywhere and so it becomes kind of a

1:04:53

constant thing in the studios is fixing that so i’m going to i wanted to ask sorry

1:05:01

you were just talking about um your weaving sucking in i don’t know if you can see us but

1:05:06

i’m definitely having that let me see oh it’s not so bad but is the secret

1:05:12

just like continuing to pull them out i i know you were talking about this kind of step there’s a couple of things um

1:05:21

one is to think about what materials you’re using like there’s lots of there’s lots of little things if you’re

1:05:26

using something stretchy like wool and your warp is something that’s

1:05:32

not stretchy often the stretchy one likes to pull in a lot so no matter what you do it’s going to be kind of fighting

1:05:39

your warp um but you can also just make that angle that you’re pulling the thread bigger and so that should help a little

1:05:46

bit the thing is especially with a tiny loom like this once you start getting that

1:05:52

drawing in draw draw in is the fancy weaving term for that um is you can’t really undo it so once

1:05:58

it’s started to come in you can’t really push it back out very easily you can just stop it from coming

1:06:03

in more so at this stage embrace embrace your

1:06:08

it’s gonna be an hourglass weaving

1:06:14

so i think i’m going to show um how to remove your weaving so i’m going to actually do a little

1:06:21

cooking show swap here and bring in a little example weaving i made

1:06:26

um a while back to show how you would actually remove your weaving from your box because we’re

1:06:33

getting near the end of our time here um so i’m going to say that this weaving is

1:06:39

done for now and you can see in this one i’ve done the little the kind of fabric approach here and

1:06:45

i’ve also done a similar sort of approach using a bundle of thin fibers together

1:06:51

so that’s another thing you could try but i’m going to take it off the loom by turning my box

1:06:58

upside down and snipping all of these threads on the back

1:07:04

so this can be kind of scary i promise your weaving won’t fall apart too much so i’m gonna just slip my

1:07:12

scissors in the back here oh and a nice satisfying snip for you

1:07:19

[Music] and then flip it back to the front and i

1:07:25

don’t like to just rip it off right away because it’s nice to have a little bit of the stability of the loom

1:07:30

while i’m doing the little knots on the edges and so i’m going to finish this one as if it was going to be like a

1:07:36

little mug rug or coaster or something or just a little weirdly shaped bookmark potentially um

1:07:44

and so to do that what i’m going to do is tie my warp ends off in little knots in groups

1:07:51

of let’s say maybe groups of four so that

1:07:56

it doesn’t take me too long here so i would just take off the four that i’m going to tie

1:08:02

and because i’ve had these wrap all the way around my box they’re long enough that i can actually tie a knot with them

1:08:09

so in some weaving looms that you’ll see here some styles of frame looms you won’t have

1:08:14

this extra and you’ll want to make sure that you don’t weave right to the edge because there’s nothing more

1:08:19

uncomfortable than tying a knot with like a one inch of yarn if you’ve done any kind of fiber

1:08:25

related work you’ll probably empathize with that statement so i’m just using a simple overhand knot here

1:08:34

although i should say nothing is necessarily simple until you’ve done it a few times but

1:08:40

it’s not a any particular weaving related knot just an overhand knot

1:08:46

and that should be enough to secure the edges so i’m going to take the next four

1:08:53

and i’m doing all of one side first and then i’ll do the other side

1:09:12

so if you want to keep working on yours and potentially take it off of your loom later that’s

1:09:19

totally fine i just want to show you how that process works so that you can

1:09:24

do it on your own

1:09:39

so i didn’t plan this but i actually have a warp number that’s divisible by four so each one has four

1:09:46

threads in it if that’s not the case and you didn’t luck out like i did you

1:09:51

can just have the edge have a smaller number than the rest of them

1:09:58

and usually you won’t really notice but you can plan ahead and kind of have a number that’s divisible by

1:10:05

the number of warp threads you chose if you are a planner

1:10:11

so i’m actually going to take out the little knot that i used to secure my warp when i was making this weaving

1:10:17

because i don’t want that extra knot in the corner there

1:10:23

luckily it’s not too tight

1:10:36

okay so i’ve got one side done

1:10:43

now if i wanted to if i was very proud of my little weaving as maybe some of you will be

1:10:51

and i want it and you want to display it somehow you could take this top part here and attach it to something like a dowel

1:10:59

or um you could find a way to kind of fold it over and frame it if you wanted um but for

1:11:06

the purposes of this i’m going to tie more knots but now would be a good time to kind of decide okay what am i going to do with

1:11:12

my weaving before you go ahead and totally take it off the loom once it’s off the loom then you don’t

1:11:19

really have that organization of the warp threads being all spread out nice and evenly so it’s kind of now is your your

1:11:26

time to make a decision on what you want to do with it so i’m just going to do the same thing on this side

1:11:33

for our purposes here now that it’s not not secure on this

1:11:39

side it’s a little bit trickier to do these ties so it’s not too bad this is a pretty

1:11:44

stiff work that i use so it’s going to cooperate pretty well but if it’s sliding all over the place you can you can take it off the loom and

1:11:51

just put a heavy book on part of the weaving or something so it’s not moving around on you too much

1:12:12

in the weavings that are on display at the aga right now as part of the scene

1:12:17

exhibition i’m using all sorts of different materials like um a lot of them are made out of paper

1:12:25

so they’re actually yarn that’s been spun not by me but by others um from

1:12:30

paper and paper works really well with linen because neither of those fibers stretch so i was

1:12:37

experimenting with a bunch of different things like transparency where you can kind of see through the weaving but it still holds

1:12:44

its structure so if you’re interested in kind of the different forms that weaving can take and

1:12:51

sometimes they don’t necessarily have to be practical forms

1:12:56

and you might be interested to kind of closely look and now that you’ve done this you’ll have a better idea of how those would have been made although um the

1:13:04

weavings in the exhibition were made on a four shaft balloon so that’s a floor loom where you would

1:13:10

use my feet and my hands together and it’s a lot more efficient than what

1:13:16

we’re doing and there’s a lot more pattern capabilities but there are times when

1:13:22

weaving like this kind of slowly by hand is really the best choice depending on what kind of

1:13:28

pattern you want to make or what you have available to you um in weaving we often talk about

1:13:36

using the loom to its maximum capacity is really the best kind of way to

1:13:42

use a weaving loom so if you’re making a small tapestry but you’re using a huge loom you’re actually not going to be doing

1:13:49

yourselves any favors so you if you want to make um you want to be using the loom that’s appropriate

1:13:54

for your kind of project you want to make so if you are interested in kind of looking at

1:14:00

different kinds of looms or trying different kinds of looms out we have all sorts of looms on display

1:14:06

in the studio at gather textiles on fort road and you’re welcome to kind of swing by

1:14:12

and give them a try and we love to kind of show people all of our different samples and what’s available

1:14:18

for all different kinds of weaving

1:14:30

all right so i have my my little weaving is free of its loom now and i’m just gonna tighten up

1:14:38

these little knots and then i’ll trim them

1:15:00

so you can have your fringe as as long or short as you want it to be i’m going to go with kind of short i

1:15:07

think for this

1:15:22

all right now if you wanted to now be a good time to

1:15:27

take your weaving and bring it to the ironing board and give it a nice steam

1:15:32

press if you want it to lay nice and flat um you can also see this is the back of

1:15:38

my weaving which is looking a little bit sloppy right now so in order to fix it up

1:15:44

you can actually cut all of these tails flush and i know people are often hesitant to

1:15:49

do this because it seems like it’ll just unravel but that’s kind of the beautiful thing about weaving compared to some

1:15:56

other kinds of textile crafts is you don’t have to worry too much about unraveling especially if you’re going to give your

1:16:02

project um a wet finish or a steam because the fibers will bind to each other

1:16:08

and they will not unravel assuming that you’ve done a good job of

1:16:14

overlapping your fibers when you change colors etc

1:16:23

okay so that’s looking a bit better now that i’ve trimmed it all up on this side

1:16:35

that’s that so if there’s there’s other questions i’m happy to answer them um weaving weaving technique

1:16:44

related or otherwise but if not i think michael

1:16:49

that’s that’s all i’ve got well i have more questions of course uh

1:16:55

if anyone wants to add a question uh you can add it in the chat and i can read it out or you can just simply

1:17:01

uh interject that’s totally cool as well uh i’m just gonna let people know that helen has put a little survey in our

1:17:08

chat so if you like this program or if you have some constructive feedback please let us know

1:17:13

um so my question is a little bit about the exhibition so the exhibition is

1:17:19

called this scene and it’s kind of talking about the

1:17:24

energy and art scene what’s going on in the edmonton art scene and one of the things that kind of made me think during your presentation

1:17:31

was about the edmonton textile art scene can you talk a little bit about that

1:17:36

um i feel like the textile art scene in edmonton is really growing um when i first started

1:17:44

learning to weave it was really just like the edmonton weavers guild was the place

1:17:49

and kind of the one and only place that i knew of um that you could learn to weave but now

1:17:56

there’s several places in the city where you can learn to weave and there’s a growing interest in kind of

1:18:02

weaving and weaving adjacent practices there’s a bunch of people interested in punch needle and rug

1:18:08

hooking and all sorts of different types of textile related crafts and we sort of see them coming through the door

1:18:15

at gather and that’s really been kind of some of the most exciting parts of my coved times

1:18:22

because i haven’t been able to see people quite as much but now and then if somebody came through the door with a project

1:18:27

that they’ve been working on i am encouraged to see that people have been crafting like crazy

1:18:34

during the pandemic and i think because of that there’s this sort of renewed energy around

1:18:40

making things in the city and so i would strongly encourage people to get

1:18:46

involved i think um there’s there’s specific clubs like for different i think there’s

1:18:51

um there is a rug hooking guild as well there’s a needle craft guild i’m not sure if it’s called needle

1:18:57

craft or like um needlework or something somebody might know that’s here um

1:19:05

and there’s a a bunch of other like kind of smaller groups that will um meet up there’s a group called i

1:19:12

think they’re called making space um that they’re doing a lot of textile related

1:19:18

dyeing workshops lately yeah actually one of my co-workers works for

1:19:24

uh making space so i know a little bit about that which is really exciting uh at the aga so i guess does

1:19:31

anyone what we’ll craft somebody somebody helped me out with that edmonton needlecraft guild

1:19:37

yeah it’s really fascinating one of the things so i’m a textile artist as well and one of the things that i think is

1:19:43

kind of really popular is sho is making it more popular is social media

1:19:49

is that is that part of it as well or is it just like covid times [Music]

1:19:55

i i think it’s both um yeah i have like mixed feelings about this i mean i’m so

1:20:00

inspired by people on social media but i also feel like it can kind of lead to this spiral

1:20:06

of like everybody doing the same kinds of things and like sort of um pinteresting is that can that

1:20:13

be a word of that’s the word making and um sometimes it can lead to problems like

1:20:20

um it being difficult to attribute certain kinds of skills and techniques to certain groups and

1:20:26

so there’s definitely pros and cons of social media but i mean yeah if you’re looking for inspiration

1:20:31

you don’t have to look very hard and especially as a way of kind of connecting to other makers

1:20:37

around the world it’s been um kind of a unique opportunity i think just because now it just seems easier to

1:20:43

reach out to someone in a different area and i’ve had i actually had a really amazing um

1:20:51

video call with my moroccan weaver friend at like three in the morning that i

1:20:56

never would have thought to do pre-covet i wouldn’t have even um thought to like try that but because

1:21:02

there was so much virtual programming happening i thought you know what like why not like i can connect to somebody on the

1:21:09

other side of the world i mean it will be a late night but it’s totally worth it so i think a lot of yeah a lot of those

1:21:16

connections that are like through kind of through social media or through um the online connections that people have

1:21:22

been able to make have made the world a lot smaller and a lot more kind of exciting collaborations have

1:21:28

been happening too yeah i have a question from arlene arlene is asking is the scene a virtual

1:21:34

exhibition oh no no it’s in person and it’s open to the public

1:21:40

um yeah it was it’s been a long time coming we’ve waited a long time for this

1:21:46

exhibition um so when it finally opened it was sort of like oh we’re actually gonna get to see this for

1:21:52

real and so it’s been yeah really cool to actually be able to go and see the work of the other artists

1:21:57

um in the show i’d strongly recommend a visit um there’s other really great work on

1:22:04

display at the aga as well if you they haven’t advertised it a whole lot but there’s a picasso exhibit right now

1:22:10

which is really we do have a picasa exhibit that’s for

1:22:16

sure we also have this really great show called black every day which is on our second floor which is the 15th anniversary of five artists one

1:22:23

love so yeah definitely encourage people to uh to check out check out the aga

1:22:28

um helen just put in a link to learn more about the scene

1:22:34

and i guess uh kim do you have anything else to say or should we wrap it up one more thing i

1:22:41

kind of want to say is uh i i’m this is what i made i’m really curious what other people made so

1:22:47

if you want to show us maybe in the screen or maybe you can send an image to the

1:22:52

facebook event uh for this uh i’m just so curious what people made i’m sure kim would love to

1:22:58

see yes no thank you yeah for sure okay wow amazing uh

1:23:07

wow people did amazing this is so incredible well i guess i’ll just say a big thank

1:23:12

you uh for myself and everyone at the aga thank you so much for joining us it looked like people had a lot of fun

1:23:19

kim you’ve given so much great information about weaving and looms and it’s so

1:23:25

fantastic to have you in the show and in this program uh big thank you to helen uh who runs

1:23:30

on the zoom and does all our digital stuff so um you know i can’t wait to see everyone’s

1:23:36

weaving and i guess we’ll leave it there thanks again thanks everybody thank you

1:23:41

thank you

1:23:48

you

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