For me, hands down, my list starts with this one. Not because this is how I learned to weave or even because this is how I learned that weaving has cosmic possibilities. It's because I can't stop learning from this book and I love the beauty and intricacy of the ideas in this book. Sometimes I can't fathom what she's writing about, but I keep trying. What's more important: Taking care of a book or reading it a lot? I spent maybe a decade weaving my way through this one.  And writing notes on it -- in pen -- which is not very classy. "Strickler," that's how weavers describe ..read more

*Warning: This post is just partly about fiber. Remember those test patterns on your old black and white TV? They were typically accompanied by an ear-piercing alarm to tell us that a TV station (we had three back then) was malfunctioning for some reason or other. Kids like my sisters and me -- who loved watching the Three Stooges and Bugs Bunny and Spanky and Our Gang -- were out of luck. Truth be told, I'm experiencing technical difficulties right now, accompanied by malfunctions in my weaving, ever since our house was damaged by water -- more like flooded with water -- last September 1 ..read more

My gift to you this season: A free pattern (see below) for a handwoven cotton cowl in an Echo design on four shafts. No matter what holiday you celebrate this winter -- and even if you don't celebrate any holiday at all -- you have my endless thanks for following this blog and my work, for being a part of the larger weaving community that means so much to me and to all of us. So what are we looking at? A pattern that calls for less than a yard of woven fabric and takes up less than 10" weaving width on your loom. To create the cowl, the fabric is sewn into a circle using a flat-felled seam on ..read more

 A brief intro here: I like to use lots of photos in my blog posts, because weaving is such a visual medium. But this month's topic doesn't really require photos, because we can all visualize the problem -- and who wants to see a photo of a fraying selvage, anyway? So with that out of the way, let us begin with my first text-only blog post ;o) A weaving friend from the Potomac (MD) Fiber Arts Guild wrote me recently about a problem she was having with fraying selvages -- a problem that most of us are all too familiar with. What follows is my reply. I welcome comments from anyone and every ..read more

Deflected doubleweave scarf woven by Katherine Luhring from my workshop,  "Weaving Outside the Box" This month I'd like to share an essay by "Katzy" (pronounced "KAHtzee") Luhring, one of the managers at Lunatic Fringe Yarns. Some background: Over the summer, I taught "Weaving Outside the Box: 12 Projects for Creating Dimensional Cloth" at the Intermountain Weavers Conference in Logan, Utah, a workshop based on my book of the same name. We we lucky to have Katzy in our class, as she brought a lot of knowledge and information about some of the special yarns we used that are sold by L ..read more

 Above is my most recent post on Facebook, promoting a 10-minute "Thread Talk" I'll be giving during Spinning and Weaving Week. It's a wonderful opportunity for me to talk about craft, why we humans have always been makers, and how inspiration can come to us like a bolt out of the blue -- even to the point where we don't know how it happened or where it came from. My talk is based on a longer presentation I've given at guilds and conferences, looking at craft around the globe and throughout history.  The discussion reaches as far back as the cave paintings of Chauvet, France, disco ..read more

  Based on my book of the same name, this workshop is being offered for the first time online -- thanks to MAFA, the Mid-Atlantic Fiber Association, which is offering Zoom workshops this fall for weavers near and far. For three Saturdays in October, you'll weave a project of your choice from the book, on 4, 6, 8, 12, or 16 shafts. The photo above, woven on 4 shafts, is one of the projects you can choose from.  Here's the link to register: https://www.lessonface.com/apply/Weaving-Outside-Box-12-Projects-Creating-Dimensional-Cloth And here are photos of a few more of the project ..read more

Last week I taught at the New England Weavers Seminar -- well known as NEWS -- in Worcester, Massachusetts. Not only was it run very well (right down to the excellent IPA I had at the dinner for jurors and NEWS committee members), but I had a great time teaching my workshop, "One Warp, Many Structures: Explorations in Extended Parallel Threading."  Everybody was enthusiastic and their samples showed it -- as you can see from the 12-shaft samples above, woven in Jin (bottom) and Shadow Weave (top) by Diana Vaughan. Diana was one of the conference organizers (forgive me that I can't recal ..read more

  I write this as I'm sitting in the airport in Grand Rapids, MI, waiting for a much-delayed flight to Detroit and then home. What better time to post about the just-finished Michigan Handweavers Conference in Holland, MI? And why not start with a classic conference photo -- that of a group of weaver-friends going out to dinner after a long day in the classroom? Pictured above, from left to right: Cathy McCarthy, Janney Simpson, Martha Town, Susan Moran, Nancy Riele, Martina Celerin, Nadine Cloutier, and me. Everyone in the photo is either a teacher, a conference organizer, a student at ..read more

 Signal, 1976, Richard Landis I came upon the work of Richard Landis as I was reading Loom-Controlled Double Weave: From the Notebook of a Double Weaver by the late, great Paul O'Connor. It was one of those moments.... You see a weaving and the lightbulbs go off: "Who IS this? What exactly is happening here?"  This was the photo I saw. Even though it was a poor reproduction and printed in black and white, it had presence. The Passion, detail, Richard Landis, 1978 I wanted to know more. Which led to a Google Search, confirming that this was indeed the work of a celebrated ..read more