Run Up to the Michigan Fiber Festival

A week ago, I cut my left index finger – instead of the intended baguette. My typing was, um, impaired. I’m just now getting back to normal finger activity.

OK, that doesn’t sound very nice…..

Let me catch up. The Michigan Fiber Festival is just around the corner; workshops start August 17, and the Festival is open to the public August 20 and 21. I’ll be teaching on Wednesday (“Blending Colors at the Wheel”), Thursday (“Plying for Texture” & “Plying Balanced Yarns”), and Friday (“Mechanics of Your Wheel” & “Spinning Marl Yarns”). There’s still room in some of these workshops. Check out the MFF website and the MFF blog.

In addition to my teaching, I get to shop, meet new friends, and catch up with old friends. One person I’d like to introduce you all to is Laurie Boyer. I met her a few years ago at MFF. She is an amazing art yarn spinner. Her yarns are not simply hodge-podge mixtures of odds and ends; they are well thought out, carefully designed, and meticulously constructed fantasy yarns. She used locks, nuts & bolts, q-tips, feathers, and this year even clothes pins! She recently sent me a couple of pictures of some of her latest yarns. See the clothes pins?...on the right....

Laurie will be at MFF – with some of her yarns – helping at Carol Wagner’s booth, Hidden Valley Farm & Woolen Mill. You know I’ll be stopping there early on!

For more on Laurie, click here to go to a 2009 article about her by Ruth Knight Sybers.

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Earlier this week I got a call from Jennifer Ackerman-Haywood. She’s a free-lance writer who does articles on arts and crafts for the Grand Rapids Press. She’s preparing an article about the Michigan Fiber Festival and she wanted to get some of my thoughts on trends in the fiber world, specifically about the increasing popularity of spinning. We had a wonderful chat, during which I found out that Jennifer also has begun a new arts and crafts magazine, CraftSanity. You can find more about Jennifer and her writing at www.craftsanity.com. Jennifer promised to stop by one of my classes on Friday at MFF so that we can meet face-to-face. I look forward to meeting her in person.