CNCH 2022

CNCH is the Conference of Northern California Handweavers. This event, like most others was cancelled for the last two years, but thankfully came back this year. I had been asked to teach a class for beginning weavers at the conference in 2020. There were two strikes against me teaching that year. Many of you know about the first—the injury I suffered in 2019 (first blog post here). Because of the unknown outcome of that injury my family cancelled my involvement, but then the conference was cancelled anyway due to Covid.

I resurrected the plan I had for that class and was accepted to teach this year. The class filled and there was a mixture of experience levels. Some had no weaving experience and some knew the basics but were in need of a refresher or wanted to learn an alternate warping method. I have taught this class for years here at the farm, but take only two to four people at a time. This class had 14!

When I teach a class here I have all the equipment. When you teach a class off-site and people are already weavers they can bring looms and all the extra gadgets. What do you do when you have many students who have no experience and no equipment? In this case, I brought five floor looms, two table looms, four benches, and all the other equipment that I thought we might need.

I dreaded the thought of driving to “the city” with the trailer and navigating the traffic and figuring out where to unload. Fortunately, Dan drove. He didn’t stay so that meant a trip on Thursday and on Sunday.

The conference was at the San Mateo Marriott Hotel. My class room was on the second floor of a section of the building that was not accessible to the normal loading dock. So we parked in front and hauled everything in through the front doors. We snagged a couple of luggage carts and made several trips.

This is how it looked after I got everything into the room.

This is before anyone else brought their looms. Fortunately this view is only half the room.

I had spent a lot of time the previous couple of days making decent labels for all the samples. I knew that with that many people I needed to have the samples available for everyone to see and have the information clearly marked. I brought the gridwall panels so that there would be a way to hang the samples. The samples on the left are woven with Amerian Maid™ naturally colored cotton. The one on the far left is Timm Ranch wool and the two in the middle are Ashford DK wool. Students had the choice of any of those yarns for their weaving.

Handouts ready to distribute.

View of the classroom from the other side of the room after people brought looms.

I didn’t take many photos during the class because I was too busy and didn’t think about it each day until most people had left.

This participant did warrant a special photo. She was a delightful addition to the class and was the calmest, best behaved puppy I have met.

The Friday night program was very entertaining! It was called a Textile Tableau and took the place of a typical fashion show. I think the organizers were correct that many people might take part in something like this when they might have balked at the traditional runway fashion show. Each participating guild presented their own scenario complete with introductory music and a variety of themes. This group staged a picnic and after all the weavers were introduced with their garments and textiles, the T-Rex joined the fun. That’s a spread-out and decorated umbrella swift he’s holding.

This group of basket makers came to the stage to the tune of Octopus’ Garden. There was a variety of delightful fish, jellyfish, and other underwater creatures. It’s hard to tell here, but the theme of the one on the right was the trash in our oceans.

The music changed to the Jaws theme as the shark came on scene and chased everyone away.

I took about an hour in the noon to 2:00 break time to wander around and look at the gallery exhibits. This is the piece that I entered in the Instructors Gallery. It is the first one that I have finished for the show I will present at The Artery in October.

There were a lot of beautiful handwoven pieces, but I will share just this one.

Back to my class. This is one of the pieces on the loom. Students could weave all 13 drafted patterns plus a few extras. I hope that those who have their own looms will work through all of them if they didn’t have time in the class.

Michael was the first to take a warp off the loom!

About two hours after everyone left I had all my things packed up and ready to load in the trailer. Dan showed up shortly after I took this photo.