Northwoods Art Tour, Day 1

Today was my first Art Tour day, lots of fun, great conversations with visitors, and good questions about what I do. One woman, though, said it all,... "This woman has thousands of dollars worth of looms, and we're all fascinated by the sock machine!" Totally True!

I had about 20+ people here throughout the day, more than I expected, given this is my first year, and sales were better than I hoped they would be, so feeling good about both. A number of pairs of socks sold, along with four towels. Tonight, I'm wishing I had had a lot more socks done to sell, but I wanted so badly to get the drawloom going that I gave that priority.

For myself, a good part of my reason for doing the art tour was to provide an opportunity for people to see the looms, spinning wheels, and sock machine, and ask questions/get answers. Sales of my work are just a happy bonus.

I did get three socks cranked today while demonstrating and talking with people, along with demonstrating weaving and explaining the drawloom. There would have been a fourth sock, but one of the yarns caught, snagged and broke while finishing up the toe, darn!

I have Art on Main coming up on Aug. 9th, Art in the Yard on Sept. 19th, and the fall art tour Oct. 2-4, so sock-cranking will be a high priority in the coming weeks. With the coming cold winter weather coming, there will probably be even more interest in wool socks.

Today, between visitors, I started my first rag rug. The stripe warp has been sitting on the CM loom patiently waiting, so I'm now looking forward to my first rag rugs. The drawloom is nearly ready to go, the reed is half sleyed, though I'm considering waiting and ordering a 15 dent reed on Monday which would be here probably by Thursday.


The lighting isn't great on this, given this is a dim log home/studio, with an Ott floor lamp for light. These rugs will certainly go faster than some of the weaving I've done lately, at least the weaving part, not forgetting there is weft prep, too. I do like the effect of the "ticking" stripe in the sheeting as it is woven in, with thin random green stripes coming to the surface.

So, I'm looking forward to Days 2 & 3 of the Art Tour and meeting more people with an interest in, or curiosity about fibers, looms, and sock machines.