January 2024 Newsletter

​Greetings Fiber Friends, and happy new year!

The hubbub and festivities of 2023 are past, and we are settling into winter, albeit a mild one so far. I like to take some time in the week between Christmas and the New Year's to reflect on the year and look forward to what's ahead. My textile work/practice continues to evolve and go down new rabbit holes. I am excited about the new/deeper explorations I am making and looking forward to a creative new year.

Every year-end inventory also includes the carryovers, projects that we're still working on. For our group that means the Guild Challenge, Weavers Poker. My 'Inspiration' card is Bhutanese textiles and I recently burrowed into my storage unit to find the weaving, a gift from my sister's visit to Bhutan, that inspired me to put this in the card deck. I swear, it's a complete coincidence that I happened to pick that card! Anyway, I've now got this beautiful piece (sash? wall hanging?) on my wall and it is indeed inspiring me! The star motifs reminded me of some tiny crochet stars I made decades ago that surfaced in recent unpacking; I'm supposed to incorporate knit or crochet, check that box! Tool or tote bag? How about a travel bag for my beloved Freyja inkle loom? The ideas are starting to swirl and coalesce and I'm having fun trying to include as many of my cards as I can. How are you coming with your weavers' challenge? It's still possible to draw or redraw cards, we'll have them at the January meeting or contact LeslieAnn by email.

And speaking of our meetings, I just want to say how lovely it has been to meet as a group in the new hybrid format. We've had around 32 attendees, almost evenly split between in-person and online, for both November and December, which is almost 40% of our membership, an impressive turnout! Each month we get better at the tech side of things and we're purchasing a mic and some other equipment to continue to refine/amplify how it works for members. Many thanks to Nancy Ridenour and Shawn Rush for setting up and monitoring this important piece of our meetings each month! We'd love to have backups for them in case one of them can't make it to a meeting. If you know how to run a zoom/computer interface and can help out occasionally, please let LA or Nancy know.

I have to admit to feeling constrained by the time limits of our new meeting space. I love the chance to socialize, the casual chats while admiring the show and tell together, catching up with someone I haven't seen in a while, and it felt like we were rushing to get out last month. But then a group of us decided to get coffee/lunch together nearby. We basically continued the social portion over food, and it was fabulous! We talked about weaving and the day's presentation, botanical gardens to visit and holiday lights to see, we discovered things we didn't know about each other and laughed a lot. To me, this is one of the treasures of guild meetings - time to hang out informally and share, weaving and strengthening the network of connections that go far beyond just our love of threads and fiber.

So I encourage you to continue the meeting beyond the official time limits. We've started opening up the Zoom earlier and keeping it open later and I'm hoping we can get in-person attendees to jump onto Shawn or Nancy's computer to say hi to the Zoomers. And I will be looking for restaurant recommendations in Ferndale, maybe we can get a big table together! 

Until then, happy creating!

​LeslieAnn Bestor
WWG President, 2023-2024


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