And Ahhhhh The Vendors...At Spin-in

Lots of vendors for January spin-in
River's Edge Fiber Arts

Maple Row Stock Wool, MI, have returned for another year

Gale's Fiber Arts

Dicentra Designs

Peachtree Handspinners Guild

Ewephoric Fibers

Weave Been Sew Busy from Central Texas

Even pottery that a spinner could use from Puff Studios

Fire Ant Ranch Republic in the background with Alpaca farm in the forefront

Daily Fibers

Far Out Farms was there with their walking wheel lots of hand carded and hand dyed wool

 

The Copper Corgi

Here's What I've Been Doing..........................

For the past few days I've been busy sponsoring our annual January Spin-in which takes place the last full weekend in January in Destin, Florida (no better place to be in January!)! This was our 25th anniversary party and we did a little celebrating. Our theme for 2013 was Circles

We had 25 silver balloons around the room.............

Lots of silver tinsel and silver spindles to give as favors......................

And lots of good reason to be where we were.................

One creative spinner wore her reasons for being here--a different shirt for each day.

We went from an empty room

Vendors setting up their booths

 

To a full room with over 100 spinners--all there with one thing in common--spinning to have a good time!

 

Here's Where I'm At................................

White Sandy Beaches of Florida Gulf Coast.............that's where I'm at!

Chinese Textiles

A trip to China in itself is fascinating but when you can take a trip to this country and feast your eyes on your passion, that's a real bonus! Textiles! Textiles! Textiles! We had visited China a few years ago and thoroughly enjoyed our time there.  Since there were only 5 of us we could voice our opinion on what we would like to see and do--well, you can do that to a certain extent.  The Chinese government will only let you see and do so much.  We wanted to see textiles.

I had put my treasures away safely and had forgotten about them until we had a fiber artists meeting this past week and our speaker had recently returned from a visit to the southern provinces of China and brought some of the textiles she had purchased on that journey. 

The stitching on these garments are absolutely fabulous!  and there is no way we would spend the time or effort doing this.

These are culture pieces, passed along from family member but the knowledge is fast fading as the younger generation want western things

These pieces of jewelry are from our speakers 'stash'  The top piece along the border is a head piece

Now, the following pieces are the ones in my collection.  Feast your eyes and senses on this handiwork from this culture

The stitching seems to contain small beads

This piece would be worn like an apron

Miao Textiles :  this book gives a good overview of this topic, but you can read online some of the history

The blue is from indigo--deep dark indigo

Shibori piece

Batik

If you have a chance to visit China, look at the textiles.  You will see many minorites wearing their treasures in various cities and small towns.