Two winters ago I attended a workshop taught by Kay Faulkner at the FibreArts gathering in Ballarat. I had a fabulous time, learning heaps and meeting some lovely weavers. So when she was announced as a teacher at this year’s Easter gathering I immediately booked a place, despite knowing it was likely I would be in the midst of editing my current book. (As it turned out, I wasn’t.)

Well, it was just as wonderful as the last one. The theme of the previous was mixing two weave structures. There is always room to pursue something personal, and I’d mentioned that I’d like to try Summer and Winter, so I mixed it with double weave.

This time the theme was Summer and Winter. I went with the option of prewarping our looms with a draft Kay provided. Despite that, it took me a day to get my brain back to the level of understanding I reached at the end of the last workshop.

By the third day I had two samplers done.

On the fourth I created two drafts I liked, using the iWeaveIt app on my iPad and some help from Kay in Fibreworks.

I rethreaded my loom to weave them.

Late that night, when I couldn’t get to sleep, I made four more drafts, each a stage of evolution between the first two I’d come up with. Then the next day I wove a runner using all six as quickly as I could in the shorter time we had on the last day. (Later I found two mistakes, which I think is pretty good considering how I rushed the weaving.)

On the last night we all set out our work for the student exhibition:

I now have a pretty good grasp of Summer and Winter. I’m hoping to finish off the warp by weaving matching placemats – but not straight away. My back was a bit touchy after so many hours of weaving in a row, and I have recently developed the beginnings of a frozen left shoulder.

And I think my brain could do with a rest, too!