About Vävstuga
Vävstuga is spearheaded by two women who are passionate about weaving.
About Becky Ashenden
Becky's 1981 introduction to the wealth of the Swedish textile world at Sätergläntan Hemslöjdens Gård, a school renowned for weaving and other traditional crafts since 1922, gave her the motivation to pursue weaving as a life passion as well as a career. The following 13 years of production and sales added experience to her initial high-level training to build a unique set of complementary skills in both theory and practice of weaving. Her use of equipment and techniques that have withstood the test of time adds to the value of what she has been offering her students at Vävstuga since 1991.
Becky has also worked on a series of publishing projects for her own Vävstuga Press, which includes translating weaving books from Swedish to English and republishing Swedish weaving books that have gone out of print. She has also been the technical editor for several Swedish weaving books that have recently been published in English.
Becky is also a professional musician in a variety of folk music traditions from Swedish to Balkan to Cape Breton, playing a variety of instruments including piano, accordion, and fiddle.
About Susan Conover
Susan Conover hails from Parkman, OH and joined the staff at Vävstuga in March 2009. Susan is a talented fiber artist who connects her spinning, weaving and dye processes to fiber's historical roots. History directly connects to her real passion, reproduction of historical weavings. Having raised sheep for nearly 15 years, she is well versed in the entire fiber process, from animal to finished cloth.
Susan and her husband Ernie Conover have run a successful craft school, Conover Workshops, since 1980. In 1995 Ernie instituted the Conover Workshops Apprenticeship Program for his woodworking classes, and that program has served as a model for our own Vävstuga Apprentice Program.
At Vävstuga, Susan applies her organizational and business skills as our operations manager. When she's not at Vävstuga, her interests include cooking, reading, hiking, and motorcycle touring.