You are all invited to come and weave on our looms December 9-13! They are dressed with beautiful holiday projects for Vävstuga Days.

Our February and March Basics classes have been filling quickly, so if you have been thinking about these, contact us right away.

Any of you who would like either a refresher, or introduction to our loom dressing techniques, should consider our Dressing the Loom class March 2-3.

We do still have some openings in our January Weaver’s Choice class.

Join us for Vävstuga Days, our annual week-long open house. All of our looms will be decked out with festive warps all ready to weave. Little or no experience is necessary and ample instruction will be given. December 9-13, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m., including afternoon teatime with Swedish cakes and cookies. Contact us to sign up for a slot, or just take a chance and show up.

Our Weaver’s Choice class January 26-30 still has some slots left. Have a look at the recent projects gallery for inspiration from what some of our students have recently done in this class!

If you would like a job weaving traditional Swedish fabric in a style appropriate to make an apron from the region of either Värmland or Södermanland, contact:

Janet Johnson
jjohn30254@comcast.net / 301-962-3788
3606 Janet Road, Silver Spring MD 20906

Our Drawloom class next month still has some openings. This is the last time this class will be offered, so we encourage anyone who has been interested in it to attend this November 3-7.

We will be assembling an order from Borgs in early November, so if any of you want to put in a special order please get the information to us this month.

The Fiber Twist is happening this year on October 25. Come and visit us!

We now have the 2009 Vävkalender in stock. We acquired several other new books while we were in Sweden, too; they will be appearing in the bookstore soon.

Have a look at our new class list and calendar for 2009! We have many new offerings this year, including several 2-day classes.

We are currently in the process of working with someone who could manufacture hackles for flax. It is possible we will need to receive orders from people ahead in order to have these hard-to-find high quality tools manufactured. Please contact us if you have any interest in this or know someone who does.

A Julia loom is available for anyone who wants to use it for a weaving demonstration as part of a school program or other fiber event. Please contact us if you are interested.

We will be attending the weaving conference in Sweden this month. Becky will be demonstrating her countermarch tie-up system at the Glimåkra booth. Hopefully we will have some pictures and new books to share with you when we come back.

We at Vävstuga have had the incredible fortune of receiving a generous gift from Mary Chase in Maine. We have built an entire new bookcase for her donation of weaving books. Her collection of woven pieces will be a wonderful resource for our future classes.

We are preparing for our trip to Sweden in September to their national weaving conference.

Watch for several 2-day class offerings in our 2009 schedule, which we hope to have posted by the beginning of September.

We are delighted to inform you that
The Swedish Weaving Book: Project Planning, Loom Dressing, and Finishing, the long-awaited instructional weaving book that Becky has been working on translating for several years, has arrived!! It is very much in stock and ready for immediate shipment.

Becky’s new DVD, Weaving on the Julia, is also now available. Many of the straightforward and simple methods are applicable to many looms. It is an excellent instructional DVD for beginners, and presents different techniques from those found in her previous DVDs.

Our Vävstuga Club members have had a productive summer so far and we are looking forward to lots more weaving activity here in our busy months of August and September.

We will be putting together our 2009 schedule shortly. Feel free to send us your requests for the class schedule.

Becky’s new instructional DVD, Weaving on the Julia, is now ready for release with the first shipment of the new Julia looms!

Our new addition to the schedule from last month, Traditional Swedish Rosepath (July 28-29), is starting to fill, but we have room for a few more students.

Here is our update on special workshops for the summer. Please contact Susanna for more details about any of these. We hope that, despite the short notice, you might take advantage of some of these opportunities.

• Latvian Mittens (June 16-17): The accomplished knitter Linda Daniels, from Northampton Wools, is offering a 2-day class June 16-17 in knitting Latvian mittens using our wonderful Swedish yarns. Lunches will be provided
  and staying overnight is an option. Please let us know soon if you’re interested.
• Straw Plaiting (June 29): The birch bark class scheduled for June 29 has been revised and will instead be another straw plaiting workshop with Lark Leonard, who did a wonderful straw ornament class for us last November. Today we’ll start with simple techniques, and progress to more challenging hollow core plaiting in the afternoon. The fee for this class is $70 plus materials. Bring a bag lunch, or get carry-out from one of the local eateries.
• Natural Dye Workshop (July 7-8): Jody McKenzie, of Botanical Shades dye studio, will offer a 2-day dye workshop July 7-8. The first day will be spent mordanting fiber and dyeing with natural dye extracts, the second day will be dyeing with indigo. We will use wool, cotton and linen yarns. One may attend either one of these days for $90 or both days for $150, plus materials. Staying overnight is an option. Bring a bag lunch, or carry-out for us to enjoy together.
• Tatting (date TBA): There has been some interest in tatting, and Susanna would be happy to teach a session on this technique. Please let us know if you are interested and we will schedule a time and date.

[update 6/6/08]

We have another exciting new offering in our lineup of special summer classes:

Lark Leonard, who taught a wonderful straw ornament workshop for us last year, will join us again to teach a class in making a small woven birch bark basket in the Scandinavian tradition. The class will take place Sunday, June 29, 10 AM – 5 PM, and will cost $50. Class size is limited, so contact us soon so as not to miss this opportunity.

Our Swedish Heirlooms class May 12-16 and our Weavers Choice class June 2-6 are filling with some wonderful weavers. There is still a chance for you to join them if you can squeeze it into your schedule.

Becky has been busy this spring doing the final edits on her translation of The Swedish Weaving Book (Väv Boken),
which should appear in print later this summer.

Becky is also working on the final details of a new DVD, featuring streamlined basic weaving instruction on the new Julia loom from Glimakra. It is the instructional DVD that will come with the new looms, but it will also be of great use to anyone as an instructional tool for easy and readily accessible warping techniques using tools that require minimal investment.

We’re adding another new class to our schedule: Traditional Swedish Rosepath, offered July 28-29. These stunning weft-faced techniques are simple to do and only require four shafts.

Due to overflow from our winter classes, we have added a Vävstuga Basics class to the schedule April 14-18.
We do still have some openings that week, so let us know if you are interested, and tell your friends.

One more scheduling change: Our fall Weavers Choice class will be moving to the week of October 20-24.

Vävstuga will host some special workshops during the summer months of June and July. In the planning stages are a day-long course to make a small Swedish style birch bark woven basket, a two-day Latvian mittens class using our wonderful wool yarns, and a woven backpack basket class. We will send more information as plans progress. Do let us know if any of these interest you, as these workshops will accommodate only a small number of students.

My friend Gisela Von Weisz is offering a very interesting class in Sweden next summer. I wish I could go, but maybe some of you can instead!

The new pricelist is now online. You’ll see updated prices throughout our Store.
Our new shipping policy provides simple and cost-effective flat-rate shipping for all purchases, and FREE SHIPPING for orders totalling over $300!

We have added a Vävstuga Basics class to our schedule April 14-18. (This will replace the Swedish Rug Techniques class previously scheduled at this time.)

I recently came home from a wonderful trip to Sweden. I had the pleasure of visiting with Doris Wicklund and her husband Jean in Kiruna, which lies above the Arctic Circle. She is the author of four wonderful weaving books, including Det Gamla Linneskåpet: Från tuskaft till damast (The Old Linen Closet: From plain weave to damask) and En Annan Bild av Lappland (Another picture of Lappland). I have been translating her second book, Old Swedish Weavings from North to South, and this was a chance for us to meet in person. We had a delightful time getting to know each other. The amount and quality of her weaving is simply astounding!