Sarah Swett and the Value of Wool

Sarah Swett was here. Do you know her? if you don’t you should. Her work is fantastic. She tries everything and she has a magic touch. she knits a lot of sweaters and they all begin with raw fleece. She does fantastic tapestries of all sizes and the wool is all spun and dyed by her. She has delved into needle point and block printing. Please check out her website.

If you look at the knitting section of Sarah’s website, I tried on many of those sweaters a few years ago at SOAR and I was particularly taken with the one called Green Sleeve and the one called Ode to Elizabeth.

Most of the sweaters shown on her website don’t have patterns available but you can find her work here too if you want to get some of the patterns.

The tapestries look beautiful on the website but their true beauty doesn’t come through. She really is amazing.

When i met her at SOAR I immediately began inviting her to teach here in Michigan. it took a while to convince her. She only travels to teach a couple of times a year and though she likes the teaching, she’s not a fan of the traveling. So, in late 2011 we set a date for 2013. When I decided to close the brick and mortar store I couldn’t cancel her and so I came up with another plan. A local hotel was the key and I think it worked out really well. That’s why I’m now working on scheduling some more workshops in the area. Keep your eyes peeled and watch the newsletter for upcoming announcements.

This is what the classroom looked like. Piles of wool in the middle and people all over the place. It was fantastic. Lots of freedom to do what moved us. There was instruction each day (it was a 2 1/2 day workshop) and then we went crazy with knitting and embroidery and needlpoint. We were seeing what blending wool to get values that move smoothly from one to the next could do for us in our needlework or weaving. We also learned about different processing techniques and drafting techniques which would make great yarn for a wide variety of projects.

This is my wrap card of the first blends I did. the yarn was better with values that were closer to each other. I have no other photos because I was so busy and involved in what was going on I forgot to take pictures! i did do a big knitted swatch with that yarn and then i did a bit of embroidery and a little self portrait in needlepoint that isn’t finished.

I was amazed at what the other students in the class came up with. so much fantastic work.

Then she was gone. Back to Idaho. to take some time off of teaching and get a lot of work done. I was so sad.

And one final thing. Here is a tiny little picture. Maggie made this robe for herself last night.

She watched this video and just did it.

She is fearless and she inspires me to be more fearless and that’s all i have to say about my darling youngest daughter.