Jim Coleman

7pm, July 9th, 2010
Common Cod Guild Meeting
32 Vassar St., Cambridge, MA
Room 32-155

Jim Coleman , a local fiber community power house, has spent his life dedicated to the textile industry. In his career working for Forté Cashmere Company in Woonsocket, RI, he has traveled the world to bring in the finest quality products from places like China, the former USSR, and Eastern Europe. After leaving the industry in 2005 he has taken on the position as President/CEO/Director of the American Textile History Museum.

In his talk “A Lifetime of Textiles… Loro Piana, Linhe and Lowell” he will share both his career and the issues and challenges facing the most significant combined collection of textile materials, library & ephemera in the Americas if not the world. This talk will be a very interesting blend of industry and non-profit parts of the fiber community in the Boston area.

Is it May yet?  Adrienne Sloane will be our next speaker at the May 14 guild meeting.

Adrienne Sloane brings us face to face with great fiber art

Artist and community builder, she’ll show us how knitting and crochet artists are reinterpreting and liberating themselves from traditional forms.  The work they’re creating is showing in museums and galleries here in Boston and around the world..  We’ll see some of the amazing work by established and emerging artists who are helping to change the landscape of fiber art.

Adrienne Sloane has shown her work nationally for over 20 years, initially in wearable art and since 2004, sculptural work. As both a hand and machine knitter, her recent work often addresses the political while remaining mindful of the historical context of the  medium.   She has taught non-traditional knitting both nationally and internationally, as well as also having worked with indigenous knitters in Bolivia and Peru.

In 2008,  Adrienne co-curated the exhibit Beyond Knitting; Uncharted Stitches at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles and recently juried the 2010 exhibit: Metaphoric Fibers, Untamed Knit & Crochet for the Textile Center inMinneapolis.

You  may have seen her work in Fiberarts, American Craft, the Surface Design Journal, the academic text, The Culture of Knitting and is profiled in the book, Knitting Art: 150 Innovative Works from 18 Contemporary Artists.  Find her work in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Goldstein Museum of Design and the Kamm Collection as well as private collections. But you FiberCamp veterans may remember her as the spirit behind “Something’s Fishy,” the group public art project that waved through winter outside the Arsenal, long after FiberCamp ended.

So set your Calendars for May 14, 7 pm.  As always, exact location will be confirmed, but at this point, we think it’s the Stata Center again.

Hope to see you at our March 12 meeting at 7pm when knitwear designer and photographer Jared Flood (aka Brooklyn Tweed) comes to Boston.  We’ll meet at 32 Vassar St (Stata Center) in Cambridge, room 123, near the Kendall Square Red line T stop.

The Pacific Northwest native has been living in Brooklyn since 2005, where he’s put his MFA to work in photography and knitwear design.

During his time with us, Jared will share the design journey that led to his first pattern collection, “Made in Brooklyn” which was published in August, 2009.

Catch more tidbits about Jared’s knitting, observations and photography on his web site.

Newbury Yarns will host Jared for a series of workshops about knitwear design and specific projects throughout the weekend.

Julia Farwell-Clay

Jan 8th, 7pm
32 Vassar St., Cambridge, MA
Room 32-123

The guild is thrilled to announce Julia Farwell-Clay will kick off the FiberCamp Boston as our guest speaker.

While still shocking to many internet geeks, developers, and even many in the fiber community, knitting is a very powerful force on the internet. Julia Farwell-Clay, Features Director at Twist Collective.com, will share her thoughts and experiences about how the knitting community has evolved on the internet. She has seen it move from mailing lists, to blogs, to social networks, to social media. She has been knitting all along this path and will share her insights about what has come and where things are going as well as highlight some of the people who she feels have made a real contribution to the community.

Julia will also share her own personal relationship with the internet and the greater knitting community where she has contributed as a reader of lists, an organizer of events, and now as part of the team that produces a cutting edge knitting fashion magazine. She will share her experiences in creating Twist Collective with Kate Gilbert, and discuss the goals and vision of how she fosters community and commerce around patterns. The process of working on Twist incorporates a lot of thought about the community and feedback from the community. And of course, she will share some of her favorite designs and stories from the Twist collective so far.

Julia Farwell-Clay is a life-long knitter who only ever made one sweater at a time until she discovered the magical mystery tour of knitting on the internet about 6 years ago. Now she has an Addi collection, an infamous stash, and the long-running blog, Moth Heaven. Julia is one of the original KnitListers, an unrepentant Rowanette, sometime Knitsmith, published designer, former NETA SPA Diva, FiberRevivalist, Raveller, and friend to knit dorks (like herself) everywhere. These days, she is one of the visionaries behind the highly regarded magazine, twistcollective.com.

A FiberCamp note:

While this talk will be at MIT, address is listed above, the rest of FiberCamp Boston will happen at the Arsenal Arts Center which is located at: 321 Arsenal St., Watertown, MA

Bustling could describe the dock of the Common Cod this month.  Folks are signing up for FiberCamp, building session topics, and organizers are lining up sponsors and vendors for the event.  We’ve made videos and with your help, are spreading the word.

But let’s not forget our speaker for the Friday night meeting.  Julia Farwell Clay, of the Twist Collective will speak at 7 pm on Friday, January 8, 2010 at 32 Vassar Street, room -32-123 in Cambridge (the Stata Center).

Get ready for a great weekend!

Whew!   Register now for FiberCamp Boston on January 9 and 10, 2010 at the Arsenal Center for the Arts.

What is FiberCamp?  It’s an open agenda weekend where you can ask, share, and hang out with people who are passionate about spinning, crochet, knitting, weaving, dyeing, felting, surface design, photography or social networking.

Our regular meeting on January 8 at MIT will kick off a weekend full of fibery goodness!

FiberCamp is different than most knitting or crochet shows because the participants decide what goes on during the sessions.  We’ll post short videos like the one below giving more details about what to expect at FiberCamp.  Many of you have suggested topics you’d like to see on the wiki over the last 7 months.  Others are already volunteering to help out.  With registration finally open, we can finally take the suggestions, the volunteers and get this weekend rolling!

At the Arsenal, there will be 5 conference rooms/studios plus informal space for connecting.   We’ll also open up space for vendors.  Businesses are welcome to sponsor FiberCamp, so we can offer goodie bags, snacks, etc.  There’s more details about all of this on the FiberCamp web site.
Non-members are very welcome, as usual, so spread the word!

SHOW BEGINS at 7PM EST, Friday, November 11th

Make Mine Local Fiber Arts Fashion Showcase 2009 from Brilliantvideo on Vimeo.

Thanks to my friend Skip at Brilliant Video Productions we will be streaming the the fashion show. You can also see the video on <"http://vimeo.com/brilliantvideo/videos"> Brilliant Video’s Vimeo Channel directly.

OK… we will try to live stream the fashion show. In true fly by the seat of our pants fashion(cough) we have not completely scoped out the location of the fashion show, so we hope that this is possible from an MIT class room.

For those of you who can make it on Friday, hope to see you at 50 Vassar St, Room 34-101 in Cambridge (not the Stata Center).. and for those who cannot, hope you see us here.

WACKY, WONDERFULLY CREATIVE, EMPOWERING, and a woman you do NOT want to mess with!

That’s Shannon Okey, our guest speaker and host for the Guild’s first Fiber Fashion Showcase.

At the November 13th meeting, Shannon will introduce the local designs heading down the runway and answer the much mused question, “Can you make a living by designing fiber fashion?”

Okey runs her own publishing venture of digital and print publications, and most recently was editor in chief of UK-based print knitting magazine Yarn Forward.   Based in Lakewood, Ohio, she teaches at Knitgrrl Studio, her gallery and studio space.  Always swimming in front of the current, Shannon organizes events such as the Cleveland edition of Boston-born indie craft show Bazaar Bizarre to gallery shows featuring fellow fiber artists.  You may have read her column in knit.1 magazine.  She founded Stitch Cooperative, a designer-operated pattern publishing co-op.  A former resident of Somerville, Shannon misses Tacos Lupita with all her heart almost every day.

We will hand out  a show program with more information about the designers featured in Make Mine Local.  It’s also a chance for local yarn and fiber vendors to support the show by placing announcements in the Make Mine Local program.  Click on the link below to RSVP or to learn more about catalog announcements.

RSVP Here!

Boston Fashion Week was  last week, but

Make Mine Local

The Common Cod’s first Fiber Fashion Showcase will glide across our Friday, November 13 meeting.   Come and catch the fashion breeze of Boston area designers and guest hostess Shannon Okey of Knitgrrl Studio.  It’s time to celebrate this year’s theme:  Fall in New England .

Really, every Cod meeting is a fiber showcase of sorts. I’m always admiring the clothes and wearable art  at the meetings.  It’s one of the great things about the Guild.  Will we see you  there?

RSVP/REGISTER HERE

Hi everyone! Quick introduction, I’m Emily Wagner, I’ve been a member of the Guild pretty much since the beginning last year, and I figured since I’m always taking pictures at the meetings and blog all the time anyway, I would ask Guido if he wanted me to post about our meetings and events! I also have a crafty podcast called We Have Thumbs which is about people who make things (third episode going up very soon, it’s still new and I’m busier than I thought I was right now), and a book blog at Stackscene, and my Ravelry name is emilytheslayer. I hang out with the South End Knitters and at Mind’s Eye Yarns whenever I have a chance, and I’m a recent graduate of the Simmons Graduate School of Library Science.

So that’s who I am, and I should also warn you guys that I’m TERRIBLE with names. If I post pictures of you without saying who you are, please drop a note in the comments and I’ll add your name! Also feel free to leave links to your photos of Guild events, since I know I won’t get everything!

NOW. Since that’s 0ut of the way, I get to do what I’m actually here to do, which is talk about our September meeting with Kristin Nicholas! I’ll admit, I squeed a little when I saw that she was going to be our speaker. I’ve never knit any of Kristin’s patterns, but I always find them incredibly inspiring and beautiful.

Kristin brought her adorable daughter, who was the inspiration for Kristin’s line of yarn and several of the sweaters and projects she showed us, and had a fantastic slide presentation.

We can pretend the stuff on the board was totally from Kristin if we want.

She told us all about her color sense, her history in fashion design, her house and colorful life, and showed us projects from her new book! Kristin and her husband are farmers in Western Mass, so there were pictures of adorable sheep and working farm dogs, bright sunflowers EVERYWHERE. Seriously, there were so many gorgeous sunflower pictures, and pictures of sunflower knitting projects, and a whole wall of sunflowers. I thought I was going to be seeing afterimages for a week! Luckily, I love sunflowers *almost* as much as Kristin, so I thought it was heaven!

Speaking of the farm animals, wasn’t this just the absolute cutest picture in the whole slide show?

The kitchen lambs sleeping with a farm dog, so cute!

Sometimes there will be lambs who can’t quite make it out in the barn, so they get to live in the kitchen until they’re strong enough to go outside. The “awwww!”‘s from the crowd were many and prolonged. I’m also sure many of us were immediately considering the practicalities of raising lambs in the kitchen. . .oh, that was just me?

Listening to Kristin describe her aesthetic and her life on the farm was really a fun treat, and she even did some color exercises with us to bust us out of our personal color-grooves.

As always with Guild meetings, one of my favorite parts was looking around the room to see what other people are working on. Here are some of my favorite crowd pics from the evening.

I love knitters!

What fun this room was! We all had a table to put all of our stuff out, which made project stalking so much easier! You can also see Kristin’s daughter Julia down in the back (of the picture, front of the room) left side of the picture, in her cute pink sweater.

It's Lucy, Alisdair, and Patience!

People I know, yay! Apologies if I spell any one’s name wrong, I already mentioned I’m bad at names, right? Anyway, Mind’s Eye Yarns representing in this picture, what what?

More people I know! It’s Jen of Blue Alvarez designs! She did indeed make that colorful sweater, I asked her. If you are the woman in the pretty coral colored sweater, or know who she is, sing out in the comments!

Abby knitting.

This was what I saw right next to me. My friend Abby was knitting so fast the camera couldn’t quite catch her hands! The yarn was prettier in real life though, even if that doesn’t seem possible.

And this is what was happening at my spot at the table. Sock bag, other project bag, camera case, leftover ends after weaving, and my sock yarn blankie that is in progress. At one point Kristin was talking about people being afraid to mix color, and Abby looked down at my blankie and just giggled. “Not a problem for you, then!” I believe were her words.

Our fearless leader! Sorry you’re blurry Guido, you were moving kinda fast. Has everyone taken a moment lately to thank Guido for all his work on the guild? What a guy! Give him a hand (and some of your time, we can always use volunteers to help with guild stuff)!

After the talk, everyone gathered out in the sitting area to chat and knit and get a closer look at the samples from Kristin’s new book. More project stalking, glee!

That is the top half of a very long sock. So cute!

Guido talking to a group of Guild members. Ooh, better shot of Jen’s sweater in this one, too!

A Knitter in the Wild!

Blogging you ’cause you’re blogging meeee. . .and also because WOW that Noro Wisteria is gorgeous. LOVE. You also get a good look at some of the Kristin Nicholas samples laid out here. Lovely!

Kristin chatting with our members.

This baby blanket from Kristin's new book was a big hit with the group.

So that’s it from me for now, if you want to see the few pictures I didn’t post, they’re right over here! See you guys in November!