OHS Central Region Seminar 2013

Thank you so much to everyone who joined us on October 5 at the Canadian Canoe Museum for ‘Paddle your Own Canoe’ – the Ontario Handweavers and Spinners Guild Region Seminar! It was a terrific success, and we’d like to thank all of our volunteers, as well as the Canadian Canoe Museum for being such terrific hosts.

For some photos and other notes about the day, visit this post on our News page.

Our OHS central region seminar 2013 that had been in preparation for so long is over and was a definite success, based on the delighted feed-back from the participants.

For those of you who missed it, our excellent keynote speaker, felting artist Andrea Graham, turned out to be a great hit, taking us on a journey through her life paddling her own canoe. Even the non-felters were captivated. She shared her life’s defining moments with humour and feeling and also where she hopes to paddle next. It was quite inspirational. She also explained how her felting technique has evolved, how important it is how you present your items, how much dedication it takes to get people to remember you, to keep at it! But not to lose track of that it has to be good and enjoyable for you. She asks herself at the end of each day if this was a day she would do over. And the seminar one was, so it was a positive experience for her too.

People had opportunity to shop before and after the presentation, and the vendors were happy to be in the same room as the rest of us again.

After lunch the demonstrators started:  Faye wove with metal wires incorporated in her weave and had samples of her work displayed, Jo Mills spun with sari silk and had the different steps displayed, Mary Charles was rug hooking with roving, Gina Peers was caning a chair seat and had her little intricate amulets displayed, and Murray Lincoln was tatting. Unfortunately the ‘hat lady’ was not able to attend to do her embellishments as planned, which was disappointing, but  Andrea’s felting demonstration drew quite a crowd.

 The pillows displayed in the canoe looked great and when the people’s choice award was presented it came as no surprise that Wendy had won with her fabulous birch log pillow, followed by Carole’s felted pillow and Dee’s canoe transparency pillow! So our guild raked in the prizes, but it was nice to see that other registrants also participated, even if we had hoped for more participation from the other guilds.

 There were enough draw prizes to go around too so nobody went home empty handed, not that it was very likely to happen with all that the vendors had to offer. And the early bird prize was fittingly won by the very first registrant!

 Lionel’s baking was thoroughly enjoyed by everyone and Jacqueline in the kitchen (from the canoe museum!) kept the coffee and tea coming, but the juice packs went over well too. So all in all, a very, very good day.