Last weekend was the return of our local Guilds Sale and exhibition. It was last held in 2019. The Sale had grown over the years unfortunately the venue had not expanded as we had (Brick and Morter buildings just don’t stretch well!!)
Glebe Community Centre started life as the St. James Methodist Church In the Palladian style designed by Clarence Burritt (It was begun in 1914 and finished in 1924.) due to a merger of congregations it became St. James United Church in 1925. In the early 1970s, the congregation had declined and again merged with another Church building leaving The City of Ottawa to buy the building. In 1974 the Glebe Community Center opened.
This year we reduced the number of booth spaces and increased the space for the exhibition, demo and Iles which also gave the sale a less squished look. This worked out well since we had some vendors who were no longer vending and some who did not have the amount of stock for a booth so joined the Guild Co-Op booth.
Ann organized the measuring and taping group that started the setup for the sale. Once the tape was down marking the booth spaces, the tables and chairs were put where requested. The crew was moving so fast that it was hard to get a shot of their hard work!
Just as the last table was set into place the first vendor arrived early. Wendo had one of the four booths with felting!
The rest of Friday afternoon into the evening was spent in a blur of setting up. I had lively music to keep them moving, (including Uriah Heep, Sweet, Placebo, and lots of other lively inspirations ending with the Lords of Acid).
My focus for Friday was to both photo document the activity and find Photos of each of the 21 booths to put up on our Facebook group to inspire Shoppers for the weekend.
Booth 1 was the co-op booth. Members of the guild who only had a few items to sell put them in the co-op booth. Both Ann and I had items in this booth. (Bernadette was sharing a booth you will see some of her batts later)
The booth beside the co-op was Wendo Van Essen’s. Full of whimsical felted animals, kits and pincushions. I was all set to take this guy’s picture face on when he suddenly swung around and showed me his but! I waited patiently, as he slowly continued his rotation until I felt he was showing a better side of himself.
A few booths down was Molly Underhill who also had a booth full of felting. I was captivated by the thin felted bowl. It was even more intriguing when she dropped in a battery-operated candle, which produced this fabulous glow!
Lona’s Booth also had some Felted items, as well as Wood turned yarn bowls, shawl pins, buttons, art yarn items, crochet sets, handwoven and knitted items.
Les Belles Bouclettes booth had high-quality mohair from Angora goats. In both natural colours as well as dyed mohair locks, roving and yarn.
Booth 6 was Judy Kavanagh and Don Haines. Both work with wood. Judy repairs wheels, makes spindles and sells fibre. Don makes doffers, nostepinne, Inkle looms, warping boards and a loom bench with a shelf!
Booth 7. Studio 3 had hand weaving; hand-dyed clothing, textiles, scarves and fibre art.
Booth 9. Wool, emporium de laine Amélie Blanchard raises cashmere goats. (She is also one of the people who run the fibre festival Twist). She had hand-dyed yarn and fibre, fleeces, and cashmere.
Booth 11.Fab Fibre Two (Jean Sharp and Bernadette Quade)
Jean Sharp is a spinner and weaver. She had unique yarns suitable for weaving and knitting projects. As well as handwoven and knit articles.
Bernadette Quade is a spinner and weaver She hand cards, drum cards, or combs the majority of her fibre and tries different dye techniques on her handspun yarn. Her fibre and yarn may include Fine wools, silks, linen, cashmere and angora as well as alpaca, llama and other exotics. (I have used her batts for landscapes and have found them fabulous!)
Booth 12. Handweaving by Janet Whittam Handwoven clothing, fashion accessories, rugs, household linens, and baskets in vibrant colours and always with something unexpected woven in. She also teaches both weaving and basketry.
Booth 13. Cavadelo Flax Garden “Established in 2021. Our goal was to spin and weave flax/linen. We started with a (12 x 12) plot and tools replicated by our local Men’s Shed and learned the process of fibre prep, spin and weave. We have a much larger flax crop this year and it should be ready for the exhibition to spin.” They had a display of the tools of flax preparation, a small loom weaving with linin as well as a spinning wheel spinning the prepared flax into linen. It was a fabulous display! They are hoping to expand their production next year.
Booth 14. Beaux Arbres Basketry (Michael Peterson) Basketmaker for about 30 years. Inspiration from historical techniques from various sources to make functional and artistic baskets. He teaches basketry, check his website. It is fun to watch a basket appear out of a pile of wet sticks.
Booth 16. Wayside Weeds and Wool (Amanda Carrigan) Handspun and natural-dyed yarns, hand-knitted accessories and original patterns and kits. She is published in the ‘101 Lace One-Skein Wonders. She teaches spinning and natural-dyeing workshops.
Booth 18. Yarnsomniacs Handraised and homegrown sheep and llama fibres and yarns: raw fleece, washed fleece, roving, handspun and hand-dyed yarns, handmade SuperJumbo knitting needles, and more! Rambouillet Merino, Romney, Babydoll Southdown, and crosses of BL/BFL/Polwarth with either Romney or Rambouillet.
Booth19. Cannaweave Weaving and Fibre Studio and Accessories (Laurie Harkin-Chiasson) Loom weaving articles and baskets, including pine needle baskets, tools for the fibre enthusiast, nostepinne wool winders to mini tools on jewellery chains. Also woven bookmarks of handspun dog fur, spinning wheel hooks, wrist distaffs and rug hooking hooks. All the equipment for Japanese braiding (Kumihimo) including finished jewellery with Kumihimo braids. She uses beautiful exotic woods in many of her tools.
Booth 20. Off the Loom (Liliane McKennirey) Hand Weaving using recycled materials for the weft: t-shirts, ribbing, furs, leather, VHS tape and plastics. Liliane is very well known for her recycling of old fur coats into lap rugs and pillows.
Booth 21. Lin en ville Weaving eco-friendly linen essentials for the bath and kitchen. If you look closely you will see how fine the yarn she is using for her tea towels is. I could not pass up the lozenge twill pattern in blue and white!!
We also had an exhibition. The theme this year was Then and Now: A Maker’s Journey. We were to select an early piece and one that was current to show the progress we had made in our creative journey.
We also had a make-and-take table (Kumihimo on cardstock, Turkish spindles and Tapestry Necklace)
There was also a demo area. (Spinning and weaving, I was felting in another corner with the Mer’s while I was taking photos and trying to get the music to run.)
Overall the sale was busy, vendors seemed happy with sales and the shoppers seemed happy with their purchases! I mainly was distracted by fibre but also impressed with the linen display. Even Ann did a bit of shopping!
Mr. and Mrs. Mer also attended the Sale but did not do any shopping. I was working on Mrs. Mer but yet again Mr. Mer was caught Flirting!!
