You have probably heard both myself and Ann, chat about the 2025 OVWSG Sale and Exhibition. We continue to have the Guild sale at the Glebe community centre, which started life as a church, changed congregations then became a community centre. It has had some renovations over the years, and this year, there is scaffolding surrounding part of the outside of the building. Other than the challenge of parking, it is a beautiful site.

 

As with every year, it was a busy time leading up to the sale. You may have noticed I posted for myself and covered for Ann to give her a bit of a break.  Ann is not only baking for a local Farmers Market, a Fabulous felter and felting teacher, Guild Librarian, but also the coordinator for the sale, so she is very busy leading up to the sale and then really tired afterwards, but all her hard work was both worth it and appreciated.

You have seen lots of shopping opportunities lately, so this time I would like to show you a bit of the “behind the scenes”, some of the photos from the sale, then in the next post, finish by showing you the Exhibition.

Although Ann and the Guild sales team have been working since shortly after the last sale ended, the largest part of the volunteer teams get to work the week before the sale. On the Monday before the sale, we had gathered all the boxes and display grids in the studio ready to head to the sale on Friday. At 6 pm, we have the set up team at the Glebe, busy marking booth spaces and placing tables in booth spaces.   The Team with Pickup trucks, loaded everything and met us at the sale around 6:30 pm.

1.1) The pile of stuff is ready to go, with the black grids just visible behind the folding tables.

1.2) Busy setting up the team, the room and dome is beautiful, but possibly had a leak

As soon as the tables were up, the vendors started bringing in their wares, with the help of the “assist-the-vendors-bring-stuff-in” team.  The Guild Co-Op booth, Guild info booth, Make and Take table, the Exhibition and the demo teams were also setting up. We didn’t get to start as early on Friday as previous years (since the room was used as an after school daycare until 6 pm), so it was extra busy!

1.3) the various guild teams bringing in the guilds and vendor stuff (the blur of activity is Ann)

1.4) The booths popping up look like magic! (but it’s actually a lot of work)

I took a few (126) photos Friday night, to both document the guild activity and to create images we could post Friday night to entice shoppers on Saturday morning. (The postings seem to have worked, since Saturday morning was very busy with shoppers!) If you were curious, I took 873 photos in total over the weekend.

 2.1) Molly Underhill’s Birch Trees

By this point, it had already been a busy week, and I was extremely tired. As I stood looking at Molly’s lovely trees, I wondered what needle she had used to attach the felt to the birch bark….. (Yes, I needed more sleep!)

2.2) Molly’s Canada goose bag and Glasses cases

2.3) Inge Dam’s Weaving

Besides felt, there were also booths of weaving, handspun yarn and commercially spun and hand died yarns.

The guild booth had the door prizes. When you filled out a questionnaire (it was short), you got a sticker and were entered for the door prize. For those of us whose phones are luddites and don’t recognise QR codes, they had a tablet to fill out the questions.

3.1) info table with survey and QR Code (QR removed since the draw is over!)

3.2) The Door prizes

3.3) Even if you don’t win a door prize, you still get to pick a sticker!

Once you have filled out the survey (this gives us info on where our shoppers are coming from, and a bit of what they were looking for) and picked your sticker, we can take a quick peek at the Guild Demo area.

4.1) Ann helping a new spinner in the demo area

4.2) Weaving and spinning Demos

4.3) Felting Demo (I am looking forward to seeing how this progresses)

The guild also had a “Make and Take” table, which had various small weaving, felting, and sometimes spinning projects to do and take home. This has been fun to see, with lots of younger new people, but also quite a few adults trying their hands too.

4.4-4.5) Make and take table, the team was busy most of the weekend!

Let’s look at the booth, time for some virtual shopping!!

5.1) The Vendors list and Map, in case you get lost, we will meet at the end near the exhibition

Booths: 

Booth 1 is the Guild Co-Op booth, which gives members the opportunity to sell their work when they don’t have enough to have a whole booth.

5.2) These are blankets woven on the Guild’s 100-inch loom. The proceeds will help fund the guild.

5.3) A few of the items in the co-op booth

Booth 2 is Wendo Van Essen. She is a Needle Felter and has needle felted brooches, vegan taxidermy, needle felting kits, and pin cushions.

5.4) Booth 2, Wendo’s Booth

5.5) Booth 3, This is October Knits,  a NEW vendor, with hand dyed yarn and fibre.

You may have spotted His colourful braided fibre at a few other events.

5.6)  Booth 4, Judy Kavanagh and Don Haines

Spindles, heddles, shuttles, tapestry looms, fibre

5.7) Booth 5, Studio Three Fibre Arts and Unwoven

Booth 5 is a group of weavers, Studio Three Fibre Arts and Unwoven (Jean Down, Roberta Murrant and Deb Templeton), handwoven clothing, accessories, table linens, and fibre art.

5.8) Booth 6, Top of the Whorl

Spindles, spindle bowls, spindle totes and fibre in a variety of formats.

5.9) Booth 7, Wööl, emporium de laine

Hand dyed yarns, books, and notions.

6.1) Booth 8, Luna

Wood yarn bowls, crochet sets and art yarn.

6.2) Booth 9, Fab Fibre Two (Jean Sharp and Bernadette Quade)

Handspun yarn, fibre, hand knitted and handwoven items

6.3) Booth 10, Handweaving by Janet Whittam

Handwoven garments and accessories, baskets, household linens, rugs

6.4) Booth 11, Strapped for Cash

Handwoven straps and bands, including guitar straps, bag straps, hat bands, key fobs, lanyards, and bracelets.

6.5) Booth 12, WindWeft (NEW this year)

Mohair locks and yarns in natural and hand-dyed colours, mohair/wool blends, handspun and mill-spun yarns, rovings, batts, and handmade wool dolls.

6.6) Booth 13, Inge Dam’s Handwoven Textiles

Handwoven scarves and shawls

6.7) Booth 14, Wayside Weeds and Wool (Amanda Carrigan)          Handspun yarn, natural-dyed yarn, handknits, kits and patterns

6.8) Booth 15, Farmer Brown’s

Felted and wool based children’s play materials. Adventure Playmats, Woodland Gnomes and Fairy Houses.

6.9) Booth 16, Weave Me Be

Woven landscape tapestries.

7.1) Booth 17 & 20, Mapi Creations

Hand dyed fibre, Natural Fibre, Felted DIY kit, Felted Fabric, Art Yarn, Interactive Art Batt station

7.2) Booth 18, Maple Weaves

Handwoven wall tapestries and finished handwoven scarves

7.3) Booth 19, Felt by Molly

Felted goods

7.4) Booth 21, Carmen Deschênes, Lise Susin-Horth, Elisabeth Davy

Roving, locks, felted objects, handwovens

7.5) Booth 22, Makeloo Studio

Yarn certified 100% Canadian wool and hand dyed, also certified fibres

Oh my, that was a lot of show in not that big a hall! Maybe we should wander up to Bank Street and pop into a restaurant for lunch? We can meet back here afterwards and look at the Exhibition. If you are not parked in the city lot a block away, don’t forget to move your car when you drop off your purchases; it’s 3-hour street parking in most of the Glebe!

PS Sorry!!! i must not have saved properly, some of the photos were missing they loaded but did not attach, i must not have pushed save correctly!!! i hope this works now!!