Jan has formal art training, with 3 years of commercial art (2 years general, 1 year illustration) followed by a BA from the University of Toronto in Fine Art and Art History. She began her formal training in fibre arts with weaving classes in 1989 from Donna Gerarden. She acquired her first spinning wheel around 1998, shortly after finding kittens. (The kittens were not amused.) Jan’s first experience with felt was early in her fibre arts career, in a workshop through the Ottawa Valley Weavers and Spinners Guild. The teacher was Maggie Glossop, with whom we made a decorative vessel using a resist, embellishing it with irises and enjoying the artistic possibilities, but not the getting wet. Eventually, she took more wet felting workshops with Ann McElroy making many hats with a resist, felt flowers, nuno felting and also a sample technique workshop. Since then she has been able to attend workshops with Moy Mckay and a 3 days long workshop on sculptural felting with Marjolein Dallinga. She also has a strong interest in needle-felted sculpture and pictures. To expand her interest in Picture felting and painting with wool she took a workshop with Megan Cleland, who has a background in Fine Art (Painting). Megan was teaching 2D felt pet portraiture. Jan has taught Inkle weaving for the OVWSG for many years, more recently she has taught needle felted pictures and small needle felted sheep. Ann asked Jan to write a few articles for the blog calming she could make a trip to the dentist sound exciting. Jan is not sure if that is possible, but does view the world as an exciting adventure especially if there is fibre involved! Jan lives in Ottawa Canada, in a tiny house, with her large loom, other smaller looms, many spinning wheels, bags of fibre, an extensive library and a little space to enjoy it all.