Meeting of (Creative) Minds

After the frost scare the other week, the weather has returned to bright, warm, and summery. Which made it a great day last Sunday to get out and take in a bit of the West End Studio Tour going on last weekend.

Meredith was the one who told me about it. She's been a friend of the family for eons - her son is the same age as my brother - and she not only has a lovely beading store , she has the same cooking/gardening/creative itch Mom and I have, and has been doing some fiber art in recent years. Turns out a friend of hers, Wendy , who's also a fiber artist, was taking part in the studio tour, and since Wendy has been getting into natural dyeing, and I do some natural dyeing...well, what a perfect excuse to get together, have lunch, catch up, meet Wendy (and her husband, who does metalwork), take in a few other studios, and generally make an afternoon of it! So we did.

We saw the studio of a wood-block printer, took in the works of a doll-maker, a painter, and a jewelry maker. Meredith also got to see the works of a few other artists who were in the same space as Wendy and her husband, which I didn't, because we were discussing dyes. Turns out what she and I have done is almost completely complementary - I've been doing mostly immersion dyeing on wool and a bit of cotton, whereas she has been doing eco-prints on silk and linen, and getting some stunning results. She has some photos on her blog , but they don't do the colors justice. I've been a little dubious about the eco-printing, but now I'm inspired.

We were tearing ourselves away, and I was thinking how Deb P would have enjoyed it, being as she's a printmaker artist and is part of our fleece spa spinning and dyeing group, and the one who ordered and researched the Japanese indigo we tried this year...when lo and behold, she and her husband came in. So hopefully she had as good a time talking with Wendy as I did. Meredith and I headed off after the introductions to make our other stops.

It was a lovely full afternoon, enough that although I could have caught part of my usual Sunday afternoon knitting group, I was happy enough to go home instead, have a cuppa, and let impressions percolate.