We’re getting close to wrapping up our 2021 season. Classes concluded last week and the shop’s daily hours will end October 31st. Starting in November, we’ll be in the office on weekdays only. (Pease know you’re always welcome to stop in!) We’ll still have yarns, books, needles, etc., available for purchase. This year (our 43rd) we had a total of 347 registered students and 75 of those were taking their first Sievers class. New students came from AZ, AR, CA, CO, FL, IL, IN, IA, KY, MI, MN, MS, MO, MT, NV, NM, NY, OH, SC, TX, VA, WA, WV and of course, WI. It was so good to see many of you this past season and meet our new […]
Velkommen
Velkommen til Simply Scandinavian, our last class of the 2021 season. Connie Westbrook was kind enough to offer it twice this year, in June and October, and both times focused on projects with the clean lines and simple designs of Scandinavian weaving. Like the class held in June, Connie shared her beautiful handwoven samples and ideas, offered afternoon fika (not just for Swedes, it’s time for friends to take a pause, share a cup of coffee or tea and a little something to eat), arranged for a guided tour of the Stavkirke and created a welcoming atmosphere for her students. From an array of weave structures and patterns including Halvdräll, Monk’s Belt and Scandinavian Snowflake, students wove table linens, pillow […]
Knitters: Agents of transformation
The students in the Creative Knitting Retreat class with Sandy De Master and Mary Germain and their fellow knitting friends in the Open Knitting Studio know these words are true. From the simplest of tools and a ball of yarn, plus the knowledge of only two stitches, knit and purl, the possibilities are endless. From our Sievers Readings file: “I am a knitter. I take yarn and needles and become an agent of transformation…taking my part in moving a sheep’s’ fleece to garment…knitting my intentions and love into the fabric. I am linked to the past and my knitting Grandmothers, I am linked to my present when people ask me what I’m doing. I am knitting a future, honing myself […]
Sievers Alumni
As we’ve mentioned before, a number of our instructors first came to Sievers as students. That’s true of Jeanette Biederman, who was here teaching the Splint-Woven Basketry: Independent Study class and Nancy Adams, who was the facilitator for the Adams’ Alumni Open Weaving Studio. In our earlier blog titled “Two by Twos”, we wrote about Nancy’s natural progression from student to teacher. The same is true for Jeanette. We met Jeanette as a student in CharTerBeest-Kudla’s 1987 Beginning Willow Basketry class. She returned each following year as a student in classes taught by Jim Bennett and Rise Andersen. After teaching her first class in 1991 (10 students in a weekend of Splint Market Baskets), she’s gone on to offer 83 […]
Sit back and enjoy the view
Now that the students in the Bent Willow Chair class are home, we trust they are all sitting back, enjoying the view from their new chairs and feeling the satisfaction of building them by hand, with the help of instructors, Ken and Michelle Workowski. From the prepared willow, ready-to-go, it’s only a matter of a few hours before the chair’s sturdy frame is complete. The next day is spent bending and shaping, bending and shaping until you have the right fit. Ken has been teaching this class at Sievers with Michelle, together as a team, since 2005. The year prior, he had assisted then-instructor Rich Prange in our Bent Willow chair class. That’s a total of about 175 chairs made […]
Boundweave and a pop-up shop
We’d been waiting for this for a long time! Since the class in 2020 was not able to be held, it had been five years since the last Boundweave class. It’s such a treat to see the rugs Lynn Stracka Shuster brings and the ones students plan, design and weave themselves. Sharpen your colored pencils and watch the rugs come to life on the looms! One of the students, who has taken many weaving and knitting classes here, had first come to Sievers for Lynn’s Boundweave class in 1997. She brought her rug back to show us now that it’s been 24 years off the loom. Another student used one of our table looms to weave her project. There’s a […]
Sievers willow family tree
Sievers and willow have a long history. We begin by going back to 1980, our second year, when Char TerBeest-Kudla offered the first class in basketry at Sievers. Focusing on willow, the class description read in part, “You will use natural materials found right here on our rustic, beautiful Washington Island. What you learn you put to use wherever you are.” Four students that first year quickly grew to 12 in 1981. One of those 12 students was Jo Campbell-Amsler, who became the Beginning Willow basketry instructor in 1991 and has continued to offer classes in willow since then. In Jo Campbell-Amsler’s 1993 Beginning Willow class, two of her students were Donna Kallner and Jacki Bedworth. 1993 Beginning Willow Basketry […]
Tool times
It’s not often we have two classes in session that predominately use hammers, pliers, saws, knives, drills, gouges, torches, burners and more, but it happened when both Kay Rashka’s Metalwork Jewelry Boot Camp and Woodcarving with Jerry Landwehr were here earlier in September. Where a set of carving tools can fit in a nice case or box, the many hundreds of pounds of metalwork tools, equipment and supplies need the space Kay’s entire pickup truck offers. However, this post is not just about the tools, it’s about what you can do with the tools! To create metalwork art jewelry, there’s cutting, filing, stamping, etching, piercing and soldering. Along with all the “-ing’s” you do with the various tools, there’s an […]
