Sunday, March 29, 2015

Our Second Weaving Outreach

We were surprised to begin the afternoon with a group of girls and their moms, an arranged "play date."  One of the girls had come last year and loved it and now wanted to share it with her friends.  They instantly gravitated to the table we set up with cardboard looms and went right to work.
The moms gravitated to the station Nancy had set up to show the wide variety of things she has woven with a simple rigid heddle loom.  We hadn't anticipated having the library's entire meeting room area since last year we had just half of it and were all of us smushed into this space.  It was nice to have open and differentiated work areas.
It wasn't all just families and kids.  We did attract some adult interest too.  But what a difference it was from last year when the adults tried the looms and the kids were all about the cardboard looms  I keep wondering if the most beautiful Saturday this year played into this.  Our main audience was kids.





My loom was adopted by a group of girls.
Who left their shoes there when they went to try other looms.

I guess when we set out reach other weavers, we don't have an audience in mind - or maybe we do. We expect adults who are looking for an avenue of self expression.  We never dreamed our audience would be pre-adolescent girls who applied huge pressure on their moms to get looms.  One mom laughed when her daughter looked at her in all seriousness and said - do we have one of these at home?