Courses

During the days of 25th to 27th April 2003 twelve people attended the spinning and weaving course at the Kadeřávek family farm in Věcov. As the course itself was of only two days duration, I at first had some concerns whether we shall manage to go through all that I had planned. Up to now I only organised one day courses, but these were separate, either for spinning, or for weaving.

We begun by weaving on simple looms. A different warp was threaded to each loom, so that various different techniques could be tried out.

Apart from an introduction to working on looms, we also looked at how to prepare the wool for spinning. We washed the wool and tried carding it using hand carders. We thus had first hand experience at how much simpler and quicker carding can be when using drum carders, particularly when more fleeces have to be carded.

Concurrently with the weaving, two participants at a time took turns in spinning on two different types of spinning-wheels. This way they could find out if a machine with a bigger or smaller wheel is better suited to them and on which they find spinning easier.

At this stage it should be pointed out that the quality of the spinning-wheel or loom is of great importance. Nowadays it is much easier to obtain these here then it has been in the past. Currently wheels and looms can be obtained in the Czech Republic from several dealers. I myself am one such dealer, offering customers top quality wheels and hand looms, including accesories and back-up, from a world renowned manufacturer with a long tradition. In view of the fact that the purchase of such equipment is a long term proposition, my advice is to carefully consider which supplier or dealer to use.

During the weaving on simple looms the participants begun to be more and more curious as to how the warp is wound to the four harness loom and how the patterns shall be created on this loom. During Sunday the attendees at long last experienced how the first patterns begun to appear under their own hands on materials created by other then the cloth weave (tabby) method.

For me as a lecturer, the great interest of the participants to find out as much as possible, was most rewarding, and so the evenings spent together, went by far too quickly. At the Kadeřávek farm we all felt like one big family and apart from the course we also witnessed the birth of new lambs, took part in driving the sheep out to pasture and so on. I belive that, not just for myself, it has been a pleasant and unusual experience and am very glad that the possibility to organise the course on the farm, not just in Prague, remains there also for the future.

In view of the fact that there has been so much interest and not all of the applicants could be accepted, we are preparing further courses, one again for beginners, and newly, an advanced course as well. However, as we encountered so much interest in respect of other kinds of wool processes, such as dyeing, felting etc, the future courses shall be of three day duration.

I believe that everybody enjoyed the course and would be happy if future courses could be as succesful as this one. For me, the happiest moment at the end of the course on Sunday, was when each of the participants could carry away her own hand spun skein of yarn and woven samples.