A special shout out to the Billings Montana weavers guild and my friend JoAnne S. For teaching me how to weave over the winter. Without their help I wouldn’t have been able to set up the mini WV loomery to do demonstrations, classes and hands on fun for the many visitors to the historical area maintained by the US Army Corp of Engineers at Burnsville lake, WV.
We finally arrived after a lengthy cross country journey in the Conestoga. After setting up our campsite we were able to unload the cargo trailer of all our demonstration equipment and supplies and get it set up in the Fleming Cabin at the historical area and museum site. 3 days of unloading and setting up and I’m ready to start warping my looms! So exciting. The large barn loom is in excellent condition and just needed a bit of TLC to get it ready to go.
I’m setting up the big barn loom so that visitors can give it a try and help make a giant floor rug for the Fleming cabin. My plan is to let all the visitors throw a few shots on the loom and hopefully by fall we should have at least one if not two large rugs for the cabin 🙂 so if you are in the area stop by and give it a try!
The next largest loom is being set up for bath towels because I need one more set of bath towels in my RV lol. The mini two shaft table top loom will be set up for hand towels. The twining loom is currently set up with a small yellow placemat sized rug for placing doggie water bowls on Lol and makes a good demonstration size to show the art form of twining! The large embroidery hoop is set up with a piece of burlap and a fairly blunt plastic needle so that kids can give a try at sewing! Another beautiful gift of embroidery to the museum to be made by the many kid visitors. We also have two spinning wheels set up for demonstrations and several different styles of drop spindles for spinning wool.
Along with all that we are planning on having special living history events to include: cast iron cooking over a fire (pioneer style) cooking classes, knitting and crochet classes, leather making demonstrations, pioneer laundry day, wool washing and carding, wood working crafts with antique manual tools, rope making, butter churning, growing some broom corn in the garden so we can make cake brooms, grinding different grains by hand like the pioneers did, and lots of other fun pioneer style crafts for all ages!
You may even see Conestoga chuck and lil bit, and we are selling many of our hand crafted items which we make while doing demonstrations thru the historical area non-profit group in order to fund a dog park for the recreation area at Burnsville lake! Donations for the dog park are also accepted 🙂
Now I need to unload all my pioneer dresses and get the wrinkles out so I will be ready for our first weekend of demonstrations now that we are set up and ready to go! So exciting!!!!! Hmmm I wonder what Conestoga Chuck and lil bit will be wearing?
Conestoga Chuck 