Hi everyone, I am delighted to share that tomorrow I am making my way to Cleveland for the Rust Belt Fibershed Symposium, which is taking place on Saturday, January 25th. I will be vending at the marketplace, which is free and open to the public from 2-4pm.
Rust Belt Fibershed is an amazing nonprofit community organization that is working to develop and support local textiles in the Rust Belt region, which encompasses parts of the Great Lakes and Mississippi River Basin watersheds. Here in WNY, we are on the outer edges of this region, but I feel strongly aligned with RBF's mission and, of course, Buffalo is very much a post-industrial Rust Belt city. The idea of 'redeveloping' this area to produce regional textiles is so exciting to me.
I will be bringing patches, pennants and tote bags, but I'll also have printed manifestos, hand-bound zines, and a very exciting NEW project: regional spinning fiber! Over the past couple of weeks I've been busy dyeing and blending wool from New York State, New England and Pennsylvania to create these gorgeous braids and batts. I use vegetable-waste dyes (materials sourced from my local food co-op) and hand-blend all the fiber myself.
These will be available first at the Symposium Marketplace, and then will be coming to the WDG website. I'm very excited about this project and will be talking about it more when they go live in the shop, but for now they are a Fibershed exclusive! I hope you love them as much as I do.