In late June I taught a week-long class at Harrisville Designs in Harrisville, NH. I love visiting Harrisville for so many reasons. I think the main reason is that it is a place full of heart. It is a beautiful small town filled with kind people. From the friendly greeting from the librarian to the chatty cooks at the General Store and the local mechanic who helped me after hours with a car problem^ to the oh-so-helpful postmaster who shipped my boxes home, the people are solid.
I can’t say enough good things about Harrisville Designs itself either. What a place of wonder it is. Any working mill is fascinating to me. Turning piles of fleece into yarn is magic.* The owners of Harrisville, Chick, Pat, and their son Nick Colony are so interested in what the students are doing. They embody the friendly, community-centered nature of the business and the town. The shopkeepers who will greet you with their knowledge of yarn, knitting, and weaving and make you feel like you’ve come home, are all exceptional humans. I have to give a huge thank-you to Sara Parker who not only helped me run a successful workshop but she got me out of a self-imposed and potentially disastrous jam one night.
I taught another class about color. This is one I’ve taught many times before though as always I couldn’t resist changing it up a little bit. It is called Predicting the Unpredictable: Color in Tapestry. Because isn’t color elusive sometimes? We used Harrisville Highland yarn for the class and it was wonderful to see the results of the heathered mixes along with a few solid hand-dyes I brought.
Harrisville yarns on the wall behind the tables of materials. The yarn in front is Harrisville Highland hand-dyed by me.
I set up the classroom on Sunday evening ready for a Monday morning start to a week of color.
The classroom set up on Sunday evening ready for the class the next day. My samples are one of the only things I always put in my carry-on when traveling. I can’t imagine losing this collection.
When teaching color, I always start with value. If you don’t take value into account, you can have the most beautiful palette ever but end up with a tapestry that just looks muddy or gray. So I have the students put a selection of yarn in order by value. This group worked together well and of course the highly saturated colors stumped us as always.
Harrisville Designs tapestry class working on seeing value
The class worked hard and there was lots of joyful color excitement all week long. We had a heat wave while I was there, but we managed not to melt and this huge and light-filled studio was enjoyed greatly.
A busy classroom at Harrisville Designs
Some of the class talking about color while looking at Gail’s work
The gallery below has some of the weaving done during the week. There was a lot of weaving that I didn’t get images of.
The shop at Harrisville Designs was the third yarn store I visited while out east. Since I was teaching just upstairs I was able to visit many times and delight in the color and ideas for both weaving and knitting. They also have copies of my book everywhere and I can’t tell you how fun that is for an author! A few of the photos in the book were shot at Harrisville.
The section of the shop where the Highland and Shetland yarn lives
So many copies of my book The Art of Tapestry Weaving, were to be found here and there. Thanks Harrisville!
The gorgeous town of Harrisville is just about as picturesque as you could imagine. All the old mill buildings are brick and there are ponds reflecting the sky and the flowers everywhere. The little building at the end of that pond is the library.
Harrisville, NH
Harrisville, NH and their very large pond. We would call it a lake in Colorado.
A mill building that is now the Harrisville Designs store and workshop space.
The rhododendron started blooming outside my house while I was there.
One night I met a friend in Peterborough for dinner and had a few minutes to duck into Toadstool Bookshop. They had my book!
The week went by quickly. I had a couple other adventures that I’ll talk about in separate blog posts. For now I leave you with a great group of weavers and a wish that you too find some time to play with color this summer.
A fantastic group of weavers! L to R: Sarah, Rebecca, Kerri, Renee, Deb, Gail, Kathleen, Jeri, Kathy
And just like that, the week was over and everyone was on their way home again.
Harrisville Designs’ classroom after a successful week
^Thank you Jonathan! You saved my bacon. I would have missed a much anticipated dinner with dear friends who drove a long way to see me when my rental car pulled that lock-the-door-automatically-with-the-keys-inside trick. And huge thanks to Sara who helped me not panic with her kind, “No problem! I know a guy!”
*I’ll have a post about our mill tour soon!