June — well, here it is. My final President Message to you. It is a
been pleasure to have been “at the helm” for TWG these past two
years. We have accomplished some goals, and been joyfully and
colorfully enriched about weaving and fiber techniques. It has been
satisfying to accept new members into our guild, and grow our fiber
community.
This month we install our new officers and set up the Standing Board
and committee chairs for the coming year. Thank you to all those who
have stepped up, and re-upped. Barbara, our new President, will call
a board meeting over the summer.
Applications for Tacoma Open Studio Days (October 17, 18) and Arts
at the Armory in November are made, and hopefully we will be
accepted into both events. Be sure to add extra to your warps for
items to sell at our fundraiser sale.
The June picnic, will be held at the home of Nancy Olson’s daughter.
Full directions are included in the newsletter. Dog Daze and Potluck,
Show and Tell which is always inspirational. It’s the heART of our
guild! Hope you can come. I am sad I will miss it. I will be in Denver
at Complex Weavers Seminars.
I want to thank all of the guild members who have worked with me the
past two years. I could not have done this without your support.

Happy weaving,
Mimi

May is such a lovely month. Especially here where we live — we are lucky. Sun is warming the earth bringing colorful blooms and greenery to our gardens. It’s inspiring and tempting me to wind some warp yarns for dyeing. We have enjoyed presentations this year with color themes and colorful images. We have a color challenge – have you finished yours? We hope to see it at our meeting!

This month we will hold elections. Thank you to all those who have stepped up to help administer the guild’s activities. We all benefit. We also will be talking about the future activities, including Tacoma Open Studio Days (October 17, 18) – shall we participate again? And the potential of another Arts Sale through the City which is planned for dates in November. We look forward to planning our year and the ongoing promise of inspiration through our programs, workshops and study groups.

At our meeting, our member Debbie Waite will share with us her experiences as a beginning weaver. We’ll also have more information and examples of the double weave project. We’ll hear about some of our study groups endeavors. We will talk about the June picnic, graciously held at the home of Nancy Olson’s daughter. Full details will be sent on directions etc. And —- the color challenge!

Whether you are a weaver of many years, or just beginning, our Show and Tell is always inspirational. It’s the heART of our guild! Come join us.

April 2026

Hello Weavers!

Trees in blossom, tulips budding, and sprouts popping everywhere, – even bunnies on the lawn!  We have heard of snow in the month of April here in Tacoma, but after our surprise Snow Day last month, let’s hope we won’t have another.  The early morning decision to hold our meeting 100% virtually proved to be optimal, with everyone being able to see our speaker, Kathrin Weber, on their own screen.   I certainly enjoyed it and look forward to playing around with dye techniques.

I have finished the weaving my 3 shaft rug, but now must do the braided finishing – still slow!  I’m planning on dyeing a warp to go onto that loom next, probably for towels.  I am also finally weaving on my new AVL loom, still with some problems, but I will have those resolved soon.  

We hope to see everyone at our April 10th meeting to enjoy even MORE color inspiration from Beverly Ash Gilbert, “ Dancing With Color”.  Beverly has an awesome website:  beverlyashgilbert.com

See you soon –

Weave away!

Mimi

Mimi Anderson, President

Tacoma Weavers Guild

TWG President Message

October 2025

Hello Weavers!

Fall is such a busy time for us all. Home life, work life, weaving life – each aspect of our days is filled. This is the time of beginnings — weavers guilds meetings— and, with sadness, the lazy (?) days of summer are gone. September saw us begin again with the FAIR activities and Fiber Fling at the Job Carr Museum Park. Showing the visitors what we do and how we do it!

October brings another opportunity to share our love of fiber craft as we open the Studio (our meeting place at Saint Andrews) to the public for the Open Arts Studio Tour, on Saturday October 11th as we participate in Tacoma Arts Month. You can find out more hereour members will dress up our meeting room, bringing table looms, spinning wheels, and many examples of what we make. We will not be selling, but rather promoting our SALE coming up in November during Arts at the Armory. Be sure to check that out here

For weaving inspirations, I’m feeling lured by more thoughts of Optical Hues, and by October colors – turning leaves, pumpkins everywhere, rain, fir needles, and by October scents – pumpkin spice lattes and all goodies with that wonderful smell. It feels warm.

I hope you will be able to join us in October for “Much from Little” – utilizing your handwoven leftovers.

Reminder, if you have ideas for Study Groups, contact Kitty to connect with others who also want to focus on a technique or study.

See you soon –

Weave away!

Mimi

Mimi Anderson, President

Tacoma Weavers Guild

Hello Weavers!

I am filled with anticipation of another great guild year for Tacoma weavers.  This year, our theme is “Optical Hues” specifically, of course, color options in weaving.  

AI says, optical color mixing is a perceptual phenomenon where two or more colors placed close together are seen by the brain as a single, new color.  Our brains and our eyes do have a symbiotic relationship and function, but when the brain is encouraged to think what the eye is seeing, that double curved line in the middle of a blue background becomes a seagull flying in the blue sky.  When the brain sees little blue dots and little yellow dots close together, it sees green. 

I remember back in a high school art class, our teacher was teaching about pointillism, and we were required to choose two colors, opposite on the color wheel, and use only those two in small dots, to create a portrait.  Perhaps it was of a specific famous artist, because I remember mine was Van Gogh.  I chose blue-violet and orange, and I can almost remember the painting.  It was amazing to see how just the use of dots could make shapes and shadows, and definitely a portrait of Van Gogh.

A similar concept is simultaneous contrast:  Two colors, side by side, interact with one another and change our perception accordingly. The effect of this interaction is called simultaneous contrast. Since we rarely see colors in isolation, simultaneous contrast affects our sense of the color that we see. For example, red and blue flowerbeds in a garden are modified where they border each other: the blue appears green and the red, orange.

Our weaving is like little pixels or dots, one up one down, so it’s the perfect medium for optical mixing.  In weaving, we can achieve totally different colors from what color each yarn color is, by using yarns in combination.  I was just looking at my sampler from our workshop with Jennifer Moore, Double Rainbow.  The places where two yarns are used form another color.

At our first meeting, we’ll have an activity.  If you choose, you can select some colorful paint chips to get you started thinking about how colors might interact and combine to create optical mixes.  We’ll proceed through the year, and as our May Challenge see results that we all have created using this concept.

I hope you all have had an amazing summer break, filled with weaving and ice dyeing, and you are back at the loom, or the wheel, or your favorite textile techniques.  We hope you are creating items to offer for sale at our Arts at the Armory event in mid November, and that many of you will participate in the Open Studio Day, October 11th.  

Weave away!

Mimi

Mimi Anderson, President

June

And now it is JUNE!  Two weeks to ANWG 2025 Conference in Yakima!

We look forward to our end-of-the-guild-year Potluck Picnic, again generously hosted by Janet S, at her lovely home.  We will do the “installation” of our Officers who were elected last month, and will be appointing a member who volunteered to fill the Secretary position.  Thank you Kay!

We will have a Dog Daze Sale, but hold off on the Shawl Raffle because the Shawl will go to our guild booth at ANWG.  Our booth will reflect our tagline “Friends Making Fabulous Fabrics”, showing how we work together each year at the Sheep To Shawl activity at the Fair.

I am so excited about our Ice Dyeing activity at the picnic.  The colorful projects will be dyed, but must go home with the dyers to batch, so we won’t see what you did until later.  We will have a big show and tell in September, and if you send images, we can post them on the FB page.  Send those to Donna, or post them yourself.

Many of us from TWG are going to the ANWG Conference, and will have lots to share when we begin our year again in September.

We plan to participate in the Tacoma Arts Studio Days in October, by having an open house of weaving demos and activities at our meeting location at Saint Andrews.  We also plan to again have a sales booth at Arts At The Armory this fall.  Remember to weave items to sell there!

I have only one weaving project in process; my Family Reunion towels to give out in July.  My family has a historical connection to bar codes; my dad’s company pioneered some of the reading devices for them, so I was determined to create a readable code with our family name, using white and black cotton.  Another weaver had done this a few years ago, so I knew it was possible, but it was challenging to design the color order.  After making the code, I had to determine the smallest line to equal one thread wide, so that the rest of the code was in proportion.  I didn’t want to thread the loom and have the towels not be read-able. With a geeky engineering family like mine, most everyone will have a tiny scanner app on their phone!  I’m still in that “fingers crossed” mode, but will soon know if it works!  

Happy Summer Weaving!

Mimi

Mimi Anderson, TWG President 2024-2026