Spinning and Weaving Association Information on Annual Meeting 2009

SWA will host its Annual Meeting at The National Needlearts Association tradeshow in Columbus, Ohio, on Sunday June 14 from 7-8:30 a.m. The meeting will be held in classroom C125. Coffee will be provided. Details to come What We've Been up to for You   +Consumer outreach at Green Festival in Denver and Maker Faire in San Francisco. + Supporting regional shows (see reaching out below) +SWA Educational Listings updated! +Sponsoring a third segment on KDTV: using a spinning wheel to transform commercial yarns into novelties. +New Benefit: An Advertising Primer by Art Elkins   SWA is Going Green SWA is hosting a booth at the Green Festival in Denver May 2-3 to drive customers to your business. This event attracts thousands of visitors. The booth will show how to make "tofu" into a tote by spinning regenerated fibers as warp and weaving with recycled plastic bags to create a handy market tote. A HUGE shout out to Joan Sheridan from Heritage Spinning and Weaving for her work on our marketing materials.  We have a fabulous team of helpers including Maggie Casey (Shuttles, Spindles, and Skeins), Liz Good, Liz Gipson and Stefanie Berganini (Interweave) and Gail Matthews (Schacht). Also thanks to South West Trading, Ashford, and Louet for providing yarns and fibers.   Travis Meinlof (Craft magazine weaving cover boy) has given us permission to reproduce his cardboard rigid heddle "loom" that will serve as our one handout/promotional piece (less paper is good at a green festival)! The piece is designed to drive folks to the website and FIND A SHOP OR TEACHER. We will also have CD spindles available adorned with a SWA promotional sticker, for a donation of $3. Proceeds to go to Keep The Fleece's efforts to create the largest Heifer fiber herd. (A shout out to member Linda Cortright of Wild Fibers for her work on prompting the UN's International Year of Natural Fibres).    We will do a smaller version of this demonstration at the Maker Faire in San Francisco as part of TNNA's booth.  Andrea Longo, an associate member, will be organizing spinning and weaving in the TNNA booth as well as doing half-hour presentations on their demonstration stage. Elections   Maggie Casey has served two terms on the SWA board and will be stepping down in June. Joan Sheridan has agreed to run for the board. Any other nominations should be forwarded to board secretary Maggie Casey. Elections will be held at the SWA annual meeting Reaching Out to Regional Conferences   Associate member, Cameron Taylor-Brown, single-handedly led an effort to reach out to the Association of Southern California Handweavers Conference. Her efforts serve as a model for future efforts to support these important regional shows.   Some of her efforts included:   Outreach to SWA wholesalers at TNNA to encourage their customers  to attend the show.   Supporting mini-classes in the vending hall to attract day customers   Providing survival packs (chocolate kisses, mints, etc..) to SWA members who were vending and thanking them for supporting SWA.   Hosting a brief SWA vendor meeting for both members and nonmember to talk about organizational and industry issues.   A big thank you to Cameron for her work and SWA aims to build on her good work for future conferences

Stay In Touch There are many ways to stay in touch with SWA's activities. Join our bimonthly conference calls (the next one is August 20)--all members are invited to participate. If you would like to join the call, please e-mail [email protected].  SWA hosts a Yahoo group where you can chat with other members about the spinning and weaving industry. To take part, e-mail moderator Joan Sheridan (Heritage Spinning and Weaving) at [email protected] Join a committee. See sidebar for a list of our current projects. For more information, e-mail [email protected].