The Net Loft welcomes the following instructors to Fiber & Friends 2018. This select group of treasured teachers has been intentionally chosen, each having a unique purpose and important role in helping to create a memorable FisherFolk life experience.
Beth Brown-Reinsel
Beth Brown-Reinsel returns as our mentor for the Cordova Gansey Project. She will be one of our key note speakers, sharing her Knitted Gansey journey, and will be a member of our Gansey Knitting Panel during the "Round Table" discussion on gansey knitting. She will be teaching "Introduction to Gansey Knitting" and "Gansey Knitting Design" workshops. There will be a bookplate signing during the event to celebrate the Interweave Press new edition of her classic book "Knitted Ganseys" due to be released, July 2018. Beth has been instrumental to our Cordova Gansey Project, and we are grateful for her return to Cordova for FisherFolk 2018.
BIOGRAPHY:
Beth Brown-Reinsel has been passionately teaching historic knitting workshops nationally, as well as internationally, for over 25 years.
Her book Knitting Ganseys has been deemed a classic. She has completed three DVDs: Knitting Ganseys with Beth Brown-Reinsel, Color Stranded Knitting Techniques, and Sanquhar Gloves. She loves to prowl the storage section of museums around the world to look at old knitted things for inspiration for her patterns and classes. Her articles and designs have appeared in Threads, Cast On, Interweave Knits, Knitting Traditions, Piecework, Shuttle, Spindle, and Dye Pot, Vogue Knitting, and Knitters magazines. She continues to design for her own pattern line Knitting Traditions. Beth's website, blog, and eNewsletter can be found at www.knittingtraditions.com. She lives in Vermont and loves winter! We look forward to the updated revised edition of her classic Knitting Ganseys book, which has been instrumental to the success of our project.
Description of her newest book to be released July 2018 by Interweave Press
Knitting Ganseys, Revised and Updated
Techniques and Patterns for Traditional Sweaters
Product description: 25 years later and knitters still can't get enough of Knitting Ganseys. This completely revised and update version of the perennial bestseller includes 100% new photography, new patterns, and more! Originally released in 1993, Beth Brown-Reinsel's bestseller, Knitting Ganseys, is a classic in the hearts of traditional and modern knitters alike, bringing this historic tradition to their needles for 25 years! This special edition celebrates with new patterns for sweaters in the traditional gansey style as well as new explorations of modern gansey-inspired patterns--hats, mittens, socks, and more. Full-color, step-by-step photography walks you through a variety of traditional gansey techniques and construction methods, plus contemporary sources for traditional gansey yarns are shared, making this as vital to your knitting library as the original.
Evelyn Clark
Evelyn Clark is an excellent lace knitting designer. My very first lace knit shawl from years ago was an Evelyn Clark design. I found the pattern simple and straightforward, with clear and concise instructions. As a tribute to the coastal/island knitting communities and the great gansey knitters who were also knitters of lace and shawls, we bring to you this fine instructor with beginning, intermediate, and beyond intermediate courses. We are honored to have her presence here in Cordova, and look forward to her valuable lessons in lace knitting, as her reputation as a very fine instructor precedes her.
BIOGRAPHY
Evelyn Clark is a designer who lives in the Pacific Northwest. She left a marketing career to live a simpler life and developed a passion for putting holes in her knitting. Fiber Trends, Interweave, Knitter’s, Vogue, and Leisure Arts have published her designs, and she is the author of Icelandic Lace Collection and Knitting Lace Triangles e-books. Her designs also can be seen on Ravelry at https://www.ravelry.com/designers/evelyn-a-clark, as well as at www.evelynclarkdesigns.com.
Alyssa Kleissler
Alyssa Kleissler started dancing when she was 3 years old in her hometown studio in Union, NJ. Encouraged by her dance teacher, she completed the Dance Teacher's of America summer intensives in NYC and began teaching at Cherney Dance Studio when she was 16 years old. Although she did not major in dance in college, she continued to take classes in ballet and modern dance at Mason Gross School of the Arts, part of Rutgers University in NJ. At 23, she joined the performing group Up With People and traveled around the country and the world as one of the lead dancers.
Upon moving to Cordova, AK, where there was no dance going on other than on the barroom dance floor, she decided to open her own dance business, then called Cordova Danceworks. She has remained in Cordova, now teaching all styles of dance to all ages out of her home studio, Current Rhythms. Before she became of mom of 2 girls, who so far LOVE to dance, she enjoyed going to dance intensives.
She started practicing yoga in 2001 and has just recently completed the 200 hour yoga teacher's training through Laughing Lotus Yoga Studio in Anchorage, AK with Svia Rothstein and Lindsey Britt. Her yoga classes are a blend of different schools of yoga including Viniyoga - the therapeutic style, Vinyasa Flow - linking the postures with the breath like a dance, and Hatha Yoga - focussing on alignment and foundations of the postures. Having practiced through both pregnancies and breast cancer, she loves how yoga readily adapts to a person’s ability every day, every practice.
Alyssa has been dancing for 40 years and teaching dance for 27 of those years. Alyssa loves how dance allows a person to express herself without words and also how dance develops and nourishes human relationships. She enjoys seeing her students strengthen their self-esteem and self-confidence as well as work on their problem solving skills. She will be teaching the yoga for knitters workshops.
Maryjo Koch
Maryjo will be teaching courses in Field Sketching and Journaling. Each registered attendant will be entitled to a half day session with Maryjo in order to encourage and be given concrete tools for keeping a field journal during the retreat and beyond. She will also be teaching a separate "Full Day in the Field" course for those desiring further field sketching experiences with Maryjo. I personally have had the privilege of taking several of Maryjo's workshops, and appreciate her willingness to share her techniques. I find her courses immensely enjoyable. This is Maryjoo's second trip to Cordova, but her first time during the summer months.
BIOGRAPHY
Working from her studio in Northern California's Santa Cruz Mountains, Maryjo Koch is widely regarded among the world's most accomplished naturalist painters. Largely self-taught, Maryjo began her career doing renderings as an environmental designer, but soon returned to her childhood fascination with the world of nature.
Maryjo is an artist whose work combines authority and enchantment, and her paintings and private commissions are featured in galleries andmuseums from North America to Asia. She has illustrated 18 books that are treasured and collected by people all around the world.
Maryjo began teaching nature painting at both the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco and at Monterey's renowned Monterey Bay Aquarium. She now conducts workshops at her studio in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Maryjo is author and/or illustrator of several books including "The Artist, the Cook, and the Gardener".
http://www.kochstudios.com/Maryjo/mk_home.html
Stella Ruhe
Having met Stella while in the Shetland Islands in the Fall of 2014, I have thought ever since that if there was a way to bring her to Cordova from Holland, I would get her here. From the time I met her, I found her exuberence and enthusiasm completely contagious. Her course in gansey motifs are what helped give spark the idea for our Cordova Gansey Project. She is bringing to Alaska a collection of fifty ganseys to be put on display in our local speaker. She will be our keynote speaker for the opening night of FIsherfolk, as well as will be conducting museum tours of her exhibit of Dutch Ganseys over the weekend. She will also be teaching a full day course in gansey motifs, helping to inspire students to create their own motifs relevant to each indivisual participant.
https://thenetloftak.com/blogs/news/tagged/stella-ruhe
BIOGRAPHY
Stella Ruhe (Amsterdam, 1950) studied Textile Arts in Haarlem, The Netherlands, worked as a teacher in Textile Arts on secondary schools and supervised textile art teachers for the National Training Centres. She started working as textile publisher/editor for Cantecleer Publishers in 1983. She published and edited Knitting from The Netherlands by Henriette van der Klift, that told the story of the hand knitted sweaters, in English called ganseys, fishermen wore between 1865 and 1950, as working, outdoor gear, a first, limited study on the subject. Since 1997 she makes books and magazines as an independent publisher and freelance writer.
In 2012 Forte Publishers asked her to do another research on Dutch ganseys. It turned out that in most fishing villages people totally forgot about their ganseys. That made the research on this vanished female heritage an urgent matter, for all the women that knitted them are long gone. Because it was working gear hardly any gansey survived. They are only visible on photographs from that era.
Since Stella started researching she found more than 160 different ganseys on old photographs in about 55 fishing villages in The Netherlands and published them (knitted up again) and their social an historical background, including the developments in fishing in the second half of the nineteenth century, in three books of which two are translated in English: Dutch Traditional Ganseys (by Forte Uitgevers 2013, sold out) and More Dutch Traditional Ganseys (published in June 2017 by Search Press in London). The third one is Visserstruien voor kinderen 3 (Dutch Children’s Ganseys), published in Dutch by Forte Uitgevers in 2016. The ganseys from that book will be published and for sale during 2018 as separate pdf’s on the website www.visserstruien.nl.
Vince & Jennifer Kelly - Aurelia Charters
The Kelly family, owners and operators of the schooner Aurelia, have lived at Perkins Point on Port Valdez since 1991. Daughters Zephyr and Linnea were born in Valdez and grew up on the waters of Prince William Sound. Jennie and Vince met while working on the response to the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989.
Linnea Kelly went to grade school in Valdez and attended high school at the Northwest Academy in Portland, Oregon. She is attending Reed College in Portland. She will be a Senior in 2018. Linnea speaks fluent French, loves the theater. She plans to attend graduate school in the field of counseling and social work.
Zephyr Malaika Kelly attends Portland State University where she is working on a degree in Marine Biology. She speaks fluent French and Swedish. Zephyr is an accomplished musician. Tuba is her main instrument, but she also plays the fiddle and the slide trombone.
Jennie first came to Alaska in 1980 and taught school in the village of Koyuk on Norton Sound near Nome. She earned a masters degree in the teaching of languages from the School for International Training in the late eighties. She has taught French and Spanish at Valdez High School since 1991. Jennie is an experienced sea and river kayaker. Jennie is also an excellent musician, her principle instrument is the Irish flute.
Vince first came to Alaska in 1975 on a forty foot cutter he built with friends. During the late seventies he sailed to Tahiti from California, then up to Hawaii from Tahiti and back to the West Coast after spending a winter in Hawaii. During the eighties he ran charter boats on Prince William Sound, both sail and power. Vince made a number of ocean crossings including a trip from Hawaii to Alaska on a 44 foot sailboat in 1984. In the late eighties he worked on research ships in the North Atlantic and Antarctic waters. During this time he earned a BS in marine biology at Evergreen State, and in 1990 received a Master of Marine Affairs degree from the University of Rhode Island. After marrying Jennie they settled in Valdez and Vince worked for Prince William Sound Community College as an instructor for eleven years, then became an oil tanker inspector for the State of Alaska, a job he retired from in 2013. Vince has been licensed to run passenger vessels by the U.S. Coast Guard since the nineteen seventies.
The Kelly family has owned a cabin and land in Ellamar, an old mining settlement in Prince William Sound since 1988.
We have a very special someone we have invited to FisherFolk this summer who will be our guest and a special treat for everyone attending the event. At the same time, we hope that Cordova will be a treat to her. It will be our "FisherFolk Surprise".
She will be introduced at the evening program on Friday evening, and will be speaking at the Library on Tuesday evening, as well as conducting a workshop on Wednesday.
All you need to know is...
She is a kindred spirit.
You will be blessed by your time with her.
