Silverado Handweavers and Spinners Guild
Mary Ann Parker
Ready for a game of chance? Want to try your hand at poker? The Silverado Handweavers and Spinners Guild said YES to both these questions in September 2019 at their 1st meeting of the 2019-2020 season. Guild members were presented with 5 stacks of cards, all face down of course. One card was picked from each stack: color, use, fiber, texture and accessory. With anticipation and perhaps a little fear, we turned over our cards to reveal our poker hand and guild challenge for the year. Yellow! Metallic!! Acrylic!!! 
There were moans from some members, sighs of relief from others. Immediately there were requests to trade or pick a new card. We quickly made up a rule: one trade or new pick was allowed. It seemed to placate the majority, and the challenge had begun. We had until our June 2020 meeting to finish our projects.
Each month at our meetings, we shared updates. At first the common update was “I’m still thinking about it.” It does take a while to think about what to do with “small bumpy yarn and “metallic”, or “socks and wood”. But this is what we signed up for and our members started their projects.
We all know what happened in March 2020. As with many guilds, we quickly learned to Zoom so we could continue to meet and share our fibers projects. No more excuses for procrastinating. Everyone had time on their hands now. Our poker hands had to be played.
The final results were presented at our June 2020 zoom meeting. It was a lot of fun to see all our creations. There were broad interpretations of our poker hand requirements: a wood button, a few pebbles, strands of shiny or metallic yarn fulfilled the challenge requirements- all were beautiful! Everyone had a winning hand.
Click Here for next page