Teaching Double Weave

I have been teaching Double Weave today and am not a happy bunny. I asked and was told 'treat them as beginners' and planned the program accordingly. But not true. Everyone had some knowledge of double weave. I had no fall back plan - which I should have had. But a fall back plan might have been difficult since they were all warped up for a fairly straight forward set of exercises on two cloth fabric. They must have thought it was all a waste of time and I am quite off teaching weaving at the moment. I have been analysing my teaching. Firstly the Woven Shibori course is fairly novel anywhere and some of the class were not too sure what Shibori was.  So it was all new to them. Secondly yes I teach weaving to Kennet Valley Guild but I know all the weavers individually and, in any case, they do not hesitate to tell me exactly what they want.  (A good thing too). By the way we are doing Overshot in spring 2014. That will be fun since some plan to weave it in fine silk and soem want to get isolated overhsot patterns in a sea of plain weave.

In running other courses, acid dyeing, Japanese bookbinding, it does not matter whether they are knowledgeable or not, the purpose of the course is for all the students to go home with stuff ready for a textile project or a completed book or books. So I am happy about those courses. Anyway I have done those two courses so often that a fallback plan comes naturally.

I think the moral of today's course is that teaching a basic technique to an unknown group is not a good idea since you do not know what they know already. The only positive aspect is that I have 1.5 metres of loudly coloured warp on the Voyager with which to do Warp-and-Weft Interchange. It is loudly coloured because I was using up some yarn. It was okay for samples but I think toning it down is  needed. Black? White?