December Spinning Workshop & New Fibres

Saturday was spent in the safety of Knit-Wise's upstairs, out of the chilly wind and the rain, drinking tea, eating biscuits and fighting with spinning wheels.  Despite checking the wheels on Friday there was definitely a case of revenge of the machines, even from Alison's NEW Ashford Joy wheel which she brought from home.

Despite this, Gill and Annette managed to spin two skeins each and Alison spun Corriedale and Soybean fibre  The women were victorious!!

                                   
                                                      Annette with the first of her skeins

                                              
                                  Gill with her first skein, could be smiling or could be about to
                                                    throw the wheel right out of the window

It's always great to meet new friends through a love of textiles and Annette and Gill are both incredibly interesting, both have done City & Guilds in Textiles and Annette is in the process of completing a Fine Arts Degree at John Moores University in Liverpool.  It will be interesting to see how have spinning fibre as another string to their quite substantial bows shows itself.

I'm drowning a little bit in fibre at the moment,  hopefully in the next few days I'll be posting some new fibre onto my etsy shop (which I have to say is looking a little bit depleted at the moment).  The aforementioned soybean fibre, which both myself and Alison loved, will be on there in packs of 100g and also smaller packs to have a little go at if you're not sure.  I think this image shows the beautiful colour of the soybean which spins similarly to silk, a short staple and quite a lot of it up your nose.

It's either like a cossetted Princess' flowing locks or a tatty dogs underbelly.  You can decide.
The bamboo fibres look very lovely too

Beautiful.. but not as lovely as the Princess locks soybean.  There will also be some flax and some Wensleydale. Not sure about flax really, but as soon as I've spun some I will report back.

Just to finish on, here's a link to something that has had me laughing all week.  If you're feeling a bit down, watch this a couple of times. It you don't laugh, check your pulse!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnQuYq2AGek

See you soon