Spinning Fancy Yarns

Febuary 9th Saturday Workshop was led by Alison Daykin and the title of the workshop was 'Spinning Fancy Yarns'. This workshop was inspired by Alisons new book 'Creative Spinning'. This beautiful and inspiring book encourages you to work from an inspirational source to create unusual textured, coloured yarns - and thats just what we did at this workshop. Blending colours, adding slubs, bits of ribbon even feathers to our spun fibres. Taking us out of our spinning comfort zone to produce some exciting yarns.

I cannot believe it is almost 12 months since I last up-dated the guilds blog and for this I must apologize. But the demands life makes on us sucks up all our time and before you realise it the weeks and months have flown by!

But I am pleased to report the Derbyshire Guild has been as active as ever throughout this time. We have had some interesting and inspiring meeting and I will try and bring this blog up-to-date over the next few weeks reporting on all our guilds activities. Starting with the 'Free Form' knitting and crochet workshop we had in January, led by our own Joy Smith. The art of free form was very new to most of us and it posed quite a challenge. But the results were lovely, bright and colourful. The aim is to sew all these beautiful free form squares into a centre piece display for our guilds stand at shows and events.

August Outing 2007

Throughout the month of August we do not have a guild meeting, mainly because most members take their annual holiday during this time. But we do arrange a guild outing and this year we went to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park to see the Andy Goldsworthy exhibition.

This is on from 31st March 2007 through to 6th January 2008 and well worth a visit.
The weather was kind to us and after a foggy start to the day
we had bright sunshine into the late afternoon for our walk round the sculpture park and woodlands.
We visited the Garden Gallery, the Underground Gallery and the Longside Gallery.Here is a photograph from inside the Longside Gallery. The windows are obscured with Cow dung on the glass.

Andy Goldsworthy aims to make the viewers consider the fact that the green landscape beyond would be very different without
the impact of centuries of animal and crop farming.

Some of the outdoor sculptures needed some explanation to them like those in the Longside Gallery, but the views were great.

The Underground Gallery for me was the most amazing. The foyer is dominated by a huge sculpture called 'Stacked Oak'. This is large oak branches woven together in a cone shape. The work is entirely self-supporting, a real feat of engineering. We could not take photographs of the work in the Underground Gallery. But for this work alone it's worth a visit.

Guild at play in the Garden Gallery, sculpture of the Running Man.
We had an excellent meal in the Gallery Restaurant and the day was rounded off with a visit to Wingham Wools.

Melting Pot Day

The 'Melting Pot' workshop has turned into an annual event that all guild members look forward to. Everyone brings along all their unused fibres, from fleece, silk waste to man-made, dyed or undyed. The only stipulation is that all fleece is washed clean of grease. These are mixed up on the table where 4 drum carders have been bolted on, one at each corner and we all get down to the business of some serious carding for most of the morning.
The result is, apart from a good workout, a vast array of coloured carded bats all ready for spinning. These are handed out to each guild member. This year we carded enough fibres for everyone at the workshop to have 5 large bats each. There is no choosing the best colours, what you're given is what you get, just to make it fair. But to be fair, all the bats were lovely so no one was disappointed. The afternoon was spent spinning and delighting in the surprise results of the colours as they blend into yarn. Over the next few months these yarns will be knitted, woven or crochet into who knows what. We will have to wait and see.

Make a hat and scarf in a day

October's Saturday workshop was led by Janet Phillips of the Threshing Barn and her helper Audrey. Twenty guild members attended plus two visitor. We all had a very enjoyable day knitting and felting hats using very chunky funky yarns and circular needles.

Janet demonstrated how to make a quick and effective scarf using a large lucet and crochet hook and another using needle felting. Janet also brought along her sales table full of goodies from the threshing barn. By the end of the day most guild members had made themselves a very stylish and colourful hat and scarf set. Thanks go out to Janet and Audrey for a very fun workshop!

Masham Sheep Fair

On the 29th and 30th of September it was the Masham Sheep Fair - but it was a sheep fair without sheep due to 'Foot & Mouth' and 'Blue Tongue'.

The event is held in Masham Town Hall and despite the lack of sheep it was a successful event. They hold a handspun wool competition with categories in Spinning, dyeing, weaving, knitting & crochet and felt making.

Four of our guild members visited the fair and three entered the competition with pleasing results. Ann Jones won a 1st for her beautiful handspun, hand knitted lace jacked. Helen Livesey took a 2nd with her hand dyed, hand knitted bag and Anne Urquhart came 3rd with her lovely hanks of fancy handspun yarns.

Well do ladies! But that's not all, Maxine's little dog Rosie came 3rd in the small dog class, winning a yellow ribbon and dog chews.

Woolfest 2007

Wonderful Woolfest - here are the pictures, write-up to follow......
I hope a kind guild member will help me out with this as I am off to Malta to be birthing partner to my daughter. It's her first baby and our third grandchild.

Well, I am sorry to say no one came through for me with a write-up on Woolfest!

The guild members that made it up to Cumbria for the event all had a great time. We did wonder if Woolfest would go ahead because of all the rain and flooding we had. But up there they missed out on all the bad floods and although it did rain on and off over the two days, it did not put us off enjoying the whole Woolfest event.

For me it was a special trip because I went up to buy a new spinning wheel. I am now the proud owner of a brand new Lendrum (seen here in the top left photograph). It's the lovely white looking wheel and I have my mum to thank for it. A very special birthday present for me from my lovely mum. As for the rest of the Woolfest experience, the Friday night Spin-in had a great atmosphere. So many different types of spinning wheels and drop spindles in action. All whirling away to a buzz of chatter as people discuss the goodies they had purchases that day or where going to buy the next day. For our guild members the whole thing was rounded off with a get-together on the Saturday night for an excellent meal before embarking back to the midlands on the Sunday morning.