Back on the 27th of September (I am catching up, I am just a bit slow!) I helped out on the West Surrey Guild of Spinners, Weavers, and Dyers stand at the Loseley Country Show.

Here we all are setting the stand up.

And here spinning away!

We had about 6 or 7 spinners, a couple of weavers, and Mary demonstrating God’s Eye weaving and woven bracelets on a table at the front which was a big hit with the kids.

It was a fun day out, we had a great site for the stand, just to the side of the main arena and for most of the day we were packed with people coming to see what we were doing. It was only really quiet for the first and last 1/2 hours of the day. The only disadvantage with it being so busy was that I didn’t get much of a chance to see what else was at the show, although I did have time to have a quick dash around near the end, and you can’t come to Loseley without getting an ice-cream 🙂

I was spinning some dark brown alpaca, and then some lovely silk hankies which Lisa gave me.

I bought the alpaca fibre from Fibrecrafts,  and it was very nice to spin once I got the hang of it. A bit different to the shetland I had been spinning before.

I am very pleased with the way it has come out. It is lovely and soft and squishy. It is a 2ply, roughly DK weight, and I have 102g and 166.5m. It is going to be part of the handspun leaves waistcoat.

The silk was dyed in beautiful shades of pale purple, but I’m afraid I don’t have a photo of the hankies because I was too impatient and just dived in. It was really interesting to spin silk, it’s very strong and very fine. Since the hankies contain the whole cocoon there are all different lengths of fibre in there, so the yarn does tend to come out with some lumpy bits. I am keen to have a go at spinning silk top to see how that compares.

Here are my efforts (in several skeins because I snapped it a couple of times while plying)

This is barmily thin, rather like lumpy sewing thread 🙂 I haven’t worked out what I am going to make with it yet, I have 55m of 2ply, something interesting and lacy I think.