Monthly Archives: May 2010

National Spinning Week

After a couple of weeks of concerted effort on the City and Guilds homework I am now catching up on everything that has been neglected again. I am going to try and stay in roughly chronological order otherwise I will get confused. I shall try not to bombard you with everything all at once 🙂

So first off, the first week of May as well as being the election was National Spinning Week. Our group demonstrated spinning and weaving and showed off some of our creations at Clandon Park (definitely worth a visit if you happen to be in the area). They very kindly let us take over their visitor room which is a beautifully large room with high ceilings. There is plenty of space to show off things we have made, and for people to look round and ask us questions about what we are doing.

Despite the election excitement and the rather variable weather we had a good steady stream of people come through and see what we were up to.

I love the variety of people you meet at these things, and all the things I learn about, some to do with spinning or other fibre arts, but lots of other things as well. We had several people have a go at spinning on a drop spindle, they were all much faster learners than me! I think it is great that we have the opportunity to share our skills and enthusiasm with so many people at events like these. A lot of fibre arts can be hard to get into if you don’t have a friend or family member who already does them, it may not even occur to you that spinning is something you can have a go at. So these events are a great opportunity for people to see what is involved and ask a lot of questions, and hopefully some may then either join us or their local group, or may be inspired to investigate further something related. I also love it when people bring things to show us. One lady brought some lovely crochet, and another brought a wheel. I had a fabulous time and am looking forward to the next one!

Stitch markers

I treated myself to some lovely stitch markers as a bit of an early birthday present. These came from Knitoramaa on Etsy. As you can see I was having a bit of a Douglas Adams moment, but she has several others.

I love the flexible wire loop on these which goes over the needle. I find them easier to use than the jump ring sort, and am inspired to have a go at making some of my own soon.

Circle socks

I actually finished these back in March while at Skip North, and have finally managed to take some photos of them.

The pattern is Circle Socks by Anne Campbell. The yarn is some of my first spinning (I dyed the fibre too), and was a bit variable, and also rather thicker than that specified in the pattern. However the pattern was also written for smaller feet than mine, so by changing the needle size to 2.75mm it all worked out fine.

It has really surprised me how much the knitting evens out the wobbly bits in the spinning. The socks are still noticeably different, but not nearly as different as I had feared given what the yarn looked like!