A Welsh Adventure

I went to Wales last weekend to attend a spinning workshop with Sarah Anderson, author of The Spinner's Book of Yarn Designs. 

Sarah was in the UK as a tutor at Fibre East but agreed to do another workshop which was organised by Katie Weston (of Hilltopcloud fame) and the lovely spinners of the Montgomeryshire Guild. 

It was lovely to meet up with some spinners that I hadn't seen for a while and to meet new friends as well.  The workshop was great fun and Sarah a very good teacher. We managed to get through a lot in the day including Corespun yarns

 

Supercoils

 

 

and Crepe yarn

 

I was a bit slow to get the hang of the Supercoils so had to finish my Crepe yarn in the hotel after the workshop but it turned out okay.

Katie had put together lovely packs of fibre for everyone to use on the day (thank you Katie) and everyone had a great time. 

I drove back on the Sunday taking a detour via Colwyn Bay

Book Charkha

I received an exciting package in the post the other week whilst I was having a particularly crappy day at work. My car had refused to start that morning so I'd had to catch the bus in. A journey that usually takes 15 minutes or so took nearly an hour and a half and I knew it was going to take as long to get home again.  The parcel cheered me up though and I could hardly wait to open it.

Inside the plastic envelope was this

 

and stitched inside that was this

 

 

which opened up to reveal this

 

which when unpacked and set up looked like this

 

 

on which I managed to spin this 

 

 

I'm having great fun with it. 

 

SarahW on Ravelry (a rather more experienced cotton spinner than me) was kind enough to send me a sample pack of different kinds of cotton fibre from Cotton Clouds in the US so I've tried spinning from sliver, from punis, from cotton still attached to the seed, green cotton, brown cotton, white cotton. I've plied the singles (though I did that on one of the wheels, charkhas aren't great for plying). 

 

This is what I've spun up so far

 

 

The skein on the left was spun on the wheel with a quill attachment but the other two were spun on the charkha and plied on the wheel.

 

I went to World of Wool last Friday and bought 100g of Egyptian cotton top and my Tour de Fleece project for this year is going to be spinning and making something from cotton.

 

Bring it on!