Fleece Day 2010

Saturday was Fleece Day for the Oxford Guild of Weavers, Spinners, and Dyers at Stanton St. John. This was kind of a guild open day with demonstrations, fleece and yarn to buy, and lots of cake (which I totally failed to take any pictures of).



[Oxford Downs fleece]

I arrived early with Megan just as Kate and the other dyers were setting up the dyeing tent for demonstrations.



It was fascinating to see Megan's dyeing process. I've seen and worked with lots of the finished product so I was so interested to see how she gets those lovely results.







There were lots of lovely items on the sales tables. This hand felted alpaca cushion found its way home with me (after some dithering) as a house warming gift to myself. I can't tell you how soft it it. Not only is the cover made from felted alpaca but it's stuffed with alpaca fibre too.



Between eating cake and watching Megan and Kate's dyeing demos I got on with some spinning, answered questions, and taught three people to spin (or at least gave them a go on my wheel).



It turns out that Clare (from Bluestockings) is a natural. Megan and I will be continuing her fibre education/corruption by pushing a spindle and fibre on her in the very near future - I think we have another convert to the dark side.

Spin Sunday

After seeing the exhibition at Stanton St. John I was moaning a bit about how I wouldn't be able to start spinning up my lovely new fibre stash until at least Wednesday as Abby still has my drop spindle. I'm afraid I didn't react very positively to suggestions that I make a spindle out of various household objects and my final objection - that I didn't have a hot glue gun - led Felix to ask if I was a crafter or not.

Obviously I couldn't take that lying down so when I got home I summoned up the spirit of Blue Peter, grabbed a creme fraiche tup lid and was looking around for a pencil when it struck me. Why do so many so many instructions for making your own drop spindle tell you to use a pencil when at least the knitters amongst us have so many more suitable implements? I'm talking needles. It turns out that a 35cm 7mm bamboo needle pushed through the lid of a plastic tub (mine contained creme fraiche but I'm sure houmous or guacamole would work too!) is just the thing for a drop spindle. The head of the needle even prevents your half hitch (or whatever it is) from slipping off the top of the spindle.



It's obviously not the most attractive of spinning implements but it's nice and light (which means less yarn breakage) and there's tons of room on the spindle for yarn so i think I'll be able to spin half the fibre in one go. The plan is to spin two singles and then ply them together to make something like a sock/sport weight yarn which I can use for socks. I've got a hundred gms of fibre so I think there should be enough but I'll try to get a rough idea of the yardage when I skein it up.

Here's a pic of the yarn on the spindle.



The colours are much more muted than in the top but there are some lovely clear deep pinks as well as some more mixed shades. I split the top lengthways into 11 sections to start with and then I'm spinning each section in turn so I should get some sort of repeat.