MY BANANA IS FAMOUS!

Last week I went to the Knitting & Stitching Show at Ally Pally - I haven't been for about 5 years, and hadn't intended to put myself in the way of temptation this year. Then I agreed to a request for people to cover the stand for the Association of Guilds of Weavers, Spinners & Dyers which came up - followed with a 'by the way can you demonstrate?' Well I always demonstrate spinning when on a guild event, so I said yes, of course - then received an email showing me where 'the stage' was ....... oh that kind of demo! When I arrived I found that actually 'the stage' was a desk in front of a handful of benches, so it wasn't really very scary.

I wanted to talk about the possibility of spinning if you own no tools - so started with hand twining, and moved on to how to create a drop spindle from things you might find around the house - making my point with a banana, a knitting needle and a rubber band - it worked enough (just) - I've spun on a better banana, and actually an apple or a potato generally work better - but it got a laugh, and hopefully made people aware of just how low tech spinning can be.

I was surprised that I enjoyed the show so much - I'd forgotten how inspiring it is - I loved the Sophie Digard exhibition & was completely in awe of the amount of work that goes into her pieces and the wonderful use of colour - so much better seen in the real world, than in photos on-line - where it's hard to appreciate the amount of detail in each piece.

I heard that someone was spinning exciting, sparkly yarn from wonderful batts in the main hall and wandered over to see her and her lovely sparkly fibre at Spin City - we had a lovely informative chat which finished 'oh you're the lady with the banana!' which amused me no end. Then yesterday a knit friend on Facebook posted a link to a blog saying 'have you seen this?' - and there I was on 'The Twisted Yarn' - with my banana. So there you go - never underestimate the power of a banana.

I realised that not having been to the show for a while, I appreciated it much more - it seemed fresh and exciting again. It was lovely to focus on the exhibitions and the people - lots of chat - exhausting but fun.

Spindle Spinning With The Leonards

Last Saturday we had a fabulous guild workshop with Carol & Pete Leonard. I can't express how much I enjoyed the day, and it's funny because it wasn't a bells and whistles sort of day - but very informative and incredibly satisfying.

The day started with a little talk about, well, all sorts of spindle related stuff including what makes a spindle a good spindle, and an introduction the The Leonard Collection of spindles. (Of course I DON'T have a collection myself - 5ish spindles doesn't count as a collection).

After the talk it was time to have a go - I picked a fairly heavy spindle from the ones handed round, with the intention of practising spinning a chunkier yarn than I normally do - and was moderately satisfied with the results.

Later we were shown two new (for me) techniques - first Andean plying and second how to wind a ball on a nostepinne. I was chuffed to bits to try the Andean plying - Pete made it so easy to understand. I chickened out of practising the nostepinne method - I felt that if I tried to do both, then I'd forget one small thing from each and not be able to do either! I shall save the noste for another day.

After lunch we split into two groups and those of us who had a little more experience with a spindle went off to a smaller room to learn cotton spinning on an Akha spindle - again brilliantly communicated - so I have a small piece of hand spun cotton made on the day.

The Akha spindle is interesting, because it's not just a 'drop' spindle - we started by hand twizzling until the thread had enough strength and then we dropped and spun in more twist. We were using spindles from Michael Williams which felt lovely in the hands - so I've asked for one for Christmas (I wonder if I can have it early).

At some point during the day Carol & Pete put out a display of beautiful spindles and fibre for sale - which I wasn't going to look at - but I weakened - I bought some fibre (merino/tencel from Bonkers and pure bombyx silk from The Royale Hare)

and I saw a spindle - it was made of Ipe (pronounced ipee) & Birch and had a pyrographed design that looks like giraffe skin. Sadly not enough money to buy the spindle :-( so I went home without, but I kept picturing it in my mind wistfully.... and then I awoke at 6.30 the following morning and my first thought was this blooming spindle - so I told my hubby about it - and he suggested that I could have it for Christmas as well - it must have taken all of three seconds of persuasion - so that's Christmas settled then!

HURRAH - I HAVE MY CAMERA LEAD!

It came this morning, so I shall endeavor to upload lots of pics.

I can hardly wait 'til the end of the week for the Knitting and Stitch Show at Ally Pally - I'm going Friday and Saturday. Friday I shall shop 'til I drop and Saturday I'm on the Association of Guilds' stand demonstrating. Woohoo - only another three days!

I'm busily preparing rolags so that I'll have plenty to spin - I hope to have a bag of border collie rolags, a bag of persian cat and a bag of pink rayon/angora.

HAPPY FATHERS DAY

A while back I decided that I would like to make my dad a scarf for Fathers Day. I thought about the colours my dad wears and decided that blues and greys would be good colours for him, so that gave me the perfect excuse to scour Etsy for fibre. I chose superwash merino fibre, as I know my mum is unlikely to want to handwash anything (actually Im with her all the way here!). I found two lovely fibres, a blended grey. from theranch.etsy.com

and a space dyed mix of bluey colours from Freyalyn.etsy.com

I spun them on my millefiori drop spindle from butterfly girl designs (also on Etsy) and then Navajo plied them on my Ashford Joy spinning wheel to keep the colours separate.

I particularly enjoyed spinning the blue yarn as it was so lovely to handle and it spun into a beautifully soft yarn. The finished yarn was 12 wraps per inch. The Grey yarn was silkier than the blue and was lovely enough that it almost won me over even though it was grey.

To make the scarf I chose to use a modular knitting technique which shows the colour variations very well and is easy for a dodgy knitter to handle - I learned this technique at a guild meeting earlier this year - it was taught by Rosie Sykes who inspired me so much that I picked up my knitting needles for the first time in years for this project. It uses only knit stitches and no purl which I liked a lot. I knitted 19 squares in the first row using size 5 mm needles then picked up all along one edge and created a grey stripe down the middle, then knitted the next row of blue squares. I finished by adding a grey stripe at either end and then did a single row of crochet as a border.

I washed and pressed it and marvelled at how much softer it was after washing - and breathed a sigh of relief when it didn't shrink or felt and in fact stretched slightly back to the length I'd hoped it would be when I started knitting (scarves always seem to shrink as they're worked I find).

The finished scarf weighed 4.5 oz or 135g and it took 16 hours to spin, ply and wind the balls and 22 hours for me to knit - probably very slow compared to all you super knitters - but hey I did it and got it posted in time for Fathers Day!

ETSY - OH DEAR!

Oh no I've recently discovered Etsy - this has definitely become my latest obsession. Over the last week I've spent hours browsing the Etsy shops (research!).

I've saved several pages of favourites - both sellers and items - I've made my first Etsy purchase - surprise, surprise two little bundles of space dyed tussah silk. I'm eyeing my next purchase - probably a scrummy polymer clay drop spindle and am currently trying to persuade my hubby to take a look at all my favourites (never miss a chance to drop a huge hint!).

I've also earmarked several pressies for family and friends and am now working out what my own future Etsy shop should look like, contain, etc, etc.

I've found someone on Etsy who will design banners for Etsy shops and only this morning have found the links to "Moo" where you can have designs printed for business cards, tags, postcards and all sorts of other bits and pieces - all to match your Etsy image.

If you want to browse Etsy for yourself use this link.
http://www.etsy.com/buy.php