Fibre blending workshop with Katie Weston

Sunday, June 8th.
Today we had an excellent session with Katie Weston, of "Hilltop Cloud", learning how to use a drum carder to produce vibrantly coloured batts of fibre.  We were pleased to welcome several of our friends from other guilds, some of whom were coming to see Katie for a second time - which shows how good she is!
Katie gave up teaching sciences at a secondary school a few years ago to set up her highly successful company, and now trades worldwide and travels the UK with her wares.  She has recently had to buy a large van to carry her stuff (as well as taking over a static caravan at the family home). 
She started our day by giving us a visual tour of her home-cum-office-cum-workshop, and showing how she uses the surrounding countryside as a source of inspiration for the colour she puts into her work.  She then gave a clear and concise demonstration of how to choose and blend coloured fibres, stressing the importance of making small samples with hand-carder and drop-spindle before progressing to larger scale production using a drum carder.
Then we were let loose on Katie's stash of dyed merino, silk, novelty fibres, and naturally-coloured Shetland and Blue-faced Leicester tops.  Using a favourite photograph as a starting point, we selected our colours to harmonise and contrast, with 50% of natural fleece to meld the whole together, not forgetting a bit of sparkle or silk to add lustre to the finished yarn.  We learned quickly that what you see at the beginning is not what you get at the end:  after three passes through the drum carder, dividing and redividing the batts, we were all surprised and delighted to have produced gorgeous and unique coloured batts for spinning. 

After the first pass:  lurid pink seems to dominate, but....

....after a couple more passes through the drum carder, a pink-purple heather mixture appears.

 Very many thanks to Katie for such an inspiring workshop, for her patience and good humour, and thanks to all our visitors for joining us.

 http://www.hilltopcloud.co.uk/  Katie's website, and a photo of Charles Rennie Mackintosh too!
http://www.worldofwool.co.uk  (for commercially dyed fibre in a wide range of shades)

AC.

May meeting - Sunday

Sunday, spinning all day.
A very good turnout again for our now-regular Sunday day out in LlanfairTH.  The new heaters are working a treat, although still tending to trip the fuses;  this is not a major problem now the fuses really do trip rather than melt.  Anyway, we were nice and warm all day and it was great to see a room full of wheels at work. One or two technical problems were solved, and a lot of yarn was produced.

I'm using a computer in Abergele Library to upload these photographs, and for some reason they're jumping about and the captions are re-arranging themselves.  I hope you can make out what's what.  It's not helped by the fact that I can't remember which images belong to which spinner.

Glorious, glorious colours.  Hilltop Cloud fibre, I think.

Add caption

A very enviable handful of dyed silk, also from Hilltop Cloud (I think)

Carding Falklands' fleece

- and this is the silk, spun up to a fine lustrous yarn.

More nice spinning - it's a while since the meeting, and I've forgotten which photos are of whom:  I think this is Jenni's Shetland.

.. and Pauline's worthy efforts with a donated fleece.  She usually knits dog blankets with it!

I do remember that this is going to be one of a pair of felt mittens, made by piecing half-felts and interesting bits and pieces.

The obligatory Photograph  of Cakes- what's left of them.

See you all in Abergele at the end of the month.

A.C.

Sunday March 10th: silk and fine felt with Helen Melvin

Another excellent workshop, this time with our very own Helen Melvin, who showed us how to use "prefelts" to make beautiful textiles.

Helen has evolved a very effective technique using a variety of silk fabrics, commercially made prefelt and other bits and pieces which she dyes with her own natural dyestuffs to produce the most beautiful range of colours:

The prefelts, which as the name suggests are pieces of partially felted merino fibre, are manipulated, cut and reassembled with layers of silk. The assemblage is then carefully hand-felted using olive oil soap solution.  Stitching and other embellishing techniques can be used to finish.  Helen is making a line of "wearable textiles" to complement her bags and landscape pictures, and her work can be seen at Fiery Felts .
We all made at least one piece of colourful fine felt - it was lovely to have the opportunity actually to finish something! And I, for one, am very pleased to have been introduced to the use of fine plastic dust sheet instead of net to hold the pieces in place while felting.

AC

Spinning Art Yarns with Ann Campbell

A full house on Sunday for Ann Campbell's wonderful session on spinning art yarns! 
There was a good attendance by our own Guild members, and we were pleased to welcome lots of visitors who were drawn by Ann's fully deserved reputation as an excellent teacher and textile artist. 
Ann brought a delicious selection of dyed merino and silk fibres for us to choose from, and showed us how to create colourful and textured yarns.
We used drum carders to form batts of wool and silk in our choice of colours; spun them "thin and thick" and then plyed them with spun silk caps. We also created an "insertion" yarn with twists and knots of silk, and plyed this with commercial yarn - a great way to use up all those bits of fibre or yarn, and those cones of yarn which seemed such a bargain when we bought them.... 
Ann's useful tip to counteract the unwanted twist in an unbalanced yarn:  soak the hanks in very hot water with a tiny amount of detergent, spin gently and dry with a little weight at the bottom.
We were so busy that, once again, no-one took any photographs! (I promise to add some once my yarn is dry enough to photograph.)
Many thanks to Ann for her inspirational teaching.

Silk Spinning with Sue Hiley Harris

We had an amazing day yesterday with Sue Hiley Harris, weaver-sculptor extraordinaire and an excellent teacher. ( http://www.suehileyharris.co.uk )Patiently and clearly she explained the entire process of silk yarn manufacture from silkworm to the finished product.  Now we all understand the differences between reeled, thrown and spun silk, and know why tussah silk is coloured (it's the oak leaves the caterpillars feed on, rather than the white mulberry leaves eaten by Bombyx caterpillars) and understand why noil silk is full of bits (the last shed skin of the caterpillar).
Sue showed us how to spin silk fibre in all its' variety - and she even examined our spinning wheels, and advised on how to optimise their performance for fine spinning.  Although there were no real beginners in the group, I think we all valued the chance to get back to basics and revisit the mechanics of "double drive", "Scotch tension", bobbin or flyer brakes.
And then spinning the silk itself!  Sue taught us how to produce a smooth yarn, analagous to the worsted woolen yarn, slub yarns, and the wonderful noil yarn spun by the long draw technique.  She also taught us how to use carders properly, and produce beautiful silk rolags.  A world of spinning in one day.
Our very grateful thanks to Sue for a wonderful day - we learnt such a lot and are determined to practise until we get it right and can produce perfectly spun silk yarn.

Bombyx mori cocoons

Poised for the long draw.....

Beautiful rolags!

Even the rubbishy bits look great!

We were also very pleased to welcome members of the Cheshire and North Cheshire Guilds, and hope to see them again in the future.