A Busy Weekend - Saturday.

An action packed couple of days this weekend:  on Saturday four of us went down to Llanidloes for the All Wales Meeting of Guilds of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers, and on Sunday we had a Spinning Day in the little Community Centre in LlanfairTH.
The All Wales Meeting takes place every two years, and is a great chance to catch up with friends & show off our work.  We take over the Minerva Centre in the middle of Llanidloes, and set up our displays in the front showroom.  Each Guild has a generous space to fill with textile pieces made over the previous 24 months.

Sorry - not hung very straight.

A closer view of a Hilary's beautiful lace shawl..

..and a delightful "baby bag" from Kate.

Some of the work on display was quite spectacular.  Unfortunately the lighting wasn't of the best which made photography tricky.

Unlimited tea, coffee and biscuits - and, for the first time, Cake!

The Guilds are also set a "Challenge" (as opposed to a competition) on a given theme, to be assembled on a single A1 board.  This year's theme was "Four Seasons":  some chose a single season and some, like us, chose all four to inspire small textile pieces which were then assembled into a coherent whole.  Due to a combination of circumstances, many of the Abergele members were unable to participate this time, but those who could, did.

An amazing variety of work was produced:

As usual we had a very tempting set of trade stalls, where all manner of spinning, weaving and dyeing stuff was on display, together with ethically source textiles from the far East and West.

Another fixture for the "All Wales" is the guest lecture, given this year by Jim Gaffney of Textile Traders .  Jim and Diane travel all over the far east to buy traditional, hand-made textiles, and Jim told us about their memorable trip down the Silk Road from Turkestan to China.  Despite knowing only a few words of each of the languages (and no Russian) they made friends along the way and found local artisans keeping old traditions alive in each country.  Jim bravely allowed us to pass his precious hats and fabrics between us, and even to walk on the felted carpets designed for nomadic yurts.  The beauty of the work was quite astounding, and the lecture provided a real high point in an excellent day.

"Thank you very much" to all the organisers, and here's to the next meeting in 2015!