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!

failure to "save"

For some reason, the "save" button isn't working on the side of the blog.
This is what should be in the Stop Press box:

Our meeting schedule has changed. From October 2013 we will be meeting twice a month: once in the evening in Capel Mynydd Seion, Abergele, and once in the daytime in the Community Centre, LlanfairTH.
Evening meetings are 7-9p.m. (Fourth Monday of the month). 
Daytime meetings 10a.m.- 4p.m. (Second Sunday of the month).

PLEASE NOTE: not the third Monday and first Sunday, as previously thought.

Missed it again!

I have just read the excellent account of National Spinning In Public Day by the Llyn Guild (see blogs on the right of this page).  I am ashamed to admit that the Abergele Weavers and Spinners have missed it Again. Actually, I can't remember seeing anything about it earlier in the year and so had completely forgotten it existed.  Unfortunately, as Helfa Gelf (the North Wales Open Studios Network) is on during weekends in September my attention has been there rather than anywhere else.
Next year.... we must do something about it.  Someone please remind me!
AC

A new year, and a new start

We held our AGM yesterday, and voted to have our evening meetings once a month in our new home in Abergele.  We will be having a regular full day meeting once a month in our old home in LlanfairTH. as well, so are looking forward to a stable and busy future.
We were delighted to welcome four new members - this must be a record for a single meeting!  Three are complete beginners, which is wonderful, and a sign of the interest in handcrafts nowadays.
Here we and they are, hard at work in our new venue:

Spinning wheel in action

- and spinners in action

The essential component of any meeting (apart from the people and the spinning wheels).

AC

A new venue?

After much searching, we have found a new venue..... back in Abergele as befits our title.  It wasn't easy to find the ideal combination of room size, access, carpark (essential with all that stuff we carry around) and suitable dates.  Despite A Politician's remarks about a broken society, there are an awful lot of community groups around in this part of the country, all busy meeting and doing, and a lot of them do it on our traditional meeting day! 
In the past we met on a Wednesday:  one evening a week, and all the other Wednesday afternoons. Since the Guild was founded in 1985 we have used a variety of meeting places from schools to community halls, not forgetting the hairdressers' training salon at Ysgol Emrys ap Iwan and that Church hall with the hole in the roof! 
In a break with the aforesaid tradition, we will be now be meeting on the fourth Monday evening of each month (unless there are major unforeseen hindrances).  Our new venue is the Hall beside Capel Mynydd Seion in Abergele, on Chapel Street.  I will publish a new link, with a map, shortly. 
Our first meeting is our AGM, so strictly speaking not "public".  However, I hope that we might offer a taster session to potential new members in the second half of the evening.
In the meantime, we are trying to reconstitute our "Summer Tour".  This was a fixture during school holidays, when members invited each other into their homes on Wednesday afternoons.  When we moved our meetings to LlanfairTH we were able to use the Community Centre all year round and so the Summer Tour went into abeyance.  I am very grateful to those members who have volunteered to offer hospitality, particularly as my own house is too small for me to reciprocate!  As the Tour takes place in members' own homes, it is open only to members and their invited guests, and could be on any day of the week:  I will not be publicising it widely on the internet. 
We have had a lot of enquiries from potential new spinners over the summer, so perhaps the Abergele Guild is heading for a new era with a new venue and new members?!
AC

Natural dyeing day.

On Sunday 14th. July we were Bryn's guests for a dyeing day:  the glorious weather allowed us to spend the entire day outside, where Bryn and Krithia set up a table of pots, pans, gas burners and assorted kit.  We brought our own fibre, already mordanted with alum, and Bryn and Krithia provided red onion skins, madder, logwood and rhubarb root (a mordant and a dye).  A lively breeze made for some entertainment with the gas burners, but there were no actual disasters.  After simmering the fibre in the dyepots (and making sure that the madder didn't get above 60deg. C) we tried the effects of "moderating" the dyes with vinegar or ammonia - with some interesting results.
We were surprised to get such a rich brown from the red onion skins - apparently a yellow or a green are more common.  The madder yielded a beautiful light purple, but then we realised that we had used soft water - hard water is recommended if you want the true madder red.

Red onion skins - which gave a deep brown dye on this occasion.

An amazing deep, deep purple from logwood.

Red onion skin dye!

Beautiful natural colours: logwood, madder (a lovely violet on this occasion as we used soft water "by mistake"), rhubarb and red onion skins.

As a bonus, Bryn had taken inspiration from India Flint (link to India's blog on the righthand side of this page) and prepared some mordanted fabric for us to try "bundle dyeing":  we carefully placed rose petals, red Kentish cob leave and fragments of dyed fibre on the fabric and then rolled, sprayed with water, rolled and sprayed until we had bundles of stuff which we secured with rubber bands.  Bryn kindly steamed the bundles and returned them with instructions to leave them for three months before unwrapping!  Can we wait that long?  (My bundle is quietly cooking inside a plastic bag on the dashboard of my car, and the colour is gradually leaching through to the outside of the fabric.)
Many thanks to Bryn and Krithia for making the day such a success, and thanks to Bryn for allowing us to share her lovely garden.  Congratulations to our newest recruit for picking up the techniques of handspinning so quickly!
AC.