Spinning in the Museum Gardens (and puppy update)

We were very lucky yesterday - we had lovely weather for spinning and it's a lovely setting. A lot of people don't realise that Harlow museum has beautiful walled gardens - there's a knot garden with lavender, large lawns and paved areas with seating (where we gather to spin) and some lovely planting. I found a couple of dye plants which we may be able to use for our dyeing in October - Solidago (golden rod) and Tansy

The museum is very interesting in itself - with the Roman history of Harlow, bits on the Anglo-Saxons and a room full of exhibits for each decade of the 1900s - you will see stuff your grandma was using! The old bicycles are worth a look too.

There were only a handful of us yesterday but it was still a nice meet - we had a few newbies which was really nice and I continued to spin the yarn I started last weekend at the Sammy Rally - a blend of pink silk (from the travelling tea box) and Samoyed fur from last year's Sammy rally.

My In-laws visited the pups yesterday - they were all very good (the pups that is).

Here are number one, four and five looking much more grown up now.

SPINNING IN THE MUSEUM GARDENS NOT

The title of Saturday's meeting was Spinning in the Museum Gardens - however the weather intervened and we were, sadly, indoors instead. It was, nonetheless a fun meeting - one of those chatty informative ones where you find out snippets of useful info that can be taken away for future use - in this case we were talking about weaving and it came up that someone in the Mid Essex Guild always leaves thread on the loom so that a new warp can simply be tied to this and pulled through - how cool is that.

We had visitors from the Mid Essex Guild (hence the previous conversation) which was particularly nice, and the museum had a Roman event where they built a bread oven based on an upturned basket covered in clay - this was fired by lighting a fire inside, the embers were later scraped out and bread was cooked inside. The first loaf cooked to a crisp on the outside in 5 minutes flat, whilst remaining soft inside. They also had a little bakery type stall set up demonstrating other Roman delicacies.

Inside in the dry with us was another lady in Roman attire demonstrating drop spindling and weaving on a warp weighted loom.

I spun more green and pink fibre towards the finishing of the scarf that I started in Ireland - this is nearly finished now, just a curly fringe to complete the look - so, by the end of the week.......

TOUR DE FLEECE

Yesterday I signed up to join the Tour De Fleece - I think it will be fun to do and a really good extra incentive to spin daily. I'm currently spinning the wool I received from Etsy a few days ago - it's a delight to spin and I'm hoping to have it ready for a lesson in sock knitting scheduled for next weekend.

I haven't been able to work out how to put the Tour De Fleece button here, but below is link to find out more about it. It's basically a great spin along with 138 spinners joining last year - I'm sure it will mushroom rapidly.

I will endeavour to join the flicker group and if I can work it out will add a link or button to this.

http://keeponknittinginthefreeworld.blogspot.com/2008/06/tour-de-fleece-2008.html

flickr link

http://www.flickr.com/groups/33126376@N00/

first day's spinning.......

KAFFE FASSETT TALK

Today I went to a talk and slide show by Kaffe Fassett held by the Middle Essex Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers at White Notley (near Braintree). Wow what a day! We had a free pass to the Museum at Braintree for the morning - I would most definitely recommend visiting this museum if you are interested in textiles as there's plenty here to see including quite a lot of information about Courtaulds and Warners. Not far away is the Warners textile archive which I didn't get to today but am told that it's well worth a visit - one for the future then!







The talk began at 2pm and the hall contained - well it must of been over 100 - excitable women eager to hear Kaffe Fassett talk. He provided a slide show which showed some of his inspiration and a lot of his work. He talked about how his ideas come about and proclaimed that it's so easy we could all do it! (If only we all had his special eye for mixing colour). He showed us so many things including latest designs for the Peruvian Connection (oh how I wish I could afford this stuff - beautifully designed and made - wonderful colours - ah well, maybe one far off day in the future!).

If you get a chance to see Kaffe Fassett talk do take the opportunity - he is so inspiring - I am buzzing with ideas for what to do next - watch this space!



He then showed us a selection of his samples and quilts.



After the talk we were able to buy his signed books. I desperately wanted his "Pattern Library" but by the time I got to the front they were all gone - I shall just have to see him again in the future!

If you want to see what Kaffe does visit his website at

http://www.kaffefassett.com/

and you can see his work for the Peruvian Connection at

http://www.peruvianconnection.com/

There were also displays of books published by members of the Middle Essex Guild and many lovely hand spun yarns and beautifully knitted woollies (see pic - I don't know which Middle Essex Guild Member did this but it's really lovely).





All in all a very yummy day indeed!