woolly wednesday again

 Woolly Wednesday

well, what have I been up to since last month? well I taught a Drop Spindle workshop  at Knit Nottingham, usually we have 4 maybe 5 beginners but just two this time. The shop is really small ( we need somewhere bigger ) and rather full of yarn so 5 newbies, 2 spinners 2 wheels and countless spindles can be rather interesting to say the least :-) So to have just the three of us made a pleasant change, more relaxed and more space to play with things.. We chatted about fleece, processing, texture, all the usual topics and touched on dyeing so I suspect that at some point I may have a kitchen full of fleece and dyes so that one of the participants can have a bash at it.

Angela and myself did a spinning demo at The Framework Knitters Museum, more about this in this post.

The oxford fleece from last months post is rapidly becoming fingerless mittens, confession here....I generally knit shawls so this is my first attempt at thumbs!! or any real shaping etc

but I'm loving the rustic feel to these and they are thick, very warm and remind me of knitted garments when I was little.

The shawl is slowly growing still and  another pair of mitts are on the needles for a friend.

umm....I seem to have acquired this to add to my winter spin collection....please note that I am not stating which winter!!

which reminds me that I was gifted a Jacob earlier in the year and have been slowly, very slowly spinning it up over the last few months between other projects.

 ok not my best photos ! White, light grey, medium gray, dark brown and a gradient skein.

I'm busy sorting out the remainder to spin at a demo on Saturday to show how many different shades can come from one sheep.
Well, I'm going to be really busy today as I was given a large bag of fibre last night which I need to sort through and I have some Swedish fleece samples to have a good look at. Will update through the month and hope to see you all for the next Woolly Wednesday next year!!

Lights

I visited a couple of Christmas craft fairs yesterday in the centre of Nottingham and managed to get round one of them, looking at every stall without a single stall holder saying Hello to me. Please, if you are trying to sell something, at least look up, smile and say hello !
A bit different at the second fair with a couple of really good conversations and yes, I did buy something.

My camera was in my bag so I decided to hang around until it was dark and take a few more photos of the market and the lights.

Bargain of the week

Hi
I'm just popping by to show off my bargain. I own 50% of a ball winder with Wikkidknitter owning the other part but we have to decide in advance who is going to take custody of the poor thing! So when we spotted another one for £5.00 we jumped on it. Now I have the red one and he has the blue one hehe.
It's old and a bit battered but it works so that's good enough for me, in fact I've been putting it to good use emptying some of my spinning wheel bobbins of half forgotten projects. I have 20 bobbins somewhere in this house so this is roundup time.

the Lace Market

I happened to find myself up in the Lace Market the other day and since I had my camera in my bag I thought I would share a few pictures of the building with you. Nottingham Lace Market refers to the area that housed the large factory buildings and warehouses and more about the history of this heritage site can be found here. I just like to take photos as you may have noticed !

 

these days these wonderful buildings have a new life as offices, a college and appartments not to mention a fair number of bars and clubs

It's a shame that we no longer have a lace industry in Nottingham and not even a museum anymore, can we afford to forget these textile connections and skills???

Fibre dabble day

Hi

At our recent Guild ( Guild of weavers, spinners and dyers) meeting we had a Dabble Day and were joined by members of the Ashfield and Hallam Guilds. Mini workshops were set up around the room for people to try out new techniques and crafts.  My camera battery decided to fade away but not until I had grabbed one or two shots of the work produced.

On offer as workshops were Tunisian Crochet

 woven baskets

 felted vessels

 tablet weaving sheep

 Japanese bag tying..Furoshiki.

 felted bangles

 Dorset buttons

and scrumbles in knitting and crochet but at that point my camera was playing up so huge appologies to that group.

why do they do it?

Why do they start Christmas so early??? I've always felt that the beginning of December is the earliest time to start with the Christmas lights, markets, nights out but is seems to creep in earlier each year or maybe I'm just a Christmas bah humbug. Maybe I should mention at this point that we do not 'do ' Christmas as such. just a present for very close family, no Christmas decorations, tree or meal. It suits us to have some time together and some time with our niece and nephew on Boxing Day when we can often be found watching motorcycles somewhere in a field or on the beach.

Before I seem a complete and utter Scrooge I will point out that I did go down to the Christmas Market on the evening the lights were switched on although I left a little before the actual event. These days we appear to have a craft/gift fair rather than the German fair that seems to be so popular with a few funfair rides in the market square.

At this point I will mention that there is a stall called Handmade Nottingham although I failed to get a photo of the stall, please have a look at the link as these lovely people make wonderful gifts :-)

I did notice that two days later a couple of the food concessions had reduced their prices along with the stall selling the pashmina shawls so I have my fingers crossed for  the Handmade Nottingham  guys as they compete with the stalls selling imported felted/knitted goods etc.

I hope to grab some photos of Handmade Nottingham over the next few days.

Framework knitting museum spinning

Yesterday was fun although I had a shaky start but a visit to the local coffee shop helped to put that right.

double whammy on the caffeine !!

So body sorted, I made my way down to the Framework Knitters Museum at Ruddington near Nottingham where Angela from the local guild and myself were due to be giving a spinning demonstration.

This was the sight that met me as a rounded the corner of the alley way, The sky was still a little overcast but the sun did make an apearance later in the day.

The large number of window are designed to give as much light as possible to the workshops to enable the workers to perform their work especially when working with fine threads.

You can see how tightly packed these huge machines are.

Also on show are squirrel cage swifts and a bobbin winder. Demonstrations of how the machines were used are available and this weekend the museum was open in conjunction with the Nottingham Lace Here Now event.

 The next photo shows quite clearly that knitting is in fact loops pulled though loops

The other building houses a collection of circular knitting machines for making knitting tubes wheich these days become scarves but would have become sock/ hosiery.

 

 

samples of machine knitted lace were also for sale

 
as for the spinners......
we made ourselves at home in the cottage with a selection of handspun yarns on show






you can see other posts about this museum here

Hiding in the basement

Some time ago I heard a rumour about something exciting ( to me) bricked up in the basement of a building in Nottingham, Now you have to remember that Nottingham had a reputation for lace and there used to be many lace factories in and around the city centre and I have an interest in hand made lace.
A week or so ago I was invited to visit the building and see the basement, I was also advised not to upset the resident ghost too much.

This is what I found.

                                                                                             hidden behind the door.