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.

Woolly Wednesday

So here we are again with a round up of all things fiberey :-) Its been a bit of a busy month so normal blog posts have been a bit hit and miss but I have a few in mind and hopefully by the time you read this ( I'm writing slightly in advance as I have a free hour to play with) there will have been a little more activity.
So, what have I been up to over the last month? well do you remember this?

 well this the progress so far....need to wash some more now

just short of 350gm spun so far, nice easy spin, sort of aran weight

We had the opportunity to attend the Ashfield Guild Hospitality Day with other members of our Guild and the spinnotts team and I almost came away without buying anything but succumbed to 3 balls of blue crochet cotton from the bargain table to use on my inkle loom.

 Pete (aka Wikkidknitter) gave a helping hand and advice to two new spinners.

and Tabs gave us a quick demonstration of how to spin and make it look easy :-)

I sort of fell in love with a couple if wheels which I'm going to blog about separately with plenty of pictures.

Back on the wheel has been some of last years Bond, one full bobbin and hopefully enough left to fill another later this week. I'm supposed to be doing a demo next weekend ( last weekend was a 1940's weekend so I pitched up with my spinning wheel as hubby was playing with the uke orchestra) and have decided that rather than revert to spinning tops I would start to prep the Shetland fleece that has been stashed away for the last few months.

 some vegetation but most should shake out

 nice fleece, well sheared but oh my! look at these tips!!

this is going to be a challenge!

 thankfully looks better after a good wash

So this is now my ongoing challenge for the next month!!

So, what have you all been up to??