Creative Spinning at Alston Hall

I've just spent a very enjoyable week-end at Alston Hall with members of Bradford and District, Bowland and Craven Guilds of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers.  There were other guilds represented, too, and in my group there was a lady from as far away as East Sussex!

I had been tutoring a Creative Spinning workshop with consisted of 15 people including one man and a lady of 92, who was quite remarkable.  The week-end began with a wonderful meal provided by Alston Hall, followed by a group welcome, before heading off into our groups for an introduction.

Saturday began with a little light design work until lunch, consisting of colour studies, textural studies and collage before I'd let them try any spinning techniques.  After much hesitation and in some cases, sheer terror, everyone settled down to work and by tea time on Sunday had produced a huge amount of work and were starting to get the design bug.

Below are just a few images of the work that was completed, to see the full range take a look at the Creative Spinning Blog

Stratford Upon Avon - June 2011

On Friday 10 June, I drove down to Stratford upon Avon to talk about Design for the Terrified followed by a Creative Spinning Workshop on the Saturday.  I was made very welcome by Gwenda, who was to be my host for the week-end, and who then took me to the local collage where the Guild meets.
There was a good turn out by members of the Guild, for the talk, and even a couple of guests from the Birmingham Guild who had attended a Creative Spinning Workshop there, last year.
As a result of the talk, Chris from Birmingham, brought her picture with design notes which had been inspired by my talk.

Chris's design notes

On the Saturday the weather was very mixed, sunshine and heavy showers, but inside the College everything was sunny, including some of the lovely images that were brought to the workshop as inspiration!  Everyone worked really hard, produced some lovely yarns and tried out some new fancy yarn techniques.  The images below show the results of the day.

Just How Eco Friendly is Bamboo?

Just how eco friendly is bamboo, well there is a really good article on Ecouterre which explains the viscosing process of bamboo in nice simple terms.  Check it out!

Ever since Jane and I wrote Creative Spinning, we realised that most of these new "eco friendly" fibres, really are not friendly to the environment at all.  I've even turned down the chance of a commission to design bamboo fabric for a mail order company who were specialising in bamboo products, I felt so strongly about it!

The claim by the manufacturers that bamboo is the only anti bacterial fibre is really not true, wool also has these properties and for area's that have sheep it is the only sustainable fibre.  Here in the UK wool now has a champion in Prince Charles.  I'm not a monarchist, but I do applaude his sentiments  and if it takes his forthright views to get people to sit up and take note then I'm with him 100%!