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.

Funky Fancy Yarns Part 2!

Alet has sent use some images of the workshop in her studio in Zeeland, so I've selected a few for you to see the industrious goings on!

There were wheels of every type you could imagine and even some drop spindles
were used!













At both venues we were very well fed!  And the weather was very kind in Zeeland!

All in all we had a wonderful time in the Netherlands, both in the Hague and in Zeeland.  We met old friends and new ones at both venues and have been booked to run two, 3 day workshops next year, with the addition of Helen Melvin to our happy band of tutors.

Funky Fancy Yarns

Here are a selection of fancy yarns produced at the Funky Fancy Yarn Workshop organised at Alet Tienpont's studio, Textielwerk Wol en Zo in Zeeland, Netherlands, last week.

Jane Deane, Amanda Hannaford and I had been invited to tutor two, 2 day workshops in the Netherlands.

The first, organised by Dineke of De Spinners in The Hague included Creative Spinning with Jane, Woollen, Worsted and Cotton with Amanda and Natural Dye Extracts with me!   From the Hague we traveled to Zeeland in the south of the Netherlands where Jane tutored a Silk Workshop, Amanda Woollen, Worsted and Cotton again, while I tutored the Funky Fancy Yarn Workshop for Alet.

We were bowled over by the beautiful yarns produced in all the workshops and I have included just a few of the fancy yarns in this blog!

I hope you are inspired to have a go!

Design for Creative Spinners

Hi everyone,

I have some exciting new! Jane Deane and I have been accepted to tutor a course at the 2009 Summer School for Weavers, Spinners and Dyers at Lincoln.

Our course is Design for Creative Spinners and we will be taking you through the design process using sketchbooks and easy design tips for those who don't think they can paint or draw! This will be followed by looking at fancy yarn techniques appropriate to your design work and on the last two day you will be making your designer yarns and sampling with knitting or weave!

We are really excited about this opportunity and look forward to meeting some new friends and maybe some old friends, too!