Woolly Wednesday gathering for April 2012

Welcome to Spinspirations Woolly Wednesday gathering for April, come and let us know what you have been doing with wool in the last month. All crafts and inspiration welcome. April brings with it the wonderful sight of lambs in many more places across the UK, adding to those already seen in March. I do love spotting lambs in the fields don't you?

Woolly  Wednesday falls on the first Wednesday of every month. Think of  it as a  creative gathering, or a virtual guild meeting. Bring along any   fibre-related project, whatever it may be. If you are starting out in   fibre arts, share what you are interested in pursuing. Let's show each   other our projects, share any tips, tutorials, ask questions, seek   advice. Add your post to the Linky below and we can visit one another   and share, support, encourage, be inspired!.

Please  feel free to add the button to your blog's sidebar with a link to   Spinspiration, a lovely way for us all to link together. Just copy the   image to your desktop and then in your blog design - add a gadget, add   picture - upload the picture and then add the url   (http://spinwheelspin.blogspot.com/) and the image will link to here.

Join  us with the linky below, link to a recent blog post of your woolly adventures in the last month or to a post in the month ahead, we look   forward to seeing you, no time limits just join us when you can.

We'll be back soon!

Dawn Woolly Wednesday April

Hi, finally made it after a mammoth seedling planting on this morning out in the greenhouse. I was listening to the radio whilst out there and all the reports of rain, snow and power cuts, but it was a rather different picture in the garden with sunshine.

On the spinning side of life _ have spun up the 100g each of white, brown and dark brown/black Icelandics previously mentioned I think. I am keeping these as singles like the greys I spun up earlier in the year. I just need to get them on the niddy noddy and set the single ply on these. 

Icelandic wool singles

I have almost finished the blue/lilac/purple roving from my March post (the last 3 photos). 

And I have returned to spinning the Cotswold too. I decided to get it all out and tease it open more as it had compacted and found there were some shorter bits at the butt end of the fleece - can't really tell if it's a double fleece thing (not sure on the Cotswold) or if it was a few second cuts on shearing. Anyway I took all these out and teased the rest, although I separated out some of the curls that I plan to do some dyeing on sometime soon. Here it is - the curls on the left for dyeing, the teased fibre to the right for spinning.

Cotswold fleece for spinning, and some dyeing

Here is the spinning progress, a bit loose on the bobbin, not sure why that is, but it's fine. I am enjoying spinning it now that I'm not getting the lumps in it. Hopefully it will be spun by next month and I'll have moved onto something else.

Cotswold spinning

Much of my time recently has been spent doing things for the Guild. I am the newsletter editor for the local guild and the next issue is due at the April meeting so I wanted to get it done and off to the printers before the Easter weekend. 

Also planning and trying to get some things done for a local hospice charity which the Guild is involved with - the theme is butterflies and will be something we are working on over the next couple of months. The hospice is Naomi House - a fabulous hospice for children and young adults with conditions that mean they are unlikely to reach adulthood. They offer care and respite to families at difficult times, and are a wonderful local charity. 

They have an end of life  butterfly suite and garden next to it, the butterfly suite is a "special chilled room where a child who has died can lay to rest and where families can say goodbye to their child before the funeral". Work created by the guild on the theme of butterflies will go on display in the dovecote in May, and little butterfly pins or other butterfly work will be chosen by family members to go in a memory box for the child they have lost. Such a lovely project to be involved with. I have knitted a couple of butterflies so far and plan to do more and some felting too.

And finally there is the Association of WSD National Exhibition and my entry for the unselected work - which means everyone's work will go on display. The aim is to make something using the crafts of weaving, spinning, dyeing to go in a 6inch ring (see Claire's post linked on her blog Simply ... Life). It can be any method of craft - knitting, weaving, crochet, latchhook, felting, etc, etc using fibres or yarns and the ring.

my ring for the exhibition

Here is mine so far - a knitted circle from some old handspun Dorset Horn left over from other projects. A blank canvas now really! I an going to use some of these tapestry wools to embroider a picture on this side. I then hopefully will felt something to go on the reverse and thus hide the back of the stitches!

I need to take this to the Guild meeting in April so have to finish it soon, so will share a picture next month.

Oh and combining my interests in gardening with interests in fibres and spinning and dyeing, here are some madder plants coming on in the greenhouse from root cuttings I acquired recently - looking good!

Happy fibre days to all, looking forward to seeing everyone's blog posts.

Dawn x

Kelly Woolly Wednesday for April 2012

Still making my way through that Lleyn!  I had planned to finish spinning the second fleece but I was way too ambitious.  I have spun up two more bobbins this month.
This is the first fleece spun up - 800g+.

Dawn sent me some of her wonderful grey Zwartble cross which I couldn't wait to spin.  I gave it a very gentle wash, dried it on the line on a warm, sunny spring day and set to it!

 What an incredible spin.  I really loved spinning this wool.  It is fantastic to spin.  Thank you, Dawn!  Can't wait to try the other wool.