September and October spin in public dates around Rugby

Some of the 'sisters' (Liz, Ruth and Chris) brought along wheels and Steve (our spinning/weaving equipment repair guru) to Rugby Repair Cafe. Its the 3rd Saturday of the month so usually clashes with guild meeting, but in September the 3rd Saturday is also Worldwide Spin in Public day. Here is Chris posing with some of her wheels inside St Andrew's Church.

Met three local spinners (Sylvia, Vicky and Peter) and hope to see them spinning alongside us at future events. In fact Peter came along to join Abby, Ruth and Chris spinning at the St Andrew's Sustainable Market day on the 28th Sept. (Look at our events page for future apperances there and locally).

Several of us are also taking part in Britspin as members of Team Over the Rainbow. We will be spinning later today in the foyer of Rugby Art Gallery and Museum. Here is a picture of the sisters there last year (we spun red in the foyer in 2018 and in 2019 we are spinning FIRE). Should be fun.

Remember that if you want to know more about spinning, weaving and dyeing you can find local guild at wsd.org.uk. (Different but complementary activties).

BRITSPIN - the event that carried on through COVID

BRITSPIN is billed as the UK Spinning Marathon. 2020 was its third year and it was not going to let a 'little thing' like COVID19 get in the way of spinners challenging themselves. Unlike other events that 'went online' this year, this event (for most participants) has always been online, primarily on the knitting/crochet/spinning/weaving platform Ravelry ). Most Britspin teams do not meet up and some may not even be spinning on the same continent. The motivation is for spinners to challenge themselves (there are a variety of ways we can do this). They also raise money for charity (this year's charity was the RNLI) and dedicate days at a time to spinning and having fun. Some teams are more serious about this than others. This year the 'local' team set the bar exceedingly high. Krys (who was a member of the Stratford upon Avon guild's Over The Rainbow BRITSPIN team) suggested a very special mascot. Barney belongs to a friend and was rescued by the RNL...

Machine knitting - watch out for the steel eye spun brigade!

If you - as we have - spent the past year generating handspun yarn, turning stash into squishy skeins and experimenting with dyepots, you may well have quite a lot of transformed yarn to use up. For those (like me) who are slow knitters, turning this into finished items is not the quickest thing. I have handnit three sweaters during lockdown but one of these was knit much faster than either of the others. It was (gulp) machine knitted. On a vintage (1980s) flatbed knitting machine. Before lockdown I had dabbled in ownership and use of various antique and modern circular knitting machines, but now I have moved out one of my looms and in its place I have a small stack of knitting machines. Several of which still require some hard work before they can knit again. Why so many? Because I am trying them out to see what will work with handspun. Also because I have been persuading some of my spin spun sisters that they too need a knitting machine in their lives. Enter Clare, Jo, Liz...

Worldwide spin in public day (19th Sept 2020)

Well its been a very different sort of summer. No Festival of Culture or Bikefest to spin at. Online spinning along can only go so far, so while we still have sunshine I decided to go and spin outdoors and in front of an audience for this year's Worldwide Spin in Public Day. Outdoors = next-door's garden and with an audience of one. But it felt nice to be answering questions about my craft again. I think others in my guild planned to do some garden spinning themselves and hope that happened - it was lovely weather for it. Take care everyone and hope to spin in public again sometime soon(ish).

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