Hilary submitted a couple more great shots of the Spin In in Linden Gardens in the summer.

Margie adds:

A couple of weeks ago our guild drop in was bustling with activity.  Klaudia was teaching a felted slipper workshop, Dianne was teaching gals how to make fingerless gloves with bell bottoms and beads, and some were learning to weave.  

Some of the beautiful slippers.  Missed getting a picture to post of Marianne sitting soaking her feet with her slippers on in a tub of hot water. 

 Quite a few of our gals went to the Ponderosa Spin in the first part of Oct.  Another great day!  I was most impressed with the blankets the Salmon Arm guild did.  They wove several blankets on their warped loom then did a process called waulking to full them.  I came home researched  this process on my internet and was most intrigued with it. It  is a step in woolen clothmaking which involves the cleansing and thickening of the yardage.  In Scottish celtic tradition this process was accomplished by waulking songs which women sang to help set the pace.  Women would weave a yardage about 70 yards long, sew it into a circle and then place it on a long table and begin a very rythematic exercise of fulling the wool.  Apparently in Roman times fulling was conducted by slaves working the cloth by standing knee deep in tubs of human urine.  Urine was so important to the waulking business that it was taxed.  Stale urine, known as wash, was a source of ammonia salts & assisted in cleansing and whitening the cloth.  There are video's on-line as well.  

 

Gail & Barb enjoying the luxury of an alpaca fleece.  Won't post your comment Barb..might get you into trouble.

 

Gudie displaying her felted necklace.  When I asked her what they were she said, " Gudie's balls."  How could I not have known that was what they were called?  You are such a delightful, inspirational person Gudie.  

Teaching my daughter-in-law to knit on the knitting machine.  Little man Hunter is just waiting for an opportunity to help.  Hoping soon that knitting machines will make a revival in the fibre world.  There are so many of them under the beds waiting to be brought out and become productive once again.  They are a challenge to learn to knit on but once figured out they can create garments in a fraction of the time it takes to hand knit.  If anyone is interested in knitting machines try to get Singer models as they are still being made and parts are still available.  Every knitting machine that has been stored needs a new retainer bar, the bar that holds the needles in postition.  These are made of foam strips and after years of storage the foam becomes crunchy and falls apart.  Danielle was excited about the scarf that took her fifteen minutes to knit. 

Last summer when I was dying skeins of wool in my back yard I was throwing them onto the ground when they came steaming hot out of the microwave.  The next day when my husband was out in the yard he called me to come out and see what I'd done to the grass.  My skeins had burnt the grass but the result was the almost perfect picture of an alpaca my random tossing had created.  So glad I took the picture to prove it.  Might have to submit this unusual happening to Spin Of magazine.