Merry Christmas 2017

Merry Christmas 

and

Happy New Year to You All

from Members of Bedfordshire Guild WSD

FibreEast 2017

What a wonderful weekend we had at FibreEast!
The Beds WSD stand was put together with lots of examples of our work, from the workshops we have had, guild challenges, and home work. See the photos below to see just how much we were able to show! Thank you to everyone who contributed, and we had loads of people who spent quite a bit of time looking at them all, in detail sometimes.

A huge thank you to all those who came to volunteer on the stand during Saturday and Sunday - Chris, Anna, Yvonne, Helen, Elaine, Julie, Roma and Liz. We couldn't have done it without you. We very much missed Hilary who was unable to join us due to ill health, and hope she is now getting better.

The "Have a Go" tables were hugely popular. The CD spindles with a puff of fibre will be the starting point for many new spinners (thank you Hilary). We had loads of people trying kumihimo braids, felting with Kinder eggs, making orifice hooks, weaving, and many more activities. And finally, most of the guild equipment was on display, and being used for demonstrations.

So a successful weekend, and lots of positive feedback on our interesting and impressive stand. We're hoping that we see some of the faces we met over the weekend in the guild meetings in the future, and everyone is welcome! Please get in touch via this blog if you have any questions or need any information about our meetings.

I'm looking forward to next year already, but I might need to start saving now!

Tuesday 6th June Meeting

I'm glad to say that our meeting was both interesting, lively and attended by a good number of people. Three of these were new to the guild. May this interest continue!

Roma was able to help Andrea sort some alpaca that she had been given.
Angela helped Janet and Claire take their first steps in spinning.

Chris had brought an impressive amount of foliage and other materials that we need to collect for our session on Eco Dyeing next month.

Open Day

OPEN DAY 

 BRING & BUY

Tuesday 7th March

A Social Tuesday Evening Meeting

     There was a buzz about last night's meeting with a variety of activities going on.
Jean got her rigid heddle loom warped and ready for her to 'get weaving' on her return home.
Participants of the papermaking workshop, at the last Saturday meeting, brought their dry sheets of paper to show us. Hopefully, those workshop participants unable to come last night will bring their work along to the next meeting.

    The sound could be heard of Spinning wheels, knitting needles and straw being plaited, making the familiar 'music' of eager, productive crafts people. Everyone was working on an individual project.

    A prospective new member made her first visit. A brave thing to do on your own! Hopefully convinced of the friendly, helpful nature of our group, she will soon return.
    Maggie brought cones of alpaca weaving yarn that could be purchased at the extremely reasonable price of £6 per cone. The remains of stock which had been spun for a lady keeping a small 'herd'.

   At our meeting on Saturday 18th of March Sarah Root will pay us a visit to talk about Cotton, as well as show and help some of us to spin this short fibre, considered by many to be a 'tricky customer'.

Papermaking Workshop

HAPPY! HAPPY! HAPPY!

   These were the words heard coming from participants towards the end of our papermaking workshop on Saturday and there were, smiles all round!
   Thanks to our member, Chris Dobson, we had a well prepared and interesting workshop, with a wide choice of materials and additions to our papers.
   After Chris' demonstrations on making sheets of paper from two types of recycled, pulped paper, kindly prepared for us, ahead of the day, with the help of her husband - mustn't forget the unseen labour force! - she showed us how to make sheets of silk paper using wallpaper paste as a binding medium. These took a little longer than the pulped paper and necessitated us getting sticky along with the use of a squeegee to get rid of excess paste.

Galanthophile in Our Midst! but have no fear!

  One of our workshop tutor's enduring interests is her collection of snowdrops. To brighten our day further Chris brought a posy of flowers from her garden. Among other beautiful things were snowdrops....20 different snowdrops, each with a different name and all from her collection.

  

 

Chris challenged some of us to find the bloom with the name 'Grumpy'. Not a 'handle' you'd expect! If that is the first snowdrop , then the second is 'Cross'. Certainly not names you'd expect for a flower that brightens us up at this time of year!

This is one small swathe of the 'common' snowdrops in my garden. What name could we give them?
'Hump backed bridge' ?

AGM and Guild Challenge 2016 'Colour'

Well, we had an interesting and lively meeting yesterday. Formalities attended to, challenge entries voted for, two new members and, as usual, lots of support for those undertaking a skill new to them. But then there's nothing unusual in that at Bedfordshire Guild!
With timber and materials already at the hall for new flooring under the stage, our equipment storage trolley, which means we can have safe and easy access to 'tools of our trades' in the very near future, is nearer to completion.

The winner of the 2016 Challenge:- Su Brown, who had woven a striped table runner using 3 shades of clasped weft, a tricky technique with a great effect.
Congratulations again Su!
The Whole Runner: -