Creative Spinnig Workshop with Andrew Johnson.

I've been looking forward to attending this workshop since my friend Kirsten told me about it. I've been attending some of the meetings of the Glamorgan Spinners, Weavers and Dyers Guild, and when I was told about this workshop I put my name down Immediately.

Art Yarn is a personal favourite of mine so the idea of spinning crazy yarns from 10-4 was pure bliss. Tora, a friend and also a relatively new spinner also attended, hoping to improve her 3 week old spinning technique and also get some intensive spinning experience.

We started off spinning huge yarn from raw fleece, the idea was just to get it as big as you could and try to resist the urge to draft the fibre too much!! not a problem for me as I adore super bulky yarns. I can't remember the fibre that was used, all I could remember was its rough texture and adoring its lovely mixed brown colour, it was rough, scratchy and dirty.....awesome!!!

The second yarn we had to spin was with raw Wensleydale fleece, still damp and a little sticky, but Both me Tora and Kirsten were ready to get in there!! Sticky fleece was slightly gross, but considering some of my immediate family are from down south...I couldn't let the side down!!

The plan was to ply said scratchy brown yarn with said sticky Wensleydale....job done!!
Although, bummer as I forgot to take a photo...bad Bekka!

Next on the Agenda was Bouclé... now I can't really say that I am a fan of it, however its one yarn I had yet to spin so I was open to suggestions. I used some of the single that I had left over from spinning Buddy the Christmas Elf and used that as the pretty part of the bouclé. The other singles that were used were a mixture of organic merino and milk protein that were spun in advance of Andy's workshop.

We consumed copious amounts of tea and in the afternoon Andy decided to let us loose on some crazy carding, in order to spin up some luuurvely singles which will then be super-coiled into a cute necklace.

Here's a photo of my newly spun single


and here's another look, check out those lovely shreds of fabric, yummy yummy!



All in all, it was a fantastic day, I thoroughly enjoyed meeting the ladies at the Guild and getting to know them a little better, at the end Andy graciously agreed to pose for a picture for me.

p.s I'm wearing my pretty super-coiled necklace :D