Thursday 22 May 2014

Facebook Connections

St. James Textile Museum, where you'll find me most days in the summertime, now has a page on Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/stjamestextilemuseum

Pop by and like us, and keep up to date on whats happenning this summer, all our special events, especially our ever-growing and popular Heritage Fair, which takes place the same weekend as our village of Dorchester's annual Sandpiper Festival.

This year's Heritage Fair takes place on July 26

 

Photos from previous Heritage Fairs:


 Examples of how wool looks in various stages of processing












Heritage Bread Baking in the Hearth Oven

 

Chairseat Caning Demonstration

 

Traditional Netmaking

 

Pottery

 

Basket Weaving

 

Horseshoeing

 

 

 

 

Saturday 5 April 2014

Uh-oh, something broke on my wheel! aka "Houston, we have a problem.."

Thursday evening i was spinning up some lovely brown Jacob fleece, when all of a sudden *snap! there goes the connection between the treadle and the footman on my usual workhorse wheel, my Louet S90





So I ended up having to finish plying this very fine laceweight yarn on the Louet S15, which...toook....foreverrrrrr with its 1:5 ratio between the drive wheel and the bobbin wheel



This afternoon i found the time to do a repair job with some chunky hemp jewellery cord, and she's now good to go.


 The poor s90 has been through a lot, i don't dare fold her anymore, and i must tell you, i keep a socket wrench attached to her at all times, cause i never know when the mother-of-all is going to suddenly droop like a wilted violet ;-) She came to me second-hand, like most of my things, and was very well loved before by a lady who lived down the road from me and kept Shetland sheep :)

This would be the shawl the yarn is going into; i'm now on row 80 out of 170 rows, plus a 15 row edging, all handspun Jacob of varying shades