Splendiferous

Views around the green city centre parks...

Bright blue skies 

Magnolia flowering brightly against a gorgeous clear blue sky

 Beautiful blooms



Camelias bright and blousy

Magnolia Stellata - delicate and one of my favourites

Colour abounds

Gorgeous swathe of Grape Hyacinths

Enjoying these warm sunny days while they last.

Another Fun Day

Spinning for the day with friends, demonstrating and chatting with members of the public

Wow what a fun day ... (in pictures)

Phew!

That was a very fun but very tiring day. Imogen's first Youth Guild workshop, along with 9 other girls and wow did they have some fun with colour. Here are some pictures of Imogen and her day's work dyeing yarn skeins, yarn balls and a silk scarf ... (other yarns and scarves by the other members but no pictures of them)

 Waiting for the day to begin

Lots of lovely dyes

Let the fun begin ...

 Injecting colour into mini skeins - red and yellow make?

 yep Orange - the one above, amongst other mini skeins (all Imogens)

then they dyed some yarn in balls and steamed them

washed and spun ready to skein
(Imogens is the one on the bottom right)

Time for lunch before the silk dyeing began in the afternoon.

adding buttons and beads with linen thread for a tie dye effect

painting with colours 

 unveiling her scarf

 ta dah ... a beautiful colourful silk scarf

 Imogens yarns and scarf drying in the breeze 

(minus one ball of wool still cooking)

Here they all are once home and all dry, don't they look fantastic? I am so proud of how well she did, being the youngest in the group but she picks things up well and has an eye for creativity.

Scarf and skeins all dry

Lovely skeins of hand dyed yarn

A wonderful day full of colour, new friends and high spirits.

Some of the beautiful work created by the girls in the youth Guild

Dyeing with the young ones

Today Imogen and I are very excited to be going along to her first workshop with the Hampshire Youth Guild of Weavers Spinners and Dyers!

Today she (and I as an adult helper) will be learning loads about dyeing from our expert dyer member before she moves away to pastures new (sniff sniff ... we will all miss her sooooo much). But we shall learn a lot from her, and her book published a couple of years ago on Natural Dyeing which is lovely and informative. I have the added bonus of going along to the Guilds Dyeing Day in July (for the adult Guild members) which Judy will be returning to Hampshire for to run.

Watch this space for some pictures soon ...


In the meantime, it is also Woolly Wednesday over on my other blog Spinspiration, why not pop along and see what spinning and knitting I have been up to there and other blogs who link up, or maybe link up too with your latest woolly adventures.

Enjoying ...

A few of the things we have been enjoying recently ...

Blossom on the trees, this was taken at the end of February ... so there is more now, warmer weather is slowly, slowly arriving ...

Spring blossom

Listening to bubbles at the Oceanography Centre Open day ... science is fun!

 listening to bubbles

Plotting places on a map, excellent skills ... learnt from her Mama!

Imogen finding places on the map

Knitting a cover for my new phone with a samples yarn ...

New Phone cover from Wingham samples day yarn 

Spinning up new yarns

Spinning on the Wee Peggy

Weaving up some sample handspun yarns ...

Weavette samples

Exploring Fort tunnels

Fort Purbrook tunnels 

and running in the dark

Imogen running through the dark tunnels

Cleaning up and oiling the Westbury wheel finally, and she spins so sweetly 

Westbury wheel

So I oiled all my lovely ladies, here they are looking glorious don't you think?

Louet, Westbury and Wee Peggy