Spinning around (other things) this month

Spinning around lots of other things right now. Since my last post about spinning, for July Woolly Wednesday, I continued to spin for the TDF on Ravelry and then took a break for a while but got back to the wheel this last week.

So my TDF stalled a little due to lots of other things in life taking up my time, partly going to Larmer Tree festival too which was a fabulous weekend. July was also hot, hot, hot around here and I found drafting wool a bit too hot to handle.

I shared my Golden Weld dyed yarn last time for my TDF spinning. After that I spun some Falkland and some Cotswold yarns for a dyeing day workshop. Here is the spinning samples ready to go to the dyeing day.

Samples ready for dyeing day

The dyeing day fell on one of the hottest days of July, inside the art department of a school with pots of natural dyes simmering away ... wow it was hot in there! But so much fun, I came away with samples of all the colours in the rainbow and more, Here are some photos from the day and my resulting yarn samples.

 Pots of weed samples for first set of dyeing

Results from some of the weed sample dyeing

 Some of my samples drying in the sunshine

 Part of the groups dyeing results of the day

 Me gathering up some of the samples (looking hot and bothered!)

I created a colour wheel when home

(Sheep drawing courtesy of my daughter)

I did some more spinning but not a lot, and I have done a little spinning on my spindle both at home and at Larmer Tree but haven't taken a photo of it.

In the last week my spinning mojo has returned and I have spun up some oddments of fibre before starting any larger projects. Here are a couple of yarns that I spun the singles and then plied from a centre pull ball. Ready to wind off onto the niddy noddy and give a quick soak.

Singles ready to ply

 Plied yarn - rainbow of colours and silvery, with silk

Purple and blue blend with silk
(way more purple than the photo - can't seem to capture it though)

Knitting has stalled a little too, but plans are afoot to get some projects finished and others started soon. I have started some pieces with my handspun yarns both in knitting and crochet for my Guilds challenge this year, but more on that another month. Our challenge is "2nd time around" - about breathing life into something old.