woolcraft log 25-7-08

Quiet day at Galgael today with many folks on Holidays, but the bothy was buzzing with the wool crafters :-)

The only one who did not make it today, apart from Laryna who is on Holiday, were Naomi (and she had been to and fro here during the week to take things out of the boxes from the Riverfest), Hazel and Sarah (have not seen her for ages - hope she is all right?)

Apart from tidying up and welcome Kentucky fried chick Sarah-Jane back (she did get a lot of sun over in Kentucky!) the 3 main tones of today were:

• how can we make our wee Bothy a more practical and beautiful place? 
• getting things ready for the felting projects next week
• sorting Verene's beautiful longwool crossbreed fleece from the Woolfest

The latter was done by Verene and Sarah-Jane in the sun in the yard, whilst the Ian and the guys cooked a barbeque.

Flora, Anneruth and Linsey got the wool, display and felting tools for next week together,

whilst Anna and Eileen brainstormed ideas for the beautification of the bothy, and drawing also Martin in who holds his office here, too: better lights (clip on ones from Ikea?), more upper level shelves, reshuffling tables... Next week when more of the Galgael folks are back we all would like to get cracking!

Everybody got roped in to tidy things up, especially under the tables, and we expanded our wool and rags material storage to Verene's loft! Mary did the laboursome business of unwinding all the handspun yarns from the spinning wheel bobbins into balls. Some of it will be great knitting wool!

    

Speaking of winding wool off: at the end of the day Sarah-Jane found some time to at last pick up the spinning wheel again and prove to herself that she has not forgotten to spin, and - at long long last she had enough wool to learn how to spin and how to wind it into a skein on the niddy noddy, and here she is with her first skein!

Next stage, after washing it, will be dyeing it! It seems that Eileen and her are now set to explore what seasonal plants can be harvested and used.

One other happy face to show you: Ian's! He has been gifted by us the small Hebridean fleece rug for his support to the woolcraft group. He plans to take it on the voyaging boat trip to Iona - where the sheep that grew and gave it is still grazing!