East Grinstead Spinners

Carol T started our 2026 workshops with a workshop exploring heat transfer printing. Everyone enjoyed themselves hugely. These are some of the results:

The Japanese art of Boro is 'on trend', We had fun playing with this decorative art at one of our 2023 workshops Repairing a rip Disguising a hole                              Covering a stain Making a feature of the mend Extending the life of a sock Choosing the yarn          Using any odds and ends you have to hand. Perfect up-cycling solutions   

Many people had brought their spindles - some of us had experience, others were learning. Good fun was had by all. Top whorl spindle Madeline presented the workshop with a few tips and tricks, which were much appreciated. She also showed us a couple of possibilities of setting up for plying - to easily remove the singles cob from the spindle, it was suggested that a quill of card was wrapped around the spindle shaft. Shoe boxes and knitting needles come in very handy A very advanced lazy kate Many different types of spindle were in use - mainly suspended spindles, which included a couple of Turkish spindles. Towards the end Laura demonstrated supported spindling. A display of spindles. The displayed spindles are as follows: A takli spindle for short fibre spinning - a very fast supported spindle, which needs to be supported in a container which doesn't get damaged by the sharp metal shaft. 3 further supported spindles, the middle one being a Russian type spindle, these are all made...

Each year we have a dyeing/craft day in August. In 2022 we prepared this in a workshop of Stitched Shibori. Some examples Small samples of stitched shibori The way the above samples were stitched A Japanese mat   The Stitching From the workshop     Some previous stitched shibori work Laura was inspired to  work further with the Shibori technique:

A Workshop in Modular Knitting As shown below this method can produce very beautiful results, with various colours used for the moduls. Samples shown: A cardigan with beads added in each modul A waistcoat A few images from the demonstration Moduls are knitted and set up for adding a next modular row This is also called domino knitting and the modules may be attached in several ways A participants finished sample