Through The Spiral: farmyard activities

It's an exciting and busy world inside Innerspiral Studio at the moment.... So much stuff going on, it's crazy! Right now, we're getting ready to take the hoop party to Glade Festival this coming weekend, plus we're organising another Fabulous Travelling Bag Folk Festival Market at The Greenbank, this time over the whole weekend for the Easton Arts Trail... 17th, 18th & 19th June. And if that weren't enough to do, we're leaving for Glastonbury Festival the day after for the whole week to run our felt making workshop in the Greenfields. And we've only just worked out how much wool we will need - 3.5 kilos! Blimey... Not to mention our vegetable garden and greenhouse which are going great guns, we're going to have potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, salad, chillis, beans, peas, sweetcorn, onions, garlic, squash, courgettes, leeks, carrots, parsnips, and sunflowers coming out of our ears! Plus I am trying to grow a tea plant but it takes up to 3 months to germinate so i have no idea if it's going to work.

Apart from all the events, there are developments here at Innerspiral Studio that are making us very happy indeed. First Pig got his absolutely BEAUTIFUL new drop spindle from slissie on Etsy http://www.etsy.com/shop/slissie.... in fact, she sent us two, so i can have a go too! We're going to be demonstrating drop spindling all week at Glastonbury. We went on holiday to Greece last week to visit the cat's mother (no joke!) and pig was drop spindling all over the shop, he even got spotted on the beach... (we think all the tourists thought he was a mad person)
(Ps Blogger is a bit rubbish so the pictures are all side on! We tried to sort it out. Blogger, we're moving to WordPress if you don't sort this glitch in your system out! )

THEN... (trumpets, drum roll, confetti...) the long awaited mighty DRUM CARDER arriveth! It's so much fun! You can basically put in anything you like and it cards it all up into as gorgeous 'batt' which is very easy to felt or to spin as woollen draw, which means much more meterage for your yarn.... we don't have a whole load of different types of fibres at the moment to add in but we will soon! For now we're satisfied with the results of combinations of dyed merino tops, blue faced leicester, white lambswool, natural black falkland, and hand dyed silk.... pig brains is delirious with joy, and has been making some very beautiful batts and spinning them into even more beautiful yarn... some are going on the stall and some are going to get crocheted up for the stall... cos the crochet has been in development too! We now have a very silly hat indeed that I made on holiday, like a cross between a jester and a dog, I don't even know how it happened! But I really like it so it stays :) Plus I have started experimenting with crochet and felt together which has created some quite bonkers colouful psytrance style cowls....

ITS THE DRUM CARDER DUM DUM DUM

This is once the batt of fiber is on the drum

removing the batt

finished batt (2batts rolled up together)

Yarn spun from a hand dyed carded batt

more yarn from a drum carded batt woo! Finally i can spin longdraw! PIG

psytrance cowl thing!

it is NOT psychedelic spit, pig!

We've also set up a new website for ourselves, with weebly - innerspiral.weebly.com. Check it out for info on our felt making classes in Bristol and our hula hoop party workshop, PixieHoopSound, plus loads of other stuff!

It's a sad fact that we just don't keep up with our blog - or our Etsy shop for that matter! We've got some splendid hats that we have felted now on the stall, and they are all entirely our own design. We've totally taken off with dyeing lots of different fibres, and Pig brains yarn has never been more beautiful. I have hand felted some scarves on raw silk with lots of hand dyed merino, blue faced leicester curls and silk.... They are very popular! I made one for myself which I'll wear when we get married and it took me 8 hours I was pooped afterwards! We really should get some of our new stuff on Etsy... we'll be working hard to do that over the next few weeks, in between festivals and organisationing and markets and stock making and general life! We never even wrote about the first Fabulous Travelling Bag Folk market that we organised.... it was brilliant! Such a success and so much fun! Ah well, here's some pictures of the day and you can see our hats in them too :)