All you need to spin your dreams
So this is what they mean by being behind the 8-ball! Needless to say I have been rather busy recently simply helping to get products into boxes and into the postie’s van. There has been a bunch of news to share so here goes. Majacraft […]
Recently we had the opportunity to engrave another custom wheel, this time a Rose for our friend Anna Josefsson. I was very pleased with how it came out, particularly the little frog on the handle nut! This was the first time we had tried engraving […]
Over the past few days we have had the pleasure of hosting the lovely Joan Ruane, cotton spinning guru from Arizona USA. She has been in NZ teaching some workshops and catching up with friends made during her time living here in the 70s.
Joan was a wonderful source of information and ideas which she freely gave. We spent quite some time working with her making little tweaks to our lace spinning tools to refine them further still. What was fascinating for both her and us was the amount of things that Majacraft make that she and spinners around her didn’t know about. The stylus, High speed head and flyer varieties were all a pleasant surprise for her.
She also gave our local club an excellent talk and demonstration of cotton spinning and the members were buzzing afterwards. Cotton is not spun a lot in NZ and this was a real eye opener to the possibilities.
In the evening we had Pat Old (past Creative Fibre President, author of “In A Spin”, and tutor of note) around to chat with Joan further. We had a great night and Joan was very generous with her knowledge.
She was a wonderful guest and if you are interested in inviting Joan to teach, we would wholeheartedly recommend her. Find her at www.cottonspinning.com
Until next time
Andy
Our friend Wooldancer (Michelle Snowdon) in Australia posted a very nice video to YouTube recently of Fibre Art Rolags she is producing. The work she is creating is very beautiful and I have included the link below. I found it really inspirational what talented people like […]
Rob has been in India for the last week and from what I have seen on Facebook, it looks like he has been having an awesome time around Rajastan and Northern India. Here are a couple of pictures he has shared recently. […]
Several years ago, we created a custom Aura for our good friend Therese Cruz. She provided the design which was drawn by a Dutch artist Mark Storm.
So anyway, long story short ;-), I am looking around for inspiration on Bing images this morning and I come across this site amongst the search results!
I recommend visiting the link below to see more of the images.
Until next time
Andy
I have spent much of today working on the Majacraft web site. You may notice a few changes next time you visit. Firstly, the blog posts now feed directly on to the front page of the web site – this is going to make it […]
Our friend Esther of JazzTurtle fame appears in an ABC segment showing how to do tailspinning (and she uses and Aura ;-)! ). Go Esther! Esther Tailspinning Until next time Andy
One of my Facebook friends is Woolwench (Suzy) who is based in Holland. She is also the owner of “The One Wheel” limited edition Aura that we built last year for her Kickstarter campaign. She recently posted on her Facebook page pictures of a new yarn she had produced which she has called “Shelob”. Here is her story about the yarn
I dreamt about this yarn, and it was one of those dreams where everything just happens magically, which of course I discovered as I was spinning it and realised it would have been much easier if I had an extra hand or more fingers. My goal was a very lumpy yarn wrapped in silk just like a spider cocoon, in my dream I had seen the fine cobwebby silk fibers wrapping around the yarn and encasing it in a thin layer. It was a bit like how a spider wraps its prey in silk, somewhat gruesome but hey, it was a dream and they can be weird right! It was tricky to spin, I first corespun a single, then coilspun it to make a coiled yarn, and then coil spun that again, in my left hand, while drafting a silk hankie with my right to wrap around the outside of it, spreading it back along the yarn to open out the silk fibers. I used a commercial spun eyelash thread as the core to add extra texture too. I also made a second yarn using a black sparkly base yarn with a white silk layer over it, hoping for an even more spidery look – I am going to add this to my LOTR yarn collection and have named it Shelob, for the giant spider that Frodo met in the Two Towers book.
Here are some pictures of a Shelob style yarn that was the first iteration of the design
I find it amazing to see what people around the world are creating with Majacraft tools and what we in a small way are part of so congratulations Suzy and thank you for sharing it with us.
Suzy is “WoolWench Handspun Yarn” on Facebook if you would like to connect with her and see what she has been up to recently or visit her site at www.woolwench.com
Until next time
Andy
Welcome one and all, we have started back at work for the year and boy is it hot in the workshop! I am anticipating Autumn and Winter with relish at the moment as the afternoons are so very humid and the workshop has very little […]