All you need to spin your dreams
It is time to get your registrations in for 2023 Majacraft Magic retreat! 2023 Class Content: Crimp Spin Ply with Pat Old – design yarn that matches the crimp of the fleece Beyond one Batt with Janet Day (AU) – carding for a big project Love Linen with Leigh […]
We have a couple of new products to announce! The first one is pretty straight forward so I will start with the new limited edition bobbins, and then tell you all about our new Extra Fine hand combs, with a wee story about what makes […]
Once again we were so lucky to have the opportunity to gather together for three days of spinning, learning, chatting, and sharing at this years Majacraft Camp! We were all delighted to see so many old and new friends, and we hope all those attending enjoyed every minute, as we did.
Our venue once again provided comfortable beds, great food, and excellent teaching spaces, and having the beach just across the road is a real bonus. We were super pleased that the weather was beautiful this time with lots of sunshine and warm days.
Our classes this year provided entertainment and learning opportunities with a variety of topics covered. We had some really interesting Heritage Spinning with Leigh Morris (author of “The Handspinners Companion”) in which longdraw was a feature along with some New Zealand heritage breed fibres.
Annette Montgomery created a ‘tool time’ playground so everyone could get hands-on with the range of Majacraft fiber preparation tools and ALL the wheels!
Pat Old helped everyone do amazing things with cotton, and I am sorry I do not have a photo from her class to add here! Everyone who knows Pat understands the wealth of knowledge she has to share and her fantastic approach to both investigating topics and teaching her skills to others.
It seemed that this camp involved much use of our Majacraft hand carders, with the heritage breeds and the cotton, and also Suzy’s class on using silk hankies. In this class everyone used silk hankies to spin samples, from super fine thread to bulky corespun yarns, and also blended some silk with wool. A nice range of sample yarns were made, and the teeny tiny cotton reels filled with silk thread. Everyone went home with a record booklet to keep their experiments and ideas in.
We ended the weekend with a bang! Debbie Held joined us from her home in the USA via Zoom, on the big screen! She showed us how to split up our multicoloured top into just the right size pieces for ‘Combo Spinning’. The yarns that have been created with this technique, both at and after camp, have been just fabulous!
We had such a lovely camp experience and hope everyone enjoyed themselves, the fibres and yarns they spun, and went home with new ideas and inspirations!
We really enjoy creating custom wheels, each one is unique, and it is always an interesting exercise to turn a customer’s ideas and designs into something that will work on wood, and fit the shape of one of our wheels. This is the story of […]
UPDATE: Due to Covid, Majacraft Camp 2022 has been postponed until 6-8 May 2022 – see you there! We are pleased to announce our upcoming retreat in 2022. We have chosen the theme: “Spinning a World of Fibre” and throughout the three days we will delve into […]
(This article was first published in Issue 9 of tinyStudio Creative Life Magazine)
Over the years I have had the privilege of being able to test new products as they come out of Majacraft’s workshop. Most recently, there has been a great deal of excitement as they have worked on and refined the latest additions to their product range! I have been testing out these new bobbins, and I would like to tell you all the cool stuff about them!
As you can see, there are now two new jumbo bobbins available, one in black molded plastic, and the other in bamboo with the lovely shaped cut-outs and 3d printed rings. The jumbo bobbins (both black and wood) will fit 8oz of yarn easily and match up with the Aura and Plying flyers in size, these are the bobbins that come with the Aura and they can also be ordered separately for any of the other wheels so long as you have the Aura or Plying flyer to fit them. (You can also order them in some of the Majacraft kits with flyer included).
The standard bobbins now also come in both the black plastic and the bamboo styles. These are the 4oz bobbins that come with the Suzie wheels as well as the Rose, Pioneer, and Little Gem. Isn’t it great to have choices?!
The delightful wee baby bobbins and lace bobbins also come with the pretty bamboo ends, as well as the super cute Stylus bobbin. But if you really want to go BIG you can also now get the massive 32oz+ Overdrive bobbins as well to match your Overdrive head for spinning very large quantities of any yarn!
After using these bobbins for a while now I can tell you why they are so good! Firstly, they look awesome. I can’t decide if I like the black plastic or the new look wood better. It is very nice indeed to be able to see through the ends and admire the yarn as I am spinning, and of course, the full bobbins look gorgeous.
Secondly, these bobbins are all so much lighter than their predecessors. In fact, the fat core lace bobbin used to be 80gm (2.82oz) and the new version now weights in at only 50gm (1.76oz). This is a massive difference on such a wee bobbin, you can imagine the weight difference in the Overdrive! This means the entire range is significantly lighter, so spinning is easier, with less inertia generated from the bobbins spin.
Lastly, for those of you with the Scotch tension Majacraft wheels, you will also notice a difference in how they sound! The plastic edges on all these bobbins are much quieter against the tension band, and as a little extra bonus, due to the ends being precision cut rather than hand turned, all your bobbins will be exactly the same without the potential variations that can alter the ‘play’ of the bobbin on the wheel.
As always, all these bobbins except the Overdrive are totally interchangeable and you can use any of them on any of your wheels. These are a wonderful update to the Majacraft range and I think you will love them too!
Above: A beautiful silk Merino blend spun onto the jumbo and the standard bobbins, ready for plying
Some pure Alpaca plied into the standard size bamboo bobbin
An big and squishy art yarn spun on the jumbo bobbin
We are pleased to announce that the upcoming retreat in 2021 is going to be “Living in the Moment with Majacraft.” Throughout this retreat we are going to focus on mindfulness and simplicity through our handcrafts. In our ever-changing world, I think it’s more important […]
It is Spring here in New Zealand, a time of lambs, daffodils, and also fresh beginnings. This seems to be the perfect time for us to bring you our brand new range of Majacraft bobbins! We have spent the winter completely overhauling all our bobbins, and are […]
I would like to share with you something I have developed that I think is new and exciting, this is my super duper colour management system for use with the Hackle – one of my favourite Majacraft tools!
I started developing this system in mid 2019 as a workshop I could teach at Majacraft Camp 2020. With the goal of making something repeatable for larger projects, beyond my usual ‘stripes and blocks’, I was hit by a lightening bolt of an idea – HACKLE PATTERNS!
Yes – drawing a template of the hackle and designing my colour placement! Much experimentation ensued, I made and spun samples, knitted them up into swatches to see how they would transfer from design to fabric, and discovered that YES! These patterns can be ‘READ’ easily and the pattern created could be directly translated into the knitted fabric! And not only that, there is apparently no end to the designs that can be created this way!
This is a simple system in which the pattern is drawn into the template as a guide for how to load the hackle. The pattern can be symmetric or asymmetric, it can be simple or complex, it creates the shapes, placements, and proportions of each colour in the design – I give each colour a number, and then it is simply colour by numbers!.
The pattern is read from end to end of the hackle, the width of the hackle becomes the length of the combed top dizzed off it.
The yarn spun from it can be done as a two ply, by creating two matching hackle loads and spinning them together, or as a three ply chain, spun from end to end of the top. I sampled both two and three ply yarns from each of my patterns, and you will see the result in the Workbook!
By following the links on the page here you can access all the material I shared in the 3 hour workshop, which I have condensed into a half hour tutorial video, which includes:
Please go ahead and DOWNLOAD the PDF of your free 50 page Workbook, which contains the overview of the system, the ‘rules’ and principles it contains, and all the patterns, samples, and notes and variations I have made so far.
Click the cover below for the .PDF (for all devices) or follow THIS LINK for the .EPUB for Apple Books app.
Please also settle in and watch the Video in which I explain the content of the Workbook and demonstrate all the techniques you need to successfully create you own, unique and repeatable colour designs to get exactly the yarn you want!
You can watch the video right here, or travel on to YOUTUBE and watch from there, I would like to strongly encourage you to SHARE this blogpost, the Workbook, and the video on Youtube with your groups and spin families! I would LOVE to revolutionise the use of hackles, a much undervalued tool, and to bring people new ideas for taking control of their colours and yarns in this way!
I would also love it if you enjoy this so much that you do wish to share it, if you would give me a wee credit and/or a link back to Majacraft, who make what I consider the best hackles on the market, and also tinyStudio (www.fiberygoodness.com) so I can continue to share the love for all things fiber by reaching new audiences through tinyStudio Creative Life magazine!
Happy Hackling!
Suzy
Did you guess which of our wheels these pretty pedals belong to? They DO look like Rose pedals, or Suzies, or even Aura’s, they could be Pioneer feet but these are Rimu not Ash, so whose can they be? Yes! Our updated Little Gem has […]
