All you need to spin your dreams
It’s been a few days since we all reluctantly re-packed our bags and returned home from Majacraft Camp. Time to reflect on the wonderful atmosphere and marvellous things learned, as well as the good feeling of having spent time with old friends and new. Firstly […]
Only a few weeks to go till Majacraft Camp! Tutors are getting ready, making up samples, sorting out fibres and yarns to bring, organising equipment.. And I recently had a visit here at Woolwench House from the vibrant Angela Daish! (No I don’t live in […]
Majacraft Camp is just around the corner, with just on four weeks to go till we all gather for much fiber fun! Preparations are well under way and I know Glynis has been super busy making up goodie bags, assembling equipment, and arranging important things like food, and coffee. And of course we have such a fantastic range of workshops to look forward to! In a previous blogpost we shared some information about the amazing Pat Old, who will be teaching some flax weaving at Camp, and this week we would like to introduce Michele Peddie, a VERY talented fiber artist, who will be guiding us thorugh the Journal making process that runs alongside the entire weekend. The idea of the journal is that we will be creating our own record of the weekend, this can include class notes, fiber and yarn samples, inspirations and visual journalling.. in fact it can be whatever you want to record of the weekend, all bound together in a specially made set of wooden covers which we will also decorate during the weekend! We will be supported, inspired, and guided by Michele throughout this process.
Michele Peddie is a textile designer, fibre artist and graphic designer by trade. Having returned to university as a mature student to complete a Bachelor of Design – Textiles, she is now keen to impart and share some of that knowledge with fellow fibreholics. Michelle explains her vision for the Majacraft Camp Journal as follows:
“The journal is about how to collect your ideas, notes and experiments and record them in a visual journal, rather than scrapbooking which can be very neat and tidy with photos etc. My visual diaries tend to get stuffed with lots of ‘things’ in the creation process. Instead of looking at an already created yarn and then trying to replicate it, I am hoping, along with Suzy, to show you a fresh way of coming up with ideas for colour and texture for your yarns and how to record these ideas so that they can be used over the weekend and in the future. This will be a fun exercise and I will be there to help throughout the weekend.”
Michele shared this image with us, as an example of how she collects inspiration and ideas to add to her visual journal:
Here are some examples of Michelle’s work to further inspire you!
We are sure you will enjoy Michele’s passion and enthusiasm for the art of fibre, and the creation of your Majacraft Camp 2016 Journal!
This time we would like to share a special place with you, a place called ‘Tarndie’, somewhere all us fiber fanatics would enjoy visiting! Firstly we would like to congratulate them on their 175 years and six generations of the Dennis family, farming in this […]
Since we have a little waiting to do before we can go and enjoy Majacraft Camp 2016, we thought it might be of interest to feature our tutors, so all those now signed up can get a little taste of what is to come at […]
This week we were able to send out a gorgeous batch of customised wheels, just check these out, we love them!
One of the joys of being a small company hand crafting our products, is that it gives us a lot of freedom to really personalise what we do to suit each customer. We don’t have a giant production line using pre-set machinery that can only build one thing with no variation. We don’t have an unchangeable system that churns out mass produced items. We start with our hands and our materials, and we craft each wheel, each carder, each set of combs individually, and very often to order because we also do not have a giant storeroom full of pre-made stock to flick out as orders come in, The beauty of this is, not only do our customers receive an item that has been made just for them, with our own hands, but we can also pause during the process and make changes to the wheel, add a personal touch on request that will give the new owner of this wheel a unique piece of equipment that belongs to THEM, that fits their taste and personality, a one of a kind wheel for a one of a kind customer!
We can do this in a variety of ways. We can colour them differently as you can see in the picture above, and there are so many colours to choose from 🙂 Check out this gorgeous purple!
And then of course there is the ‘tattoo’ we can add to the wheels, laser etched to your specifications, this really is the fun part! We have had many requests for wheel designs and it is always a pleasure to send these out to excited customers, it is such a great way to truly connect with a wheel, a visual treat each time you look at it and work with it. We only ever make one of each of these, so if you send us your design, you can be sure no one else will ever get ‘your’ wheel, it is just for you exclusively! Take a look at some of the unique wheels we have created in the past..
We can really get a lot of detail into these designs:
and we can add design touches on more than just the drive wheel too:
and one more example of where you can add design here with my (Suzy’s) ‘One Wheel’ which Andrew covered in Elvish script for me 🙂
Are you feeling inspired? Just email us at support@majacraft.co.nz and share your dream wheel wishes with us! We can talk about design and pricing, and together we can help make your ideas come to life with a spinning wheel you will love to use! If you already have a Majacraft wheel that you love, but want something personalised for you, we can customise individual parts for you to swap around as you like! Contact us for pricing and possibilities 🙂 Your ideas and designs are an inspiration to us!
And here we are! Thank you so much to everyone who has joined in with us on this fun project, we have LOVED seeing your beautiful weaving and knitting and have very much enjoyed the individual creative approaches you have each taken with this project. […]
Our Circle Weave Along project has been running for a week now! It has been super fun seeing people starting to post their progress photos on the Event page, here are a few really neat ones: Simone Broersma is using some beautiful colours and a […]
This week is the start of the first of what we hope will become regular events, an online ‘Along’. Wondering what that is? Well for this ‘Along’ we are going to Circle Weave a scarf! We would like to invite you to join us and follow along to make your own!
It works like this:
Over the next three weeks we will use the Facebook Events page as our home base for the Weave Along project. The three weeks will look like this:
Week 1. Weaving the circles
Week 2: Attaching the first circle and knitting and or crocheting the scarf centre length
Week 3: Attaching the second circle, finishing (weaving in ends) and creating the tassles
Each week there will be a new Tutorial for that part of the project, the tutorial will include both a video and a downloadable set of instructions to go with it. I will also be available on the Event page on Facebook to answer any questions and help out as needed.
I hope you will also post your progress photos on the Event page!
The Scarf is a design I came up with specifically for this Weave Along, I wanted to share something that anyone could have a go at, and it covers the basics of warping and weaving in plain weave. I hope we can encourage some people to get started for the first time with their weaving! If you are a more advanced weaver you are very welcome to add your own design into this project, you might want to add embellishments, different weave patterns in the circles, and play around with textures. The same goes for knitters! I have made this very simple but please view it as a base, if you wish to add to the design in any way this is NOT a pattern that must be followed, rather it is a GUIDE from which you can grow your own unique scarf! With all this in mind, plus the possibility that we will all bring different yarns to the project, I have deliberately left it simple and un-patternlike, I will be providing you with techniques and measurements, as well as suggestions for things like, how to deal with different yarn sizes within the project.
Today I am posting the first Tutorial! Please follow the link to pick up your free download of instruction, it includes a warping pattern and information about materials and weaving your circle and is designed to go along with the video (below), these two things are integral to each other. please take the time to read over the document first and then watch the video.
Download the written part of the Tutorial by clicking on the cover:
Watch the Tutorial Video:
For more information and warping patterns don’t forget there is also the Warp Speed booklet that Andrew and I created, there are plenty more patterns in there as well as a template for making your own mid size circles. Just in case you are inspired to do some more after this project is completed!
For the Majacraft Fusion Engine Drum Carder Majacraft now has in stock both the 72tpi and the 128tpi carding cloth for the amazing new Fusion Engine Drum carder. This raises a few questions! The first, and most important one is, ‘which cloth doth suit me […]