Wendy Fowler, July 2018
On 21st July I went to the Oxford guild to take part in their fleece to finished garment day. This was held at one of the members farms at Chilton near Thame. What a beautiful venue and the weather was amazing.
We were split into 4 teams splitting the members up who knew each other. This was a great idea as we got to know other members. The rules were that we had to spin, knit, weave, needle felt or anything else fibrey. It had to be a scarf that would wrap around a neck and must have at least 50% of the given fibre in. We could embellish it with whatever we wanted that we had taken with us. So we could choose fleece from several plastic bags, they were either white or brown.
We took it back to our shady spot under the tree and three of us started spinning while two were carding and making embellishments with needle felting. We decided there wasn’t time to ply as well so as soon as there was enough spun yarn on a bobbin someone would start to kit it straight from the bobbin. This was challenging as it was very springy. We made squares which we sewed together then added needle felted balls and flowers. The balls were the tassels. We crocheted around the edge once it was all sewn together. At the last moment we were all working on the scarf together which was funny. We finished in the nick of time with just three minutes to spare! Our group was called The Worshipful company of tea drinkers and biscuit eaters but in fact we hardly had time to do either! At the end each team had to present their finished scarf to the other teams. Would you believe it our scarf was voted best in show!
A great day finished with tea,cake, scones, jam and cream!
