Feltmaking in January ....Message from Marilyn

Felt Jewellery (Small items)
This is intended as an experimental day, where you can explore different techniques, both wet and dry felting (needle felting) to make small items such as jewellery, cards, small purses, pictures, phone or glasses cases. The emphasis is on small, so no physical workout rolling felt this time! A relaxed, chatty day! I shall bring several ideas, so that you can choose what you want to try.
Above are some examples using wet and/or dry felting, but I shall be working on more over the Christmas period.
Marilyn

Christmas Lunch at Dalemain

It seems to have come round very quickly.......... where did this year go? Time, yesterday, for our Christmas lunch at Dalemain House, near Penrith. Lovely surroundings, and as always, delightful meal in the Mediaeval Hall. The photos show most of us meeting up first at Rheged, a very happy bunch at Dalemain, and a picture of the house itself.

Val reminded us that because the Friends' meeting house in Keswick is still recovering from the flooding, the first few meetings of the new year will be held in the Village Hall in Threlkeld. We also wondered how we'd represent the day's celebrations on the Sampler?

We exchanged gifts then, mostly embroidery-related, and we all received lovely examples of the skill and imagination of our members. I've posted a picture of the gift I received; gorgeous colours, and just right for my tree!

The Knitting and Stitching Show in Harrogate

Cumbria was reeling under the deluge that had dumped the floods on the Lake District on Thursday, 19th November, and a car-load of KEG members had planned a visit to the Harrogate Knitting and Stitching Show on the Sunday. Unfortunately, Lesley (our KEGBLOG person) was unable to get through on the shattered road system (bridges down etc), and Joan was poorly, so I set off on Sunday morning with Kate (a friend from the village) and picked up Gloria in Penrith (flooding was minimal to the east of us).

The three of us had a great time. After a two hour, uneventful journey to Harrogate, we found the multi-storey car park easily and arrived at the exhibition at just gone 10am, just in time for a coffee within the beautiful theatre area (I think the Queens Hall) which has recently been refurbished. The Knitting and Stitching was, as usual, very good – so many trade stalls to choose from; really good exhibitions; a full size hand-knitted boat(!); friendly people; etc. As usual for me, it needed a superhuman effort to keep my bearings in the many halls and, again, you feel you might have missed a whole area. Very disorientating when you’re so engrossed in everything!
Gloria managed to track down the Yorkshire Women’s group who provide kits to make little crib figures, Kate bought a bargain pack of superb knitting wool, and I ended up with many beautiful threads ‘just in case’, and had a full demonstration of a Janome embellisher – wow!

We all agreed that there were definitely more stands on knitting than before at the show but, nevertheless, a good mix. Some stalls had run out of some of their wares, it being the last day, but in other cases there were bargains to be had as traders didn’t want to take too much stuff back. The time went by so quickly. I always come away feeling I should have gone back to get that book, or kit …

Pat Knifton

Christmas Lunch at Dalemain

Nearly December already! Just a reminder......... Lunch at Dalemain is this Thursday; the plan is , to meet up at Rheged at 11am for coffee, and to organise lifts , should anyone need them or, be at Dalemain itself by 11.55, to eat at 12 noon. A small embroidery-related gift can be entered into the gift exchange!

Look at this site!

Just wandering through from one site to another, I came across this one. www.onestepon.co.uk It houses the web pages of a group of textile artists, and shows examples of their very varied work. As we missed our bag-making day, you might like to get some inspiration from some of these examples! You need to click on the artist to see their work So far, I have drooled over bags made by Sandie Maher, and Ann Christy. Worth a peek!

Floods

The November meeting had to be cancelled, of course, and in the light of what happened next in Keswick and Cockermouth, it seems a very minor disappointment. Maybe we'll be able to do that workshop in the future.

Val has provided me with an example of a stitch sampler, to post, showing the idea behind her 'Chairman's Challenge.' It has a stitch, or technique inspired by each of our meetings this year.(In our case, this will be a mere nine motifs!) I will try soon to link this picture to a larger version, so that you can see it in more detail, but in the meantime, you get the idea!

Programme Changes

I will miss the bag-making session, sadly, but hope you all have an inspiring day! Please note the changes to this year's programme, set out on the right. Also, note that the felted jewellery session in January will be held at Threlkeld Village Hall rather than at the Friends' Meeting house.