Lots of Outings

On Wednesday, I took a train to Oxford and met up with two friends, Mary Jarvis and Rosie Price, to visit the Ashmolean Museum. We were interested in organising an outing for the Guild weavers and Mary was anxious to try out one of the one-hour lectures which the Museum gives. It was very good, a conducted tour of one of the galleries with explanations by a very knowledgable lady. Mary has in mind getting a lecture given to our group based on the Textile gallery and we agreed at the end of the day that it would be A GOOD THING. The textile gallery is amazing. They have (they say) the best Museum collection in the world of Coptic fabrics (woven) and Indian printed and embroidered textiles. What was on display was wonderful.

We did look at various other galleries, Chinese scroll paintings, Japanese galleries (no fabrics at all!!). The highlight was a small gallery Rosie dragged us too. An array of etched and engraved wine glasses between 1750 and 1850. They were exquisite. About 100 of them from their holdings of 1500!!! The Ashmolean believes in a lot of a few things, if you see what I mean. Anyway we all think the Guild will enjoy themselves - and the cafe is not at all bad.

Thursday was running round Malvern day going into all sorts of shops. Today I went, with a friend, Jennifer, to a garden north of Leominster called Stockton Bury. I had never heard of it before and it is lovely. Privately owned and obviously much cherished. I recommend it highly. Sort of Hidcote before the National Trust ruined it. I have some photos but they are all of bark!!! Why is it, asked Jennifer,  that textile people like bark. I don't know but it's true.

In between all this, I have been continuing with the organising for the Weaving Exhibition. I also dealt with the diversified plain weave draft and ordered the cotton I need.  The coloursed stripes in the graphic  photo below are an artefact. The warp is all cream and there are sections of weft which are all pink and sections which are all dark green. Having seen it printed out, it needs adjustment to the tendrils and leaves. I could do much better. I have just found out that I have a short piece on DPW in the next issue of the Complex Weaver's Journal.

While waiting for the 2/30 cotton to arrive, I have been warping up the high twist yarn which is quite horrid. Both the black and the white want to hug anything close by. It takes 30 minutes to thread and sley one inch. I can't help feeling that 36 epi is not enough and that I will have to resley. But that what this exercise is about - samples.  I did want to have something on the Voyager for demonstration purposes in two weeks time at the Leek exhibition. I am not at  all sure that this is suitable and may try to get these samples finished and warp up with a nice middling thickness wool. I have some laid aside for a project.  I have bought several cheap clear plastic drawers in sets of four,  about 2 ft 6 high. And one set is allocated to projects. All the documentation and yarn is collected together and put into one of these drawers and one drawer holds some space dyed Blue Leicester handspun which would do nicely as a demo.

Tomorrow is Guild day and I have even more than usual piled up by the front door ready to go. Let's hope I come home with much less.

(A little later) A revised draft