The finished pieces

I have now finished all of my silver arts award pieces and they are ready for modaration. The finished pieces are :

A woven cushion made entirely out of hand spun yarn

A felted wall hanging made from finnish fleece and linen

A crocheted scarf made with hand spun yarn and a dorset button to finish

A crocheted handbag made from hand spun merino and jacob yarn with a  olive wood button to give the flap some weight

And finally my needle felted picture on a wet felt background

So, all my pieces are finished and the only thing left to do to complete my silver arts award is a teaching day which is scheduled in for the 7th October. I need to teach a couple of people something to do with my chosen art subject which is textiles.
Seen as spinning has been the base for the whole project I am going to take in a few spindles, a spinning wheel for everyone to have a go at and a bag of various fleece bits.

( For those who don't know a spindle its basically a small portable spinning wheel but it is hard to do bulk spinning, its more meant for little bits of spinning out and about or just round the house. For larger skeins of yarn a spinning wheel is recommended. A picture of my spindle is above.)

This spindle is a bottom whorl which means the yarn hangs from the top and you spin the bottom. You can also get top whorls where the head is at the top, the difference is merely peoples preferance.
This spindle was actually made for me by a friend but you can easily buy spindles online and they don't cost a lot. One possible stockist if you are interested is wingham wool works, their website is www.winghamwoolwork.co.uk/eqp_spn_dropspindles.php     This will take you straight to their drop spindle page.

I will blog again and tell you how the teaching day goes.

Finally I wanted to tell you about Wysing Art Centre. They are in Cambridgeshire and they do a programme for young artists to complete their silver/gold arts award. I am trying to get in and this Saturday students can go along for constructive critiscm on their application. It would be amazing if I got in. Anyway I will tell you how that goes.

Thats all for now
Meghan