Charity - a decision!

Many thanks to those who made charity suggestions here or on Ravelry! We did think of going with Water Aid - as Mary said it is very relevant to our work, we get through quite a bit of it!!

However we have decided to go with the Exeter Hospice for this year. Cancer affects many of us and I have lost several family members to the big C not to mention friends who have fought off various forms of cancer over recent years.

A very dear friend is currently being helped with paliative care by the hospice - so we feel it more appropriate for now. We hope you understand our choice! Any charges we have to make for bags, any loose change given in fact any "odds" will go into a collecting pot and the total given over at the end of the year!

thanking you in advance for your support!

Giving to charity

So when we do Wonderwool this year we HAVE to charge for paper bags/ poly bags etc. The suggestion is 5p per bag. There may be "bag police" attending the event to make sure that we do not contravene the law in Wales!!

Sooo, we have decided that we will donate the 5p that we have to charge to charity, plus if someone says they don't want the pennies and 5pences change (which happens as you're going along). This will all go into a charity box on the stall.

At the end of the year we are going to count up and then we will match what is in the box and donate........but TO WHOM?

There are so many deserving charities these days, we chose the Pink Ribbon Foundation a couple of years ago, cancer is such an issue, but who else, Medcins sans Frontiers? Who do YOU recommend? If you know of someone or something that would appreciate a donation (it won't be massive, but still worthwhile!) then please put your recommendations forward. We'll put the names into a hat and pick one out just before we go to TORM on the 15th March!

I love my New Skein Winder

Hello everyone, Happy New Year! Yes I know I'm slow but I'm getting there! I would really like to get back into blogging, so I'll try and get back here much more often from now on!

I have a large swift/yarn winder  for knitting yarns, which is electrified thank goodness, but have always wound my embroidery silks and wools by hand on a niddy noddy. Age catching up on me, I am finding that my shoulder can't cope with winding as well as it used to and I've been chuntering for a while that it would be good to have an attachment to a spinning wheel. Louet used to do one I am sure for their wheels and some antique wheels actually come with them, but when I started searching for one I drew a blank! There is also the problem of the size of skein - they had to remain the size they are now when using my niddy noddy, the display stand is already designed for them!

So John has taken my Louet S15 wheel and created a skein winder attachment that is the size I need for my embroidery threads. It slots into place instead of the flyer, the drive band is the same and to help me there is a yarn counter arm that feeds from the swift holding the hank into the skein winder.

Simples!! 

It is designed to fit my wheel, and would probably fit several other Louet wheels because they are so similar.

If I decide I want to do some spinning I simply remove the winder and put the flyer back in place. The counter part is totally separate, in fact it doesn't necessarily need to be there at all!

All I have to do now is sit down comfortably and gently treadle (even whilst watching TV!) to produce far more saleable skeins than I ever could before!

He's so pleased with his design he'll make them as an attachment kit if anyone is interested.

Thank you John!