Here’s a little story about spinning dog hair or ‘chiengora’ as it is also known.
Once upon a time, in a small mountain village, there lived a woman named Lian. She was known for her remarkable skill in spinning and weaving, creating the warmest and softest garments anyone had ever worn. But her secret wasn’t wool from sheep or fur from rabbits—it was something far more unusual.
I have been involved in helping to facilitate a few workshops over the last week or so, funded and delivered by the Department for the Economy, and Ards & North Down Council.
The aim is to help develop and enhance numeracy skills within the adult population using events and workshops such as knitting and crochet, rather than formal numeracy training.
This week’s project at Ards Arts Centre was to crochet or knit ‘worry worms’. These little wiggly worms are packed into a pretty bag, along with an uplifting message, and the idea is to leave them in various places within the community – park benches, gateways etc where they can be picked up by members of the public.
We made St Valentine’s Day decorations at Ards Arts Centre on Tuesday evening. We wrapped wool around pre-cut wooden hearts, sewed hearts from fleece remnants and went daft with beads and ribbons.
This evening’s workshop at Ards Arts Centre was so much fun. We made St Brigit dolls from wool.
Ards and North Down Council have again asked me to be part of their 10 week Spring Arts and Crafts programme, and I will be taking participants through a yarn based project each evening.
I had a lovely session showing a group how to make rag rugs on peg looms this evening at Ards and North Down Borough Council craft class. This was a lovely session.
Last week we made corn dollies and then we had a go at nalbinding last night. The latter was a bit more challenging.
Nevertheless everyone had a good try at it.
We made the cutest sock pumpkins at Ards and North Down Borough Council last night.
There were some great ideas and we had a lot of fun coming up with them.
This evening we made Dorset buttons at Ards and North Down Borough Council.
Some of these turned out to be quite big Dorset buttons! Most had a Halloween theme too.
