Hello lovely people.
Today’s blog post is about a trip myself, hubby (Dr. J.) and Jessy the dog, have recently come back from. We were lucky enough to be able to take a little mini 2 day break down to Somerset and Devon in the middle of September mainly cause the Dr. had spotted a fab new guitar on Gumtree (a sales website here in the UK ) and wanted to go and take a look at it. Well I was not going to complain about this as I had just learnt of a new shop called Spinney Winnie that had opened at the Jinny Ring Craft Centre, Bromsgrove, (sorry to those not in the UK), that was very much about spinning fiber and wool and happened to be on the way. If you follow me on Instagram you will have seen that I am trying to learn how to use a drop spindle. I want to spin wool that is very fine to make dolls clothes more to scale and not all bulky (lots of practice is needed).
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The lovely Spinney Winnie was a delight. The winnies are a husband and wife team, Alex and Ray, with a delightful website www.spinneywinnies.co.uk and they do lessons too. I treated myself to a Turkish spindle and Alex even gave me a quick lesson there and then with top-tips like how to begin without a started thread. They didn’t have all the fibres and wool they will be stocking on display as they had only been open a week, but still I was impressed and found it hard to choose which to buy and in the end went with two different types of fibres so I had more to practice on. I would definitely recommend them and will most certainly visit again.
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Then we had the guitar to look at and it was most impressive, so hubby bought it. We went on to have a lovely couple of days at the beach and cycling along the Tarka Trail. Jessy runs between us on this fabulous trail that is an old railway track and has now been converted into a public cycle/walk path with no cars to worry about. We did about 18 miles and Jessy still wanted to play ball when we had ice cream on the beach. There is no tiring our dog. Being land locked in the middle of the country, all be it a fairly small compact country, we all do love to get to water as often as possible. The first night we spent in Appledore, Bideford in the harbour carpark (all paid for and above board), but we were right on the edge and could hear the waves all night long.
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As as additional treat on the way back to Birmingham, I found another wool shop in a place called Cleeve which is near Bristol. It is called Alterknit Universe which is such a fabulous name that I just had to visit. The shop was warm and cosy, with big arm chairs in the middle for sitting around knitting or crocheting in. and the wool around the walls on so many shelves was a delight to see. I met the mother of the owner on the day we visited, and she was lovely and let me take lots of pictures with a doll.
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(sorry Alex, I forgot to take pictures inside your lovely shop, but it is an excuse to come back). I now have lots of lovely fluffy stuff surrounding me to practice with and have already got some drying as we speak that I hope will make up a part of the clothing for my next Makers Medley Challenge doll (creatures of the night), can’t wait to show you how it turns out.
Also, if anyone is interested in seeing me spin, or wants to know more about the subject, let me know and I can do more in-depth blog posts.