A Grand Day Out

I had a lovely day out yesterday at the Advent Gathering, hosted by the Staffordshire Moorlands Guild of Spinners and Weavers.

I went with my spinning group (we hired a minibus so we could all go together) and we had a great time. There were lots of lovely spinners, many wearing fantastic hand-knitted, hand-spun garments and accessories - very inspiring.

There was food too, a great spread, because you know all that talking and spinning makes you hungry.

And there was shopping - The Threshing Barn were there with lots of beautiful fibres and some very interesting books, and the chap who's name I can never remember who does the woodturning and makes beautiful spindles and bobbins and stuff. I was very good and I didn't buy anything. There wasn't anything that I thought I really couldn't live without.

I did buy some raffle tickets though (and I won a prize - a large bar of Carbury's Fruit and Nut chocolate) and i bought a Fleece Log, which is for recording the different fleeces you process as you go, noting how you washed them, spun them etc. I am more than likely never going to use it - I never ever use raw fleece if I can avoid it - give me nice clean, preferrably prettily coloured roving any day - but it was for a good cause as the proceeds were going towards a Sudden Infant Death Syndrome charity.

All in all it was a very good day. Just what I needed to set me up for the mayhem that will be the next couple of weeks in the run up to Christmas. Blog posting may be infrequent during this time.

Finally I really can't let another week go by without saying how sad I am that Borders have gone into administration. It doesn't look as though there will be any buyers for the business, though a few shops may be taken over by Waterstones/HMV. Borders had a unique place in the book market, with a greater stock of American titles than most in this country, and a great selection of magazines. Borders in Oxford has long been one of my favourite bookshops in the UK and I will be particularly sorry to see it close. I hope that the booksellers all manage to find other jobs, but with the economy in the state it's in at the moment it will be tough. You have my sympathy.