Monthly Archives: August 2014

New wools and colour ranges

This summer we have been developing new types and colours of wool and silk.

We have:

  • Double knit knitting wool in the full range of colours. This is thinner and more tightly spun than our other double knit.
  • Swaledale breed wool. Ideal for those who want a more hard-wearing or prehistoric type wool. Goes well with our existing herdwick breed wool, but unlike the grey herdwick, the swaledale is white so dyes bright colours.
  • Spun silk in 2 weights. This is shiny and more ‘silky’ than the wild silk.
  • New colour range – We have been develping “Earth” colours – Softer and warmer than the standard bright colours.

The Vikings are coming to Wallingford Museum!

A lovely one-day local event for us, with plenty of crafty activities for families, including Martin Way, a brilliant re-enactor. Everyone we met, visitors, staff and volunteers alike were very interested in our demonstrations and extremely helpful.

http://www.wallingfordmuseum.org.uk

Martin Way blows a traditional Viking horn in our stall. Photo courtesy of the Oxford Mail.

Silchester Excavation Open Days

It was an honour to be invited to the last Silchester excavation open days. This Roman and Prehistoric excavation is a fantastic place for us to show some of the textile production techniques available to those people. We brought back the warp-weighted loom which we built for this event last year, and the students were very appreciative of an example of how the archaeology they were finding would have been used. We also modelled our new loom weights on finds from Silchester and Salisbury Museum.

Also many thanks to Kevin Standage Photograhy for giving us use of photos from his Silchester series.

www.reading.ac.uk/silchester/visit-the-roman-town/sil-visit-silchester-roman-town