 Hello again. We have just returned from our trip to Grassington , in the beautiful upper reaches of the River Wharfe , where we spent a very interesting and thoroughly enjoyable afternoon in the company of the ladies from the Grassington Embroiderers' Guild . I was contacted by them last year & asked if I would present a demonstration of my needle felting for them, so I'd like to thank them so much for giving me this opportunity to experience something a little different from what I am used to, which is running my workshops . I had some time to think about what it was that I was going to say and demonstrate , bearing in mind that I could be speaking to some very accomplished crafters with a lifetime of experience , and this turned out to be the case . Some of the ladies , I was informed had experience in various types of felting also . We arrived at the Wharfedale Rugby Club , which is where the Embroiderers' Guild are based. This was in a beautiful location , and from the room on the upper floor where we were , there were splendid views of the surrounding fields and hills of the Dales . We arrived around 12.30pm to set up, and had approximately two hours of time to fill , so I had decided to go through the various stages of making one of my hares, with the help of ones which I'd previously prepared to various stages of completion in the Blue Peter ," here's one I made earlier " way . The drum carder was taken & Richard demonstrated how he set up the carder, and makes up a batt of wool for the doorstops . We had also taken various pieces of work to display, and a projector which was very useful, & kindly lent to us by My Father in Law , Eric, this could be connected to the laptop so Richard could be kept busy showing some photos to help with our presentation . We never actually got any photos of the event ourselves but the ladies have some on their site if you follow the link in the paragraph below . The time passed very quickly , as it does when you are enjoying yourself , and we learned a lot from the wealth of experience which the ladies present were more than happy to share with us. Some of the work they do themselves is outstanding and we only saw a glimpse of what they actually do . We were shown a photo of a piece of work which was particularly outstanding , and I believe won them a first prize . It depicted a Swaledale sheep and dry stone wall scene . The detail, right down to the lichens and moss on the stonework was fantastic , and it would have been nice to have seen the actual work it's self . So thank you very much once again to Grassington Embroiderers' Guild for their warm welcome , and a very enjoyable experience ! Hope to catch up with you again in the future . Afterwards we had decided to stay overnight down the road at Skipton . I recently learned that Skipton is actually ,and very aptly named "sheep town" in olde English. "Sceap tun" , sceap meaning sheep , and tun , meaning town/village . The theme continued as we found a lovely old pub in the town centre called " The Woolly Sheep Inn" located , where else , but on "Sheep Street " ! They also had a wonderful selection of Yorkshire beers at the BAAA ! I f you are ever in the Skipton area and need accommodation I would thoroughly recommend The Pinfold guest house . This is room only , but there are numerous cafes etc which do breakfasts in the immediate area as well as restaurants and pubs . The room was really clean and comfortable with lots of nice little added extras all at a reasonable price .  Comments are closed.
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