Creative Fibre Festival

I have been to Rotorua to attend the Creative Fibre Fesstival, which is an annual event hosted in different places in New Zealand each year.  This year the festival was Hosted by the Bay of Plenty area and held in Rotorua.

It was well attended and the Exhibition was of a very good standard and very well hung.  The Fashion show was rather small - not many entries this year, although it was presented well.

I attended two classes which were both very inspiring, despite coming away with only a tiny sample of work from each.

The first one was in lace knitting taught by Cynthia Read.   It was the first time I have successfully read a knitting chart for lace knitting and also the first time I have made Nupps. These are little bobbles that are often present in lace knitting as, I imagine, they create a solid contrast to the holey lace.

 I also went to Leigh Morris' Kumihimo zigzag braid class.  I came out burning to make lots of zigzag braids for jewellery and as embellishment for handwoven clothing.  It was a great class and Leigh is a very generous tutor.

 Below are a close up and a longer shot of the tiny zigzag I made.  But I did manage to use supplementary threads and attach beads, messy as it is, a  lot of learning went on.