Spinzilla 2016, Team Handspinning News UK

This was the second year the Handspinning News team, captained by the very fine Pirate Peahen, participated in Spinzilla and our theme was 'Pirates'... Above is our team photo, and it was carefully and most expertly made by the wonderful ships artist, WoollyElly :)

What an amazing week. We had all learned so much from last year, so I think we were all a little better prepared for the task we had ahead of us. Bettering our total yardage from last year was never going to be easy, but we had a lot of help, thanks to our very kind fibre sponsors. 

(Pictured above: My goal for the week, 400g of combed tops. Top left, overdyed fawn shetland, top right, Ile de France dyed by myself, bottom white shetland.. and blended tops in the middle)

John Arbon carded us a very special top (pictured below)... it was a blend of 55% coloured Merino, 33% Perendale and 12% Zwartbles called 'Spin Fresh' ... and it was the most lovely blend to work with, it drafted fine and was a fast spin. The Perendale took the twist, almost like silk would, and it pulled all the other shorter stapled fibres in for a big magical cuddle. He knows his wool does our John!!

Adam Curtis & The Real Shetland Company was our other fibre sponsor, and we were given a really lovely selection of Shetland tops. I hand-dyed my white and fawn donations (top and bottom right below) as my aim for the week was to produce enough yarn to be able to weave a garments worth of yarn...

I remember getting into a midweek *slump* last year, because I was spinning undyed fibres... so that was definitely NOT going to happen to me this year :) Every single fibre almost jumped onto the wheel, and never once did I get bored of looking at a solid colour for hours on end...
We also had a couple of team events over the week too, which was something we didn't do last year. We had virtual 'Spin-ins' over a web conferencing application called Zoom and had a lot of fun, with much laughter and then more laughter on top of that. They really helped with offering support to members living far away, and just generally connecting with each other as spinners and more importantly, friends... 
There was a local meet up at the City farm in Nottingham on the Saturday too, for those of us in the Midlands area. We created quite a bit of interest with the public, I mean the whole purpose of Spinzilla is to increase knowledge and awareness of handspinning... so we helped to tick that box :P 
We had some members join us from another UK team, Team HilltopCloud too... 
I reached my goal on the Sunday evening, with maybe a couple of hours to spare. 

A grand total of 404g and 2807 Spinzilla Yards/1.59 miles spun during the week.

The results for this year came through yesterday, and we came 4th in the world!! And the UK, across 3 teams, achieved a total of 325,569 Spinzilla yards... a truly huge amount of spinning, dedication and love for the craft.

I'd like to extend a maHOOssive thankyou to everyone who was involved in keeping us spinning. Loved ones, social media supporters, sponsors and my fellow team members... you all ROCK and I cannot wait to do it all again next year :)