April 12 Guild Meeting - Sustainability

 

Date: Saturday, April 12, 2025
Time: 10:00 a.m.
Location: Hoover Church of Christ, 3248 Lorna Road, Hoover also available via Zoom
Our program this month is: Sustainability

Ever wonder what to do with all those bits of leftover yarn and fabric? Jeans that are just worn out? Old tshirts that don’t fit anymore? The ever growing drawer of plastic bags?
Join us for a day of sustainability with Daly McCay and Rosalynn Fairless.

Daly McCay is a lifelong crafter and runs Craft Rescue Collective, a creative reuse business. Her focus is on making crafting more affordable, accessible, and eco-friendly through second hand craft supplies and creative reuse workshops.

A native of Huntsville, Alabama, Rosalynn Fairless holds a lifelong avocations for fabric and fiber arts as well as for recycling and environmental sustainability. With a primary passion for lace, she knits, crochets, quilts, sews, and occasionally tats and embroiders. She is currently a Materials Engineering student at UAB. Her primary interests lie in possible recycling solutions for polyester textile waste, the applications of weaving techniques in composite materials, and the mathematical translation and applications of knitting stitch structures to engineered materians as expored in work by Dr. Matsumoto at Georgia Tech and by Drs. Niu, Kamien, and Dion at the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University, respectively. She has been a member of the Greater Birmingham Fiber Guild for approximately 12 years and presently serves on the board as the primary Ravelry administrator. When she’s not studying or playing with textiles, she enjoys art song and choral music, medieval history, reading, writing fiction, and Bharatanatyam (South Indian classical dance). She lives in Hoover, Alabama with her husband of 15 years, her 8-year-old unicorn-loving daughter, and a tiny dragon who resides in her grandmother’s train case.

Farm Day at the Birmingham Zoo

Farm day at the Birmingham Zoo is Saturday April 19, 2025 from 10am-2pm at the Farm petting zoo area.

We participate yearly in this event to show how fiber arts impact our lives on a daily basis. If you participate admission to the zoo is free. You should have received an email from Jennifer Lackey; please complete the requested information if you plan to come. Also, bring your fiber craft, whether it is knitting, crochet, tatting, spinning, weaving, hand sewing, etc and join us for a day of fiber exploration and public education.

May Family Picnic

This year’s family picnic will be at Blackberry Alpaca Farm near Anniston, AL
We’ve rented the pavilion and will get a tour of the working alpaca farm. This year will be a potluck of sorts so start thinking about what side, salad or dessert you’d like to share with everyone.

Carpooling from Hoover Church of Christ will be an option so keep an eye out for your RSVP email link in the near future!

March Guild Meeting, Saturday, March 8

Date: Saturday, March 8, 2025
Time: 10:00 a.m.
Location:  Hoover Church of Christ, 3248 Lorna Road, Hoover

Our program this month is:  Panel Discussion: Spinning

This month’s gathering will be all about spinning! Join us as some of our talented members share their knowledge, experiences and antidotes about spinning fiber in to yarn. The panel consists of:

Yvonne Gauntt will be speaking about Turkish Spindles. Yvonne has been spinning since 2005, when she re-spun the yarn in a chunky, lightly spun tourist shawl, full of vegetable matter and lanolin to knit a prayer shawl for her mother. She used a cheap, heavy drop spindle to do it, and was pleased with her accomplishment, but liked the idea of spinning more than the actual practice. In September of 2016, she went to Homewood Library to see a movie with her husband for their anniversary. She never made it to the movie. It was Spin in Public day, and she spent her time spinning with one of Kathryn Pitt’s Jenkins spindles. The rest is history. Yvonne now has a whole herd of Jenkins spindles, and although she uses other spindles sometimes, Jenkins Turkish spindles continue to be her favorites.

Mary Spanos will be speaking about Supported Spindles and Small Distaffs. Mary learned to spin 40 years ago and a few years later she left a normal career to live full time down the handspinning rabbit hole. She loves single treadle spinning wheels and low whorl spindles.

Clare Emily Clifford will be speaking about how to prepare a Braid for Spinning. Clare first learned to spin 25 years ago and has since fallen deep into the fiber rabbit hole. She appreciates how spinning thread & yarn connects us to people of all cultures on every continent throughout human history through the techniques, tools, and fibers we work with. Sometimes you’ll find Clare working with the technical aspects of spinning, but she always loves the meditative simplicity of adding twist to fiber, whether she’s doing so on a spindle or spinning wheel.

Karen Ford will be speaking about Drop Spindles. Karen has been spinning since the early nineties after a sheep to shawl Mary Spanos did at a local yarn shop. She loves her Ashford traditional, any and all well balanced high whorl spindles and spinning with supported spindles. Her favorite fiber is colorful and her current favorite combination is Polworth and Silk. She spins for pleasure and usually has no end project in mind. She loves it because it connects her to past generations….and it’s fun!!

Also, if you felted a bowl last month, please bring it in for show-and-tell!

February Guild Meeting, 2-8-2025, Wet Felting

Date: Saturday, February 8, 2025

Time: 10:00 am

Location:  Hoover Church of Christ, 3248 Lorna Road, Hoover

Our program this month is:  Hands On Wet Felting

Ever felt like you needed some good clean fun? 

Join us Saturday for hands-on introduction to wet felting. The guild will provide 1 oz of raw fiber that we will mold and sculpt into a beautiful vessel.

Please bring: 2 towels, extra fiber bits for embellishments and creativity! Feel free to BYOFF (bring your own feltable fiber) such as locks, angelina, 100% merino yarn to use as said embellishments.

RSVP needed-email gbfiberguild@gmail.com 

Guild members can participate via Zoom. So,, if you would like to participate from afar, please RSVP to above email and let us know you are interested. You will be sent a supply list which will allow you to wet felt from home via Zoom. 

Also, don’t forget to bring in your New Year’s Resolutions since last month was virtual. If you have program or workshop ideas now is the time to shine! Please share your ideas as we begin preparations for our 2025 Programs. There will be a raffle for submissions so all ideas are welcome.

Membership Dues and Renewal

The Guild’s membership year runs January through December. Annual dues are $25 per individual, and $30 per family. Dues are due by February 28th.  If you want to keep getting meeting announcements and Zoom room information, don’t forget to renew on-time. Use the Membership tab above for info on renewing your membership. 

The January meeting will be only on Zoom!

Due to the crazy weather, the January guild meeting will be on Zoom only.

There will not be a meeting at the Hoover Church of Christ. Stay home!

Due to the questionable weather conditions we are not going to have an in-person meeting tomorrow. We will instead meet by Zoom from 10am to 12 noon. Get yourself a hot beverage and a cookie and meet us to share your Fiber Resolutions for 2025.

Zoom information was included in the meeting notice you received earlier. We are sorry that we can't post Zoom connection information online as nefarious people like to interrupt Zoom meetings with their opportunities to buy time shares.

Winter Weather and the Meeting

Saturday's meeting may be converted to Zoom due to inclement weather. If that happens members will receive an email notice with Zoom instructions. If you aren't a member of the guild and would like to join, check the Membership tab on this site.

January Guild Meeting, Saturday, January 11

Percy wants to see what you've been working on!

Date: Saturday, January 11, 2025

Time: 10:00 to Noon-ish

Location:  Hoover Church of Christ, 3248 Lorna Road, Hoover

 

Our program this month is:  New Year’s Resolutions

Join us this Saturday for our annual New Year’s Resolutions! We will discuss what we accomplished in the past 12 months as well as focus on goals for the upcoming year. Please bring your work to show off for Show and Tell. Also, if you have program or workshop ideas now is the time to shine! Please share your ideas as we begin preparations for our 2025 Programs.

 

Membership Dues and Renewal

The Guild’s membership year runs January through December. Annual dues are $25 per individual, and $30 per family. Dues are due by February 28th.  If you want to keep getting meeting announcements and Zoom room information, don’t forget to renew on-time. See the Membership page on the guild blog for more information. 

 

Name-tags: If you don’t have a name-tag or would like to replace your current one, look for the bucket of name-tag supplies at each meeting. If you would like to add something special of your own to the tag, don’t forget to bring it to the meeting.

Knitting Study Group

The knitting study group meets this Wednesday, January 8, at 10:00 in the library at St. Peter’s Catholic Church on Paton Chapel in Hoover. Everyone is welcome!

Park in the front of St. Peter’s and come in either entrance, the main door on the right or the door to the left. From the main entrance, walk down the hall on the left, that same hall is to your right if you come in the left entrance. The library is in the middle of that hallway and it's labeled.

Keep an eye on this blog in case the weather is bad enough that the church closes on Wednesday.