This time last week I was in Suffolk taking part in the first ever Britspin Marathon. I’m not sure if I’ve really recovered yet. But I thought you’d like to share a little of my madness. Britspin was organised by a group of enthusiasts who wanted to have some fun and raise money for the air ambulance service. I got involved when Martina from NB Burnt Oak asked if I could be in her team, and coming from Bedfordshire we would be known, along with 8 others as “team spinning in Beds.” We had both hoped to travel to Beds to spin together but as circumstances worked against us social media came to our rescue and we all kept in touch throughout the 4 day event. As the event kicked off at midnight we thought we’d go to bed well prepared.Martina took her wheel to bed and I out teddy in charge of my drop spindle And I woke up at 6 to get a few metres spun on my drop spindle, (no wonder Eric chose to stay on board Firecrest) But I’d got a box full of fluff and my wheel and more spindles were ready and waiting for me once daylight arrived. To keep us busy during the 4 days we were challenged to make our own drop spindle able to spin a minimum of 5 m I dutifully improvised a rose from the garden and one of Heather’s hand made glass beads I was quite impressed with the result, so were the judges, I got a joint third place badge for my efforts. I was a lot more productive using my wheel and proper drop spindles though and over the 4 days I managed to spin approx 800m of finished yarn. As each skein is made up of 2 yarns plied together that actually means I spun about 2363m in total, that’s about a mile and a half. My personal challenge was to pass the mile mark so I’m happy. I might have managed a bit more but Tim and Veve decided to visit, so it was a full house. They had visited a pumpkin patch and brought me a tiny pumpkin (or more officially a gourd) which was just crying out to feel the fibre fun,and I managed another 5m. I reckon I’d be ok if I got stranded on a desert island.
It took a few days for all the results to come through, but our team captain’s did a fantastic job collating all the totals. And here are the results….Everyone had fun, over £3000 was raised for the air ambulance service, with more still coming in, team spinning in Beds came 7th out of 24 teams, our team spun 22141m, and 506220m were spun in total. There were lots of crazy things done in the name of creativity that weekend and we’re all counting down to next year’s marathon I was a little bereft on Monday morning so I got the crochet hook out and made a pumpkin to add to the collection Tim and Veve gave us.