Happy April Spools Day! I’m joining Meg’s challenge to show your spools. These are a collection of Saori plastic bobbins which are all wound with colours and dreams from a collection of weavers. I leave these so anyone can pick and choose what they want in addition to their own ideas. Sometimes I weave them all up into a new cloth. They are lovely and they follow me everywhere – When I do workshops or demos away from home I take a gazillion (is that a number!) of them to kick start the day.

The other photo is how I saw them in Saori-no-Mori in Osaka Japan. They are really left overs but reusable in every way. Some people wind lots of bobbins before they set off to weave and others wind as they go. Some have full bobbins left over, others plan down to the empties.

You’ll notice that some have stranding on them, i.e. multiple stands of yarn wound as one, and others are just straight wind ons of a yarn. Some are ‘fat’ with big plans and others have been used in cloth but cut off before it has emptied suggesting some sort of judgement about just enough of that colour used in the cloth.

They all have their own personality and style and are great to photograph. Get winding for 2013 and beyond.