Mary has been holding the yarn group regularly and it’s been going well – knitters and crocheters are coming together in harmony to drink tea and share techniques.
Now there have been a few sessions, we want to find out what times and days work best for everyone, and how often people want to come.
If you’re interested in the yarn group, please fill in this very quick survey! Thank you.
Facebook event: Click here
Suggested donation: £10 waged / £5 unwaged
Free light refreshments, Machspace membership not required. Limited spaces, so please email Penny to book: info@pennytristram.co.uk
All welcome to come along. Sessions will run approximately every third week thereafter.
Learn how to create a beautiful hexagon lap quilt or wall hanging. Tuition given on creating the patchwork top, quilting and finishing. Bring your in-progress project, materials to start one, or buy materials on the day. All levels welcome.
£10 for the session, free light refreshments, Machspace membership not required. Email chrisroserichards@hotmail.com for more information or to book.
Everyone welcome from beginners to improvers. Bring a project, or use the resources at Machspace. Help will be given, from basics to reading patterns, to shaping and stitch techniques such as intarsia and Aran textural knitting. Relaxed friendly space.
£10 for the session, free light refreshments, Machspace membership not required. Email chrisroserichards@hotmail.com for more information and to book.
Join Penny and Cassian at Machspace for our Hand Stitch Open Day!
Bring your own project or choose from:
Here’s a few of the cross-stitch kits we’ve bought to share, pay-what-you-feel:
Plus we have a whole selection of embroidery hoops to go with them, so you can join in even if you’re a complete beginner. We also now have one of those giant magnifying glasses with LEDs on it, which clamps onto the table, like so:
As it’s an open day, Machspace will be open to the public, and we invite you to read our open day rules before attending.
We look forward to seeing you there! 🙂
… maybe you like the idea of directing it, by becoming a director or a volunteer?
By nature, being a volunteer or director means you’re more involved and can shape Machspace in the longer term. You’d be able to share suggestions and be trusted to make decisions for Machspace autonomously.
Open days allow non-members to come and have a look at the space and see if they want to join, without having to visit as the guest of someone who’s already a member. Open days are two hours long, happen twice a month, and sometimes have a theme (like knitting or zines or board games).
If you like meeting new people and answering curious questions from members of the public who happened to be passing by, and you can be responsible for a small and easy-going space, while eating as many Tunnocks caramel wafer bars as you want, this is the job for you. You can be a long term open day leader and make bigger decisions with more responsibility, but if you want you can sign up to run just one open day – every hour of volunteering helps us a lot!
If you’re interested, please do send us an email or put a note into our inbox in the makerspace.
This is a role with more responsibility, but potentially less work. Whereas being a volunteer means being involved in the member-facing, day-to-day running of the space, being a director means running the company behind the scenes.
As a director you would have to attend an in-person meeting once every 2-4 months. They’re usually under 2 hours, and there’s usually votes on the legal and practical direction of Machspace. As directors we deal with accounts, legal responsibilities to Companies House, funding applications, meeting grant requirements… We maintain the foundations of Machspace, so that everyone else can benefit.
You could just come to meetings and vote in big decisions, or you could get more involved by helping with accounts, doing grant applications, or proposing policies. More directors means less work for each director, and it increases the resilience of Machspace as an organisation. If you want Machspace to last a long time, become a director!
Again, if that sounds interesting, please send us an email or put a note into our inbox in the makerspace.
Thanks to an exciting £12,500 grant from the National Lottery Awards for All (Wales) scheme, we are delighted to announce that our laser cutter has been ordered and it will be installed in early March!
The laser cutter itself was just a portion of this. The rest is going towards a lot of related and unrelated stuff, like a laptop to use with the laser cutter, installation of something to safely extract laser cutter fumes, an A3 printer-copier-scanner, and an enclosure for the 3D printer. (Though we’re thinking maybe we might wait and use the laser cutter to make an enclosure for the 3D printer actually…?)
We’ve planned a new layout for Machspace to accommodate everything, and we need people to help us move all the furniture around! Can you come and lend a hand?
It’s this Sunday, 11th February 2024, 11am – 4pm.
We now have 50 members – the number that we optimistically projected we’d have by the end of the SVFDF grant period in March 2025. We’re over a year ahead of schedule! It’s pretty amazing what this grant has made possible, not least the pay-what-you-feel membership model, and we’re so grateful for it. Just today we bought a bunch of supplies with it and stashed them at Machspace. 🧶🍫🥛
Image credits, L-R: Machspace, GM Zines (Wikimedia Commons), David Silver
The next open day has a dual theme, two crafts that go together like cheese and pickle.
A zine (pronounced “zeen”) is a homemade booklet, often copied by photocopier, with big counterculture vibes. Informative or arty or silly or serious, they’re versatile and limited only by your own imagination. At this open day we’ll teach you how to make a mini zine using just an A4 sheet of paper, no staples required, and then you can copy it using the Machspace inkjet printer-scanner.
Our badge maker was one of the first things we bought for Machspace, and we’re very proud of it! Put your art into the die with all the right layers, crunch the handle, and voila, now it’s a proper badge. From brain to badge in 3 minutes! Very satisfying. We can do 25mm and 45mm badges.
It’s a drop-in for members and non-members (ages 11+), so feel free to pop by anytime between noon and 2pm. If you’re into the theme you can bring your own art supplies and stickers and washi tapes. Machspace can provide printer paper and printer ink. And you’re very welcome to bring anything else to make instead, or just come to hang out and drink tea.
It’s free to attend, and food, drinks and materials are free – donations welcome but not required.
If you have any questions, feel free to email us: hello AT machspace DOT org
About 15-20 people came to yesterday’s knitting-themed open day including lots of new people, and several people asked if we’d hold another!
So, we are now in search of a new volunteer. Does this sound like you?
This volunteer would regularly host a knitting group in the Machspace workshop, perhaps weekly or fortnightly. Attendees of various skill levels would attend, and be able to help themselves to donated yarn, snacks and refreshments. The volunteer would be responsible for:
If you’re interested, please get in touch! Email us: hello@machspace.org
The kitchen has new teas and hot chocolate and LOTS of snacks, and a supply of small cartons of cow and oat milk. Also we’ve 3D-printed two towel holders (about 45 minutes each) for the kitchen:
Our t-shirt stencil bleaching went well:
And then we had our festive open day, complete with decorations, mince pies, and shortbread with Christmassy decorations, which was well-attended enough that I was too distracted to get photos of attendees:
And today, we finally got around to replacing the 15 missing and broken lightbulbs!