Made in Wirral

Today started off hectically as Emily decided that Doggy wanted to get in the bath with me. If only she could have done this on a lovely hot sunny day so that I could guarantee that Doggy would be dry for bed-time. Emily will not sleep without him. So he was hurriedly shoved in the wash, put on another spin cycle (no tumble dryer!) and pegged on the line while Emily wasn't looking. There were tantrums for nap time but at least she did sleep eventually and Doggy was dry for bed-time!

Well I did get to the exhibition today and it was well worth it. The craftmanship on display was wonderful and there was a wide range of crafts on display. But I must admit the one that appealed to me most was spinning! There were a wide range of different yarns on display in both the raw forms and spun: silk, cotton, wool from various breeds, alpaca and dog. Yes, Dog which is the yellow item in the picture. I forget what breed it was but the yarn was so silky and soft and looked lovely knitted up - if I'd have had to guess what it was I would never have said Dog. The Alpaca was local as well, some had been sheared(?) and spun, the other example was from sweepings from the floor and showed different colourings to the other (more muted browns rather than the rich chocolate of the other. There was wool from Wenslydales (I can see the attraction - nice and silky), Blue-Faced Leicesters and Jacob sheep with gave a nice variegated effect. Anyway I decided to pick the brain of the lady minding the display, whose name just happened to be the same as my middle name. Prime topic for questions? Spindles. Forgot all about top and bottom spindles and just asked how easy they were to use, what was the best yarn to start learning with and what was the best spindle to start with. She thought they were quite easy to use but said that some people found them hard. Wool was her starting yarn of choice and as for spindles, well she dug out a home made spindle out of the pot as seen in picture 3 and said that this was cheap enough to start with as some could be expensive, she said holding out a very pretty £40 spindle as an example (none for sale just display). Well I know my budget - CD's and dowel is more for me at least I knew where I'd seen the instructions for them! Oh, and of course she had also been to WoolFest and thought it waswonderfull and 'had everything you could think of to do with wool. You must go!' I guess people like WoolFest then!