Don't Panic but...

I'm posting again!! That's twice in one month! It is amid a post-WoolFest excitement that I'm posting but never mind! We had some fantastic weather all weekend and the Thursday night on the campsite there were some lovely clouds and the sunset was truly lovely and kept us all entertained for ages - at one stage it seemed streaked with almost fluorescent pink. And there were shapes in the clouds for us to try and identify too - top left below I sure is a footballer leaping to head the ball!

We started off well with a large group gathering without organisation on an empty pitch next to Mums camper van and this photo shows the evening off well! It was lovely to meet up again with so many familiar faces especially Kath, Becky and Carrie Anne who I'd not seen for 2 years - we will definitely have to do better next time and meet up sooner! The last ones finally called it a night around 11pm - wonder who they were? ;)

And of course we were all excited and woke up early the next day ready to hit the show!

Clockwise from top left: Tony learns Long Draw spinning,

Skye in the van, sheep shearing, the Happy Weaver,

Nadine learns hand-carding, spinning on a Great Wheel, Nadine spins on a Lendrum.

As always there were a load of animals to see and I finally managed to see the sheep shearing which was worth the wait. The lady doing it had a pen full of Rough Fell sheep (the ones with the speckled faces and horns in the feeding trough pictured below) four of which were Hogs (one year olds) and the fifth a large ram with huge spiraling horns who unsurprisingly she left until last! She really did seem to wrestle with the sheep and managed to give a full commentary with all of them other than the ram - definitely a tough job to do. There was also a lady from Denmark doing a workshop on 'Knitting directly from Spelsau fleece' who was fascinating. Pity we couldn't get on her course but we did end up leaving with a bag of raw Spelsau fleece ready to be knitted up at the next Knitting evening - I can't imagine the reaction with myself, Chris and Nadine all sat knitting from bags of fleece but it'll be fun!

Top row, left to right: Angora Rabbits, Rough Fell sheep, Katmoget

Shetland sheep, Herdwick sheep;

Centre Row, left to right: Manx Loughton sheep, Gotland sheep, Hebridean sheep;

Bottom Row, left to right: Angora Rabbit, sheared Alpacas, more Gotland sheep.

The stalls as always were a riot of colour with plenty to inspire and temp you with as always. 'Oliver Twists' were there and after seeing them at WonderWool I knew exactly what I wanted and got it - a sumptuous dyed silk brick in toasty burnt reds on oranges, yummy! I was pretty restrained with my spending coming home with only 1 fleece, some more dyes, a shetland batt, some dyed merino for some felting projects and the softest grey Alpaca/BFL lace weight from 'UK Alpaca's bargain bin - at 70p and 80p per hank I couldn't say no! The only downside to the day was the heat (I was stupidly pig-headed and insisted on wearing my hand spun Green Gable - it was not the day to wear wool!) and the crowds. The aisles do seem narrower than at WonderWool which seems to make the difference in being able to get around the show with ease but at least I wasn't hampered with tonnes of shopping - see being frugal has it's good points!

Clockwise from top left : Wensledale lock Wedding dress,

WoolFest anniversary cake, Freyalyns handspun exhibit,

Shetland 'chocolates' and 'cake', weaving, FeltStudioUK, handknit waistcoat, Oliver Twists,

WoolFest 'shed', handspun yarns.

Nadine and Chris were there from the New Brighton Knitters and I ended up going back to the show on the Saturday with Nadine before picking Chris up from her course. Its was fun going round the show with a 'novice' spinner (she is improving daily!) and seeing her face light up with it all and pointing out all the bargains and stopping her unintentionally shop lifting in Winghams although it was pointed out that most people would try to steal cashmere rather than light grey herdwick!

But for me the bits of the weekend which were most fun were spent sat at the camp site knitting and spinning with like minded people and making new crafty friends even if it did involve late nights!

All in all a really fun weekend which I'd happily do all over again as long as the temperature was turned down a bit! There has been more knitting completed and started but I'll not go into details with those now, after all that could be the basis on my next post!

Wonderful Wonder Wool!

Well I've not been terribly successful at keeping up with my blog lately - too many other bits to be getting on with I suppose!What better way to get back in the flow of things by giving a review of the wonderful weekend that's just finished namely Wonder Wool Wales down in Builth Wells. And it really was great fun - so much to see, so much to buy and so many people to catch up with and meet! As always we didn't mange to meet everyone, some like 'Remote Knitter' we've been trying to meet with for years now and still failing miserably - must try harder I think!!

It was a real riot of colour which always gets me excited and inspired - 'Oliver Twists' stand was like shopping in a rainbow and was just so stunning it made you want to buy it all! The fantastic Prudence Mapstone was there again and as well as being so lovely her work makes me want to grab a crochet hook and yarn right away and start freeforming something!

I could go on all day telling you about all the lovely things there were on show and the stands too - highlights included 'Artists Palette's stall which was a wonderful show of colour with her fibres and yarns (including some stunning silk yarn which I'd have loved to rehome!) and also

 Spindlefrog's stand which as well as being a blaze of colour had the lovely Helix who I was so pleased to catch up with as she's so nice!

There were so many people I bumped into, some old friends, some new and I'll try my best to remember names! First off was No1AliCat, followed by Wye Sue, AmberMoggie (and Mr Mog of course!!), Laal Bear,the lovely Freyalyn and Sarah (YarnSpider), bloggless lurker Katie (who was surrounded at one point by three of her bloggers she was looking for without realising it!), CraftyMandy, the aforementioned Helix, Toffees Mum, Bluefaced Andy and Fybrespates Jenny as well as members of my spinning guild and Mum's spinning guild. I could go on and I'm afraid my brain is failing me - I knew I should have written down who I'd met! Sorry if I haven't mentioned anyones name it really is down to my shoddy memory!

There were some livestock on show as well which is always lovely to see but not as much as in WoolFest, mind you more sheep will have been shorn by then and I'm sure that would make the animals more comfortable in the show - the Wenselydale and Teeswater all looked rather warm! Compared with last years purchases I have come home with less but this year it's quality rather than quantity - plus they were more expensive buys! Main buy was a fantastic new Majacraft Suzi Pro which I am loving every second of and in no way regretting buying! And of course to go with it I needed a new (competition!) lazy kate and 2 more bobbins. That blew most of my budget so the rest didn't last long after buying a Corriedale/Ryland cross fleece from Olwen Veevers called 'Polka' (lovely knowing the name of the sheep your fleece came from!), some alpaca rovings from UK Alpaca (chocolate, coffee and white!) and some dyed kid mohair from Freyalyn. Feels like there should be more with the amount I spent but there you go! No pictures of my goodies - I'll sort that out later!

As with last year I'd run out of money by the time I got to the MidWales Mouthful section which is a real shame as there was some great looking food on show including some highly tempting Scotch eggs! And I had to take a picture of Dr Who's 'house' (as DD says) on top of the BBC Cymru building to amuse DD.

All in all it's a long weekend with all the driving but the atmosphere, colour and most importantly the people more than make up for being stuck in traffic getting there! Plus I'm going to have to keep an eye open for when Google Street Map updates as I was caught on the road between Newtown and Llandridnod Wells - permanent proof of my drive to Wonder Wool Wales! Maybe I'll have to get a screen shot of it (even if I do know what my car looks like!)

I'll be back (hopefully with less of a gap than before) with an update of all my knitting, spinning, etc as soon as I can stop playing with my new wheel!!

Update - some of you may ahve seen someone elses pictures instead of my Wonderwool ones - not sure what happened there but I've now replaced them with ones that shouldn't dissapear!

November already?!

I guess you could say I've been a bit lethargic of late when it comes to knitting, blogging, etc and I really hadn't realised quite how long it's been since I blogged last. Recently I've not been doing much knitting at all anyway and have been reading instead some of my favorite books from childhood, namely Susan Cooper's 'Dark is Rising' series which I found again in the attic last month. There have been glimmers of creativeness here and there but I think the whole 'must knit these for Christmas' deal is putting me off it all and so I'm pulling the breaks on and have decided that I will knit things for people and they'll get them when ever but more likely after the festivities!! I also forgot that MIL already has her present of lace weight merino and a pattern so there's one less thing on the list already!!

Autumn finally seems to have arrived here and has lead to my current obsession with photographing mushrooms and fungi.




And my Aunt finally introduced me to her charges - 15 adorable Ryland sheep on the Formby Dune Heath which she 'watches' one day each week (counts them and feeds them and checks they're OK). They're on holiday from the Liverpool City Farm which has lost some of it's funding and so is unsure if these sweeties will be coming home again or not. They are such friendly little things and, with no rudeness involved, just look at those furry little bottoms - like mini Alpacas!

They did actually come up to you and were strokeable. Emily really enjoyed this but I told her she had to be quite with them and say 'Good Morning Mr Sheep' which she obediently did - can't get her to tidy up but say hello to a sheep? Of course!! Definitely a spinner/knitter in the growing!

Back to the glimmers of creativeness - I've found a 'local' Spinning guild. I say 'local' as it's about an hour away near Abergelle in a fantastic spot and in my first meeting we did rush weaving which was great fun - can you tell what it is yet?

It's a mat of course!! A bit holey and bumpy but I love it and I'd love to do more again. The lady who taught us was Mandy Coates and she had some wonderful creations on show with her made from both rush and willow and apparently goes to a lot of shows in North Wales wearing her woven hats so do look out for her! I've been back to the guild since for a spinning afternoon and the next meeting for me will be a show and tell - eek!! Will have to prepare myself for that one!


Talking of SWD guilds you may remember Mum has done some weavings with her guilds, the name of the lady escapes me now but I'm sure Mum has note of it somewhere on her blog. Anyway I had a little go at one as well way back when she did her first one but hadn't got round to finishing it off for ages. Now I can finally present it to you all:


Maybe there should be a prize for the person who can guess what it's meant to be. DH had trouble even seeing it in the flesh but then he does sometimes have trouble seeing things right in front of him - bless him! He was also the cause of a woolie mishap when my Twillies Freedom Spirit tank ended up in the wash. Poor DH hid it thinking I'd go mad with him (a bit annoyed granted but I've not killed him for it!) and when confronted with the felted mass he said 'Can't you frog it?' which impressed me with his knowledge of knitting terms - can't go mad when he's learnt that much, there is hope he may learn more!!

My knitting course progresses all 8 weeks of it including homework one of which is this bag in Sirdar Bigga which was an insanely quick knit but needs lining at some point before I call in properly finished.

Right, I'm weary now - coming down with a cold and having a tiresome few days (and nights) with a poorly DD who not only is full of cold and coughs but has nasty big back teeth coming through as well so lots of sleepless nights and whingey days poor love. Will try and get my knitting mojo back but the old knitting/tennis elbow is still bothersome at times so it may be dribs and drabs. Oh, that reminds me - I've a new link in the side bar for 'Knitting without Obligation' which I found from a comment on ArtyFartyKat's site which seems a really sensible approach to blogging which fits my mood lately and I've decided to try not to make this blog seem a chore and blog when I feel up for it. I will try and catch up with you all as soon as possible but it seems to be the hibernating season for quite a few blogs lately - maybe it's the time of year! Catch you all soon!!