Not Glastonbury…..Woolfest!

So as the whole world seemed to be driving past our house to get to the worlds best music festival we were on our way in the opposite direction off to the worlds best festival for all things sheepy – yay! Here’s a blow by blow account of our adventure.

Thursday 23rd
Ok, so on Wednesday the road outside our house, which just happens to be the main road from Bristol to Glastonbury, was choca with traffic travelling south from about 6:30am to about 9:30am. So today, in an attempt to beat the traffic I was up early, washed, dressed, bacon & egg breakfast and car packed by 8:30am so that I could go and pick up Lesley before meeting up with Liz and Andrea and then off to Woolfest! There was no major Glasto traffic though – weird, but a good start.

I took my Traddy, some of the Dorset Poll that Liz gave me from Freecycle which has washed up really nicely and is quite soft and crimpy, a spindle and some washed Zwartbles, also from Freecycle plus the BFL that I dyed at Lesley's Mums (just in case!). These were my spinning supplies for the trip :-)

I got to Lesley's and picked her up about 9:15am then we went back to meet Liz and Andrea at Farrington Farm Shop where we had a nice coffee and slobbed about on the comfy sofas until they turned up. Then we had another coffee and off we set to Woolfest 2011!

Liz had her wheel and an impressive amount of fluff considering where we were going! while Andrea had decided not to bring her wheel as she had brought her knitting instead.

We stopped and filled up with diesel in Bristol and then set off up the motorway to Cumbria stopping at Stafford Services for a spot of picnic lunch and arriving at our lovely B&B at about 6pm……a nice leisurely trundle.

We dumped our stuff in our rooms and had a cuppa out on our terrace which had a lovely view of Derwent Water and the fells with Borrowdale right down the end of the valley. Then we headed off to Keswick for some dinner at the chip shop opposite the Moot Hall, very yummy. As it was still early we went down to the lake for a stroll by the water. The Blue Box Theatre is still there but it’s not a temporary structure anymore but a new smart modern building where the old one use to be and a big improvement! We used to go to the Blue Box when my sister and I were little. I remember seeing The Tinder Box there; the dog with eyes as big as dinner plates, scary stuff! and people covered in grey mud?! mm not sure. As Liz and Andrea had never been to the Lake District before we took them off to see the Bowder Stone; a very large boulder dumped by the retreating glacier after the last ice age, then through Seatoller; the wetest place in England according to Lesley (not sure about that); and on over Honister Pass, stopping off at the Slate Quarry and admiring the sheep, then on down to Buttermere and past Little Town and Newlands back to the B&B for a cuppa and some spinning. We went to bed quite late, well after 10pm which is late for me, so excited for tomorrow!!!.

This is the Bowder Stone; a Glacial Erratic.


Friday 24th
I was up early 'cos I was so excited! Here’s the view from our terrace. You can just see Derwent Water and Cat Bells is on the right and Maiden Moor behind.


I was up first and even well before Janice our B&B lady. We had a fab brecky with fresh free range eggs from Janice's hens and black pud and Cumberland sausages from a butchers in Keswick. Then it was of to Keswick so Lesley could raid her savings account and then off to Mitchel's to Woofest – yay!

There was so much to see and I was a bit overwhelmed to be honest, however I did have a good look at absolutely every stall. They were all lovely and colourful and full of wonderful stuff to do with wool and sheep! I particularly liked the three dimensional felt; little felted sheep reclining on felted grass and little felted hens – so cute. In the end I bought a Shetland shearling fleece in a light brown colour, some acid dyes and some natural dyes and mordent. I also caught up with my Mum and Dad and we checked out the Sheep Parade and the Phop Stand. Mum got herself a nice shawl pattern and I got one for mittens, Dad really liked the sheep. I then caught up with the gang and we went for a spot of lunch before heading back to the B&B to drool over our purchases and get some spinning in before the sausage supper and spin in later that evening.

Here’s a pic of the sheep parade.


We packed up our wheels and fluff and headed back to Woolfest for the sausage Supper and Spin in. The sausages were yummy and the sticky toffee pudding was wonderful…mmmmm. Afterwards we went back into the cafe as it was getting a bit cold out in the marquee and had a spot of spinning till about 9 o'clock then we went back to our B&B with my Mum and Dad for a cuppa; spinning and chatting until quite late. We had a lovely time.

Saturday 25th
Today was a bit overcast and drizzly and we decided that we had done Woolfest so we went on a bit of a tour about the Lakes! First off we took my Dads coat back to their hotel in Grasmere; he’d left it behind at our place. Then we checked out the Grasmere Gingerbread Shop and bought some Gingerbread, breathed deeply the Gingerbread fumes and had a look at Wordsworths grave and cottage.

We decided against going over Hard Knott Pass as Liz was not too confident about the whole business so we went up to Cockermouth across to Maryport and up the coast road to Alonby Bay for a bit of a blow on the beach. Lesley though we were insane as it was raining by now and a bit cold; she stayed in the car!

Here’s Liz and Andrea on the beach.


And this is looking south towards Maryport.


Then we drove inland to Cald Beck where the Wool Clip cooperative is based at Priests Mill. It was shut of course because everyone was at Woolfest (they organise the whole thing) but we pressed our faces against the windows to see inside – very little left as it was all a Woolfest! We checked out the other little shops and I got a nice knitting needle case from the antique/junk shop and we had a bit of lunch at the cafe. We also checked out a really nice little shop called HestaScene that had various fibre crafts including three dimensional felted items – bags, flowers and purses – very nice; plus the lady did felting courses, now there's an idea…..

Sunday 26th
Home today – boo!

But not before Liz and I took a little jaunt up Castle Head to partake in a bit of extreme spindling! A very kind but somewhat bemused man took our picture.


The view down the lake was beautiful. Andrea is going to live on the big island and we can all go and stay with her whenever we like.


Then it was off down to Windermere to check out the Bobbin Mill at Newby Bridge – but it was shut!!! So that was that and we headed off home picking up the motorway just north of Lancaster.

So we had a fantastic time, the landscape was beautiful as ever and the people as friendly as ever. Liz and I have decided that we want to do more extreme spindling and we will be up Cat Bells and Skiddaw next apparently! Better go dig out my walking boots and buy myself a waterproof me thinks!

Friends, Fibre and Fun

Well we have been very busy doing lots of stuff and as usual I have been soooo busy doing it that:

1. I haven’t taken pictures of most of it; and
   
2. I haven’t got round to telling you all about it yet!

So what have I been up to?
Well first off we have some sad news. Miranda got sick, just like her sisters did. She became very quiet and just stopped being happy and perky and got all puffed up under her chest. We took her to the vet thinking the worst; the vet was very kind and said that there was nothing that could be done to make her better so we let the vet put her to sleep.

Obviously this meant that Amy was all on her own and we couldn’t have that so yesterday we went back to where we got Amy from last year and got Rebecca. She is a Rhode Rock which is a hybrid cross of a Rhode Island Red and a Barred Plymouth Rock (I think). She’s a bit shy still but is quite friendly when meal worms are in the offing.

Happily Amy seems to be ok with the whole “new friend” thing and really hasn’t made too much of a fuss. She has been a bit vocal but hasn’t been pecking or chasing Rebecca so fingers crossed that all will continue to be well.

In spinning and fibery news, well quite a bit has been happening.
I am now the new Treasurer of the Somerset Guild of Spinners, Weavers & Dyers ( I get a proper metal badge) and we are having our annual fleece fair on Saturday the 18th of June. However, I probably won’t be able to make it as I am having my three wisdom teeth out and will be sedated for the procedure. This means that I will not be allowed to drive for 48 hours afterwards and as the procedure is on the Thursday afternoon I won’t be able to drive until Saturday afternoon……so I won’t be able to go – pants!

Wisdom teeth aside (and frankly I am not looking forwards to it one little bit!) my friend Liz and I have been rather busy with the spinning. We had a spinning afternoon together which was really cool. We both managed to score a bunch of free fleece on freecycle so we have done a bit of swapping between us.


We spun this – Liz did the brown, which is Zwartbles (fab word!) and the white/grey is the Romney that I’ve been working on (since forever).


Ah, what a cute puppy dog.


Liz and I also did a spinning gig at the Bath & West Show for which we managed to get free tickets for the Saturday in exchange for us sitting at the Somerset Life Magazine stand and spinning for a few hours. The weather was lovely all day; sunny with a bit of a breeze. We had a few weird questions from the public and met a few interesting textile people. We also checked out the food halls (yummy coffee and super ice-cream) and the sheep (cute Shetlands and North Ronaldsays) and watch a crazy man on the top of a very tall thin pole do a balancing act with NO safety harness!

Another Fibery Friend and our Knit Club Organiser, Lesley, organised a bit of a workshop afternoon at her mums house. There’s more space there as her mum has a conservatory and Lesley left the kiddie winks at home so it was just us grownups and a load of tea and yummy cake! We did Navajo plying and dyeing which proved to be a right laugh. Kim and Megan did a double act with their Navajo plying.


While Lesley and I did some dyeing. Here’s Lesley dyeing some of her hand spun yarn.

We steamed it in her mums electric steamer.

So, that’s it really. I’m hoping that I’ll be back to update the blog before we all go to Woolfest but if not then there will be a big update of Woolfestiness! We are going up on the Thursday and staying over until the Sunday, not long to go now!

Excited (10,00000000)

Spindling along

I’ve been getting well into spindling recently. Spindling is just so portable and the spindles are relatively inexpensive and very pretty. Here are mine. 
I have been spindling some Romney, which is the grey you can see on two of the spindles. At the last Guild meeting I crumbled and bought 700g of raw Romney fleece. It was only £3.50; can’t really go wrong with that! Plus it was all soft and crimpy; very clean and it smelt all warm and sheepy as it had been sat on the sale table right in a patch of sunshine, mmmm, lol! I washed it and it came out really well, really soft with lovely natural shading from white to dark grey. But having lent my hand cards to my friend Ann I was a bit stuck; what to do?

Well at Guild I’d had a go with Jenny's flat backed cards just to see what they are like as Jenny said she preferred them to the curved backed cards that people usually use and which are the ones I have lent to Ann. I liked them as it seemed to me that it was easier to brush all the fleece on the left hand card with all the surface of the right hand card; it just seemed to work better.

So I had a rummage on the net and got myself some flat backed cards from Wingham Wool Works. They duly arrived and I have had a lovely time carding all that Romney; well almost all, there is a little left to do. It’s come out really well as there are virtually no second cuts the only thing “wrong” with it was that a lot of the staple tips needed to be pulled off as they were dry, sun-bleached and crunchy but apparently  this is pretty normal with coloured fleece.

So now I have bags of Romney rolags all about the place! I’ve spindled one spindle full and am now onto the second spindle. The two will be plied together; it’s looking like it might be light aran/heavy dk weight….maybe….some mittens!

As yesterday was Guild Jenny and I tootled off down to Hatch Beauchamp for the day. I took my spindles, cards and the last bit of uncarded Romney and Jenny took a little loom she has been making scarves on. The loom is so small that it can sit on the fold up table that she also brought along. Liz was there too and she gave me this.

Isn’t it fab? It’s a case for my Notebook and she wove it herself out of wool that she has spun plus the coloured wool on the flap is from our dyeing day last year! a really beautiful gift from a very dear friend and my Notebook fits into it really well.

Also at Guild I met Shani who's blog, Dye Verse, I have been reading for a while now; she also reads my ramblings on here too. It was really cool to meet her in the flesh and to make a new friend. She had been to Wonderwool in Wales and told us all about it. As we are going to Woolfest in June this was very interesting although I think Woolfest might be better as Shani said there were lots of the same stands there this year as there were last year with not much in the way on new stands. I know that Woolfest is trying to make sure that they have a good mix of new people and established people although as we have never been it’s all going to be new to us.

Speaking of Woolfest I’ve booked us tickets to the Friday night Spin-In and Cumberland Sausage Supper so see you there! We are staying at a B&B on a farm in Mill Beck which is about two miles from Keswick and 13 miles from Woolfest. The lady who's farm it is has around 300 sheep and has told us that as it will be shearing time when we are there we can pick any fleece we like! and maybe have a go at shearing as well. Liz is rubbing her hands in glee as she wants ten at least!! I have been saving up paper sacks and have three I think but Liz will have to take a roll of bin liners the way she is thinking!

Happy spinning and knitting ,
Em

"What I did on my Summer Holidays" by Pearle

As we have been so busy since my last post I haven't had time to post. We have been here there and everywhere having fun. This is my "back to school essay" and for the ladies in Congleton......thank you for reading my exploits, it's nice to know you enjoy my ramblings:-)

OK so first off we went to Malborough Jazz Festival which was fab as usual but actually this one was the best one I've been to so far. We stayed with friends who live in Malborough and kindly put us up each year (or is that put up with us, he he). We are volunteer stewards and this year we were stewarding at the Azuza Cafe and Night Club. We were upstairs in the Night Club during the Saturday afternoon slot from 3pm until 6pm with the "The Baddest Blues Band Ever". The folk at Azuza looked after us very well with free cola and cups of tea during our stint and the punters were fun and had a good time. After our stint we met up with our friends and their two little kiddies who were by now a bit tired from all the excitement so they went home to be put to bed and have stories while DH and I went for dinner at the the Castle and Ball Hotel. The Castle and Ball is a very old (even by Malborough standards) Hotel/Pub right on the High Street. It has a really nice dining room at the back of the building and we sat down to a "whatever you would like" dinner. Unfortunately DH hadn't brought his glasses with him so he had to rely on me reading out the menu, lol:-) After dinner we found a couple of comfy armchairs at the back of the adjacent lounge bar and enjoyed our drinks with some very good Jazz. Then our friend arrived and we went out into the world of Jazz that is Malborough Jazz Fest.

I then spent a lovely long weekend visiting my Mum and Dad. We spent a lovely day at Tatton Flower Show ( a bit like Chelsea but up North).There were some fun exhibits amongst the usual pretty gardens full of flowers. Here's a selection.

Next on the agenda was Robs Birthday weekend camping at Llanthony Priory  which was a little damp but there was a good turn out of folk. We got there a little late and met folk in the lane as they were on the way the pub for tea. We managed to get the outside part of our new tent put up and then followed them, got some tea and drank a few ciders. Then, suitably fortified, we went back to the campsite and our fab friends proceeded to finish putting up our tent in the dark while DH and I sorted out the air bed, sleeping bag, pillows and other stuff for comfy camping. We then continued a very pleasant round the campfire evening with more cider until rain stopped play and it was time for bed. Rob has a device that can detect bats and there were quite a lot of bats about judging from all the clicks and squeaks coming from the device. There are lots of old trees and of course the priory ruins for them to live in. Next morning the weather improved and was dry so we sat about and drank coffee and had bacon butties before heading off home.

Then we spent a lovely weekend on Dartmoor camping with friends for Blues 40th Birthday. A barbecue, cake, music, good company, clear starlight skies, a big fire, fireworks and lanterns - we all had a lovely time. It was great to see folks that we hadn't seen in years, there was a bit of catching up to do. The field was great and in the middle of nowhere and we could do as we please because we were the only folk there with no houses or other people within yelling distance - great!

Busy, busy.... but I have managed to do some knitting and some spinning. I have finished the alpaca Ishbel. In fact I took it to my mums so that she could see it. I also took my Ashford so she could see what spinning is all about. Here's the Ishbel. Its all pinned out on the spare bed blocking which has made a big difference to it.

Before it was blocked it was all scrunched up and it was difficult to see the lace pattern.

The  Old Shell Shawl is coming along, there will be pictures of that next time. Also, I have spun up another 250g of the fibre from Coldharbour Mill. I thought that I would have enough of the first batch to make a cardy as I though I had 400g but I had only got 250g so Lesley from Knit Club said she'd pick some up for me on her way past Coldharbour Mill - result! But, they didn't have any - boo! but Lesley being the fab person that she is sold me the bag she had - yay! so that is now all spun up....just need to wash it and felt it slightly like the last lot.

I've also been spinning some Cotswold which my neighbour gave me when I bought her Leicester and her drumcarder; she was downsizing her spinning equipment collection so I was only doing the decent thing and helping her out....Lesley has bought her Haldane spinning wheel which is a lovely wheel. But how jammy am I? an original Timbertops Leicester; it's just fantastic, like the Rolls Royce of spinning wheels. The Cotswold is spinning itself on the Leicester! Maybe som pics of the Leicester in the next post....we'll see.

So now we are almost up to date, phew!
Last weekend we actually were here at home ALL weekend so we went to Annie Halls Poultry and came home with Amy. Here she is in the courgette patch....she's still a little shy.

Amy is a Light Sussex and she's about four month old so about the age of a teenager in hen terms. We just got one as we were not sure how Miranda would react. We collected Amy in a cat carry box and when we got her home we put the box in the hen enclosure, left the box door open and then just left them to get on with it. That was last Saturday. There was a bit of argy bargy and Miranda did throw her weight about a bit. Amy was chased up onto the top of the hen house on more than one occasion and received a few well placed pecks but things got better each day and now Miranda is quite happy with Amy being around and they go to bed without any bother.

And yesterday?
Well my neighbour and I went to Kilver Court Gardens where we met the Somerset Guild of Spinners, Dyers and Weavers and did some spinning with them....quite a lot of spinning acctually.... and some knitting, eating chocolate and drinking tea. They were lovely ladies and I think that I may join their Guild. The gardens were fab, here's some pics of the day.

So, that is what I have been up to this summer. We are off out this afternoon for tea with DHs parents. The sun is shinning , the washing is out and the chooks are sunbathing. More soon:-)