Anyone who has been on a long journey with me (those by car, bus, or train, anyway. This rarely occurs when flying…) will know that I tend to commentate the sheep we pass by. For those in the know, it doesn’t come as a surprise anymore, but it can sometimes confuse people when, mid conversation I suddenly say “sheep!” in a high-pitched and excited voice.
Yesterday was Sheep! day. Yesterday was Woolfest 2008. Well, so is today, but I’m not there. Which is probably just as well, considering how much I bought yesterday!
It was a long trip, it has to be said, but I got a lift from a very kind friend, which was brilliant. Without that, there is no way I could have gone. We probably got there around 1pm, and had a good wander around, talking to some sheep and alpacas on the way. In fact, I have photos of sheep and alpacas. Here. Enjoy.
Aren’t they all beautiful!? I’m especially fond of the sheep with straw on his head. I would have brought him(?) home to live on my balcony if he’d have fitted in the car. Or the sheep at the stop standing on the bale of hay. That was an intrepid little sheep!
So, yes. I loved that side of the day! But there was also rather a lot of shopping…
I went with a couple of ideas in mind. I wanted to get some naturally coloured fibres, and where possible, I wanted to get some British fibres. I managed both to a certain degree. I won’t give you photos of the individual things I bought, but here is a job lot photo:
I got:
- 1kg of undyed merino yarn (a massive bargain, it cost me only £25!)
- 100g each of Shetland roving in natural black, grey and white
- 100g of green English sheep roving
- 100g of delicious multitoned green merino roving
- 500g of natural angora/merino yarn
- A packet of oaty biscuits, gloriously without wheat (and purchased at a farm shop on the way, not at Woolfest)
- 60g of smoke coloured angora rabbit fibre (not in the picture, but there is a pic in my Flickr)
So…overall rather more merino than I’d like. Well, I like merino, but I would have liked to do better on the British yarn front. Still, there is no point in knitting a jumper out of Herdwick just because it’s British, because if it touched your skin you’d want to cry. Well, I would. But I did manage to get a couple of jumpers worth of natural coloured yarn, even if both include merino. There was a dearth of dark coloured undyed yarns. I wandered around a couple of times before I bought the alpaca/merino and it was my favourite, but out of a very small number of contenders. I don’t have a plan for the alpaca/merino yet (apart from that it will be a jumper), but I have something specific in mind for the undyed merino. Which doesn’t include dying it.
As for the roving…wow. There was so much, and so so so so many colours! Lots of merino and Blue Faced Leicester. I bought merino only where I was absolutely in love with the colours (and clearly I was having a green day), that I came home without BFL was just an accident of fate. My favourite though is definitely the natural shetlands. I’m so excited about them! The angora bunny was an impulse buy, really. I have no idea what I’ll do with it! Well, spin it, obviously.
So, that was all absolutely wonderful, and I managed to spend under my budget. It was a rather generous budget, but I didn’t overspend. And besides, it included entrance to the show itself and then to the Tatie Pot dinner and the knit/spin in, as well as the bits I bought at the farm shop on the way there, and whatnot. So…I’m pleased. But I am most certainly not buying any more yarn for some time to come!
The Tatie Pot dinner was really nice, and we ended up sitting with some people who had come from London and were also on Ravelry, and who were really lovely. It was an absolutely lovely evening, and I got to watch people spinning. Almost everyone was better than I am. Which is fine. But I was looking for tips! And we were all ogling spinning wheels. Oh, and I have concluded that I would absolutely love a Golding spindle, as one of the women we ate with had one, and proved that they are just as beautiful as I had suspected from seeing a picture of Christina’s!
So…yes…we had so much fun! Eventually we had to come home, and that took a while. It was a long way anyway, the weather was shocking, (and I was feeling quite carsick, which probably made it feel longer!) so it was after midnight by the time I got back in. Well and truly worth it though!
Typically, I woke up at 6am and couldn’t get back to sleep. But at least I have lots of lovely yarn to play and knit with. I want so much to get on with my cream jumper, but I’m very reluctant to do that until I’ve finished the Tangled Yoke cardigan. So I’m going to try to get on with that today. I will put on a film, and just knit.
1 Comment
June 30, 2009 at 9:10 am
[...] I went last year, and I had a very nice time indeed. So this year I was keen to go back. As a result, on Saturday morning my boyfriend and I drove up (actually he drove and I…didn’t. Because I can’t!) to Cumbria to visit Woolfest. [...]