Woolfest, Open Studios and TdF

Wow, I've had a really jam-packed weekend! Hubby and I took off from work on Thursday afternoon and headed off to Cumbria. We stayed overnight near Cockermouth, ready for Woolfest 2013.

It was a great day, though I failed to take any photos of the event. (Hubby got a few of the sheep demo) All the stands were amazing. I was especially interested in Lakeland Valley Goats who are a new startup supplying cashmere fiber. Lovely. I actually ended up buying a lot of fiber this time, rather than yarn. Must be the spinning jag I'm on, but more on that in a moment...

here's my haul from Woolfest. (I will "flash the stash" of fiber and handspun sometime soon)


1. Blue faced Leicester humbug, 2. Kid mohair, 3. Yak, 4. Masham, 5. Baby camel, 6. Wensleydale, 7. Jacob, 8. Trilobal nylon, 9. BFL / Kid Mohair, 10. Merino, 11. Kid Mohair, 12. Lakeland Valley Goats' Cashmere

The pink/black merino (number 10) is gorgeous. That and number 9 were from Felt Studio UK, and might upset my original spinning plan for the TdF. More on that soon.

So, Saturday I had agreed to take part in the Bugthorpe Open Studios event, so hubby and I took our stuff to the village hall and I demonstrated spinning while he did some drawing.



(That's one of hubby's works in the background)

It was a really nice day, and the kids seemed really interested in the wheel. I let some of the little ones have a go at pedalling, so some of my yarn is a little overspun, but not to worry.

The added bonus for me was a whole day of spinning, even if it wasn't uninterrupted spinning. I've signed up for the Tour de Fleece, which is a spin-along timed to coincide with the Tour de France. Saturday was day 1, and I spun this single:



Then, on Sunday (day 2) I spun the second single



Since I divided the fiber lengthways, it wasn't entirely evenly split. That meant that I had to do a little Andean plying at the end to get one skein out of it. However, here is a nice 2ply yarn. (sorry it's a bit dark, it was about 11pm when I took this photo!)



I've brought the bobbin and a niddy noddy with me so that I can skein it tonight at knitting group, and all being well I'll make a start on my alpaca tonight.



I bought that at Woolfest 2 years ago! It's about 500g of uncarded chocolate brown alpaca fleece. I'm excited to spin some of it, though I'm not sure how much I will spin. It's a shame I didn't think to buy some more bobbins. Broadly, my plan is to spin 50g onto each bobbin and then ply it into 100g skeins. I might end up putting one (or more) singles onto loo-roll tubes in order to maximise my effort.

I might invest in some painkillers too, as all this spinning is making me ache!

I'm also pleased to say that all this spinning will count for Nerd Wars, and Elise has modified the rules for R2 so that spinning started for the Tour can be included in the R2 challenges - so my skein can be submitted to any of the challenges, if I can figure out which one!