When I'm at woolly events, I always find myself thinking about the value of things which are have traditionally been classed as 'women's work'.  Several encounters this summer have brought this closer to home.  We spent a good chunk of Italy in Barga, in the north of Tuscany.  Not the Tuscany of a million postcardss: the chianti-shire rolling hills and olive groves with roads flanked by rows of dark cypress trees, but instead a mountainous landscape cloaked in chestnut and pines, where the traditional foods are wild funghi, castagne, mirtilli, lepre and cinghiale. Barga badges itself as 'the most Scottish town in Italy, and is home to a fish and chip festival each summer.
My in-laws - particularly my late mother-in-law, Bianca, and sisters-in-law, Anna and Letizia and cousin-in-law Roberta are skilled in a number of textile-based crafts.  I will never forget getting my hands slapped by Bianca before I was patiently shown how to both crochet and knit 'the right way'  I think that Italians always have 'the right way' to do things.  And they are, generally, right.
I spotted a leaflet for an exhibition subtitled 'Lavori di donne antiche e moderne in mostra' and persuaded Anna to come along with me for essential translation purposes - and also because I knew that she would be able to explain exactly what I was looking at:

 Many of the items that I saw looked familiar.  So Italian.  We have a cottage full of bits and pieces of trimmings, wee cloths and so on all in this similar starched white fresh Italian white cotton or linen.  Picked up at markets...  It has just become part of how we live.  
A lot of the pieces were designed for 'bottom drawers' and for special gifts.
Some of the items on show were made on a massive scale in tiny stitches - lovingly crafted by women working Without Electric Light.  My eyes hurt just thinking about it.
And every time I asked a question - and people who know me will testify that I ask a LOT of questions - there was a women on hand to show me exactly how things had been made and stitched.  Threading needles and showing me how to do it; explaining the Italian name for each technique.
The curator of the exhibition was a Australian Italian. and was passionate about two things:  preserving and highlighting this highly skilled work; and trying to encourage a new generation.  Young women who might want to learn these skills.  There were local workshops and 'new hands' were able to learn from older ones.  
A living tradition as it should be.  Such a rich heritage to risk losing it.

2018 was our first visit as stallholders at Woolfest.  I have visited a few times in the past; as a customer and also as a helper on the Shetland Sheep Society stand.  I have always come away awestruck by just how creative and entrepreneurial so many people are, and inspired to do more myself.
Applying to 'do' Woolfest was a big decision:  it is a multi-day undertaking requiring accommodation and paid-for doggy-care, as well as travel costs and stall fees.  We were encouraged to apply for a mini-stall; an initiative run by Woolfest to encourage new and smaller sellers.  I worked hard on the application and was both excited and scared to find out that I had gained a place at this year's event.  
Despite still being short of stock (because my missing 16kg of spun wool is still mislaid by Parcelforce), I worked hard in the weeks leading up to the event: weighing, re-skeining; dyeing; drying; labelling ....
We set up on the Thursday afternoon and were finished quite quickly which meant we could help out our neighbouring stall-holders.  Especially Paolo, as he has Long Arms Which Can Reach Things.  Our stall didn't look too bad and - as we were in a bit of a dark corner - we felt we had lightened it up as best we could.   ​

​We took this photo of a neighbouring field last month - when everything was still very fresh and green.  It does not look the same now!
The lambs - which were so tiny back in April have really grown, with some of the larger lambs now almost as big as their mothers.  To watch two huge lambs diving for their mother's milk with such strength that they lift the ewes back-end off of the ground is funny to see, but the ewes are starting to look a bit fed up of the whole business of providing milk to such boisterous and independent off-spring.  We will probably wean off the lambs in late August, moving the ewes a few miles away to a different field, where they have nothing to do but eat and regain condition.
We lost two lambs over the last few months - and each occasion was very sad.  One lamb developed CCN - a brain illness - and the other who we nursed carefully for over a month - never really recovered from being abandoned by her mother (and stolen by another ewe) at birth.  Both times we were able to take the lambs to our local vet to have them euthanised.  It's very upsetting for us as we spend a lot of time with our sheep (and even more with the ill ones!) and grow attached to them.
We had to bottle feed two lambs for the first momth or so after they were born.  The ewe birthed twins but would only ever feed one.  If the second lamb tried to feed she would butt it away.  However, she did not reject the lamb outright (as sometimes happens).  It turned out that the ewe really only just had enough milk for one lamb and so had made a decision not to feed the second. 
There's a wee film clip below showing the paler lamb (the one not being fed by mum) looking a lot quieter and less active than her sister.  We kept the three of them in a pen for over a week so that mum got used to the idea of both lambs being around.
​

It was a tricky lambing period over all with some new challenges for us but lambs now seem healthy, happy and are growing fast.

After several months of anxious waiting my last batch of wool from the 2017 clip has arrived.  I am still short of some but will have enough (fingers crossed) for the remaining shows this year.  
The wool above is a lovely soft blend of our Shetland first-clip and some Romney fleece.  It makes a beautifully airy wool with lots of 'bounce' in it.  And I have started knitting with it already .... .I'm using it with some dyed Lammerloch blue to make yet another Surge shawl.
I got another lovely box full of my Simply Shetland Single - laceweight wool, and a batch of pale grey DK which we have christened
Haar - named after the North Sea mist which sometimes rolls inland at this time of year - sometimes cloaking us in fog for days.  
All of these new items are now in the Store of this website and will be available at Woolfest
in a few weeks time.
Now we are just dyeing wool, waiting on wool bands to come back from the printer, and thinking about shearing the 2018 clip.  More on that next time.

Lambing was tough this year and threw up a number of challenges that we hadn't faced for a long time.  I like to think it was partly down to the odd weather we've had over the last few months.  Still, we've made it with only a very small number of losses and one caddy lamb who is slowly being weaned off the bottle.  The two lambs pictured above have also given us some headaches.  The mother - Alice - had a single white (shown) and also stole the grey katmoget ewe lamb from Birgitta (who had also had a GIANT grey katmoget tup immediately named Brian Boru).  Wee adoptee probably didn't get enough colostrum before we got to the field and has been on increasingly strong antibiotics over the last couple of weeks for fluid-filled lungs and poorly legs.  As the vet says - the prognosis isn't great - but we are doing what we can.
First lamb of this year was Breck (or breac) meaning speckled or spotted.  He was huge when born and is even bigger now!

I love  St Abbs Wool Festival - I love everything about it and enjoy being a vendor here. Despite being a bit shy, I can talk about sheep and wool for Scotland, and anyway I love hearing about what other people have knitted.
I was a bit short on wool to take, as I’m still waiting on a missing 16kg of spun grey wool courtesy of Parcel Force who now think they might have delivered it to someone else by mistake. However, I labelled everything I had, dyed lots more wool taking into account the feedback I got in Edinburgh, and I was quite pleased with my display!
I was also placed opposite my absolute favourite stall at the event; Pink Minis who designs and makes the most awesome tweed clothes.
Trade was great! I was very happy that people had come back after buying yarn from me at St Abbs previous festivals; including people who bought sweater-quantities of yarn, as well as people who had been at EYFs Meet the Shepherdess event a few weeks before.
I took along a good selection of dyed mini-skeins and was pleased with how they came out!

As usual, I spent a lot of time just chatting with people  about their own knitting and certainly fell in love with this shawl worn by one customer!  The pattern is Surge by Lisa Mutch on Ravelry and I was inspired by the combination of colours and the short rows used. It’s knitted in 4 ply and I just might have some Devonia 4 ply by John Arbon in my stash which would be ideal for this!  I also plan to dye some of my white 4 ply when it arrives from the Mill.

I really did have to sprint off at the other end to head back to the lambing field, but once again a massive thanks to Jennie from SkyBluePink Designs for all the hard work she does in organising this event.  It is a real success!

This was a new event for this year and I felt very honoured indeed to be asked to participate.  There are people who have seen the potential of Lammermuir Wool when I could not (more in another post) and Mica and Jo are definitely among them.
The aim was to create a less formal, smaller event on the Sunday after EYF which would have a small number of stalls and focus on bringing forward yarn producers.  I think there may have been a dozen stalls in the end; among them yarny colleagues I had met before from Uradale Yarns, Lifelong Yarns, Black Isle Yarns and Hawkshaw Sheep.  Customers would have chance to take coffee and cake, knit and natter and buy wool with local provenance from small suppliers.
Things have not been great for me over the winter ( I was recovering from two operations and the loss of my eldest brother) and sometimes it didn't feel as if spring would ever come. 
While I do seem to spend lots of my time either at meetings or looking after the sheep, having Meet the Shepherdess (or Meet The Princess as I once called it) to focus on gave me something creative to get stuck in to.
My major problem was possibly going to be a lack of yarn to sell - despite the Mill receiving my fleeces in September last year, when I checked in January nothing had yet been scoured or spun.  Nor had it been when I checked in February.  There is a limit to the amount of preparation you can do without being able to weigh and measure the finished yarn - but I was able to make a start on dyeing my new Colour Pops.  These are 25g mini-skeins which would (I hope) complement the grey and brown yarn that I would be getting from the Mill..  But it was also important to me to find a blend of colours that I could expect to find in my own landscape.  I spent a good week or so dyeing the mini-skeins and was quite p[eased with them.  .  You can see them at the bottom of the photo above and also below​

Mica & Jo had mentioned the need for me to have things knitted up in my wool and it certainly did make a difference on the day:  especially my Horseshoe Lace scarf which can be seen in the top photo.  I am not a fast or even remotely experienced knitter and I have never knitted so much, so quickly.
The wool finally arrived from the Mill on the Wednesday afternoon before the event - well, ONE of the bags did; the other is still languishing somewhere in an unknown Parcelforce Depot - which meant several days of frantic re-skeining and labelling, and I could only manage a limited number of hanks in each weight and colour.
Saturday night - packed car.  Organised!
​Next morning:

Hasty re-packing of stock into The Mighty Defender, then a nerve-wracking crawl through the snow.
So - people were queuing to get in - which surprised me and - after an initial two minutes when I thought we might not sell anything, the stall went like a fair for the next four hours. I absolutely love talking to people - and will talk to absolutely anyone - and did not stop talking and selling until the event ended. At which point we had no wool left to take home.
I love the fact that people from all around the world were there (Paolo was able to practise his Italian), and I received some great and constructive feedback on what we were doing. Someone (unprompted) said she thought the Colour Pops were 'just like the colours you see if you drive over the hills from Haddington to Duns'. That will do me nicely.
Among the lovely feedback I love this You Tube vlog by Minna S from Northern Finland (a place close to my heart!) where - 30 minutes in - she talks about her experience of the Lammermuir Wool Stand
I always come away from wool events awestruck by how many talented and entrepreneurial women there are in the woolly world - and it starts me musing on how we as a society place value on crafts (especially those traditionally the domain of women). i may have given an incoherent and rambling interview to Louise from Knit British on this subject.
If this event runs again, I hope to be invited and I wouldn't miss it for the world.
As for now? Ti,me to try to chase this missing parcel of grey DK and get ready for St Abbs Wool Festival!

Edinburgh Yarn Festival really has grown into a 'must-attend' in the world of woolly events. As well as the fact that the show just gets better and better each year (more below), one of the things I really admire about the show organisers is the way that they have created a warm and friendly community feel to such a huge event, and this festival and events like the Knitters Christmas Party are a real testament to the fact that there is nothing we knitters and wool-makers like better than a chance to get together!
There will be two blog posts about EYF this year - this one about my experience as a vendor, and the next one about the awesome Meet The Shepherdess event.
Firstly, I did not manage to get booked into a class this year. Despite being warned in plenty of time about when bookings would 'go live', I completely forgot. I also did not get organised in time to get tickets for my preferred days, but sometimes you just have to suck it up.
I arrived half an hour before opening time, and queued around the block in horizontal snow. The queue is always a good time to get chatting to people, and everyone I had spoken to had attended at least one of the previous days and thoroughly enjoyed it. Was early in (like a greyhound), which meant things were quiet for a while. Quieter.
I was determined to be quite strict about purchase this time and did have a mental shopping list which I nearly stuck to. My stash (photo above) is very focused indeed:
1 sweater's worth of Midwinter Yarns Blane wool for making a purple Carbeth later. A Merrie Dancers Toorie's worth of Shetland Handspun from Elizabeth Johnston (already knitted up) and three skeins of Devonia DK from John Arbon which has a luxury woven scraf in its near future.
Added to that my Notions bag (now I know what a Notion is) from Woolly Originals - an item I have coveted since the Christmas Party when I didn't win one in the raffle - and my knitters notebook. Not bad going really. No single-skeins destined to languish in my Yarn Stash Box.
Managed to check in with friends and colleagues from Weft Blown, Threshing Barn, Dye Ninja, Uradale Yarns, Whistlebare, SkyBluePink and Borders Mill. Hoping they all had a great few days!