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! Sheepy-wise it has not been a bad winter so far. The grass kept growing until very late in the year and here in the East, we have avoided the very wet weather seen in the south west, and down in parts of Cumbria. The snow has arrived in the last few days and the sheep have access to shelter from the winds.
Shetland sheep are hardy creatures and cope with cold wet weather fairly well. They are now on ad lib hay, as well as having access to mineral buckets and occasional hard feeding. They have been treated to prevent liver fluke and have had their pre-winter vitamin drench. The tups were in amongst the ewes from Remembrance Sunday until the weekend before Christmas, and we have gathered together the tups that we loaned out to people as far as Skye and the North East. We borrowed two tups this year: a handsome white boy and a stunning wee grey tup lamb with the softest fleece I have ever come across. We currently have a batch of ewes and ewe lambs in isolation awaiting transport to a farmer in Northern Ireland, and some ewes who are soon due to head off to a new breeder in Orkney. Woolly-wise we are busy applying to various wool events and working on our business plan for the coming months. We aim to have new wool supplies ready for our spring events, and we will publish details of these on our website as soon as we know them. The last few months have generally been spent catching up on knitting and weaving projects, finishing off those WIPs that have been hanging around the house. We are also working on some new projects that we aim to launch later this year. Where to begin? Am just re-emerging from a period of illness and then family bereavement, and it feels good to be back into the website, replying to a backlog of emails from potential customers (sorry!) and updating the stock levels.
New of Clive's death threw me into a period of wool dyeing and also (rather less successful) home-baking. It's hard not to feel creative when you are surrounded by such great autumn colours. I've attended two great woolly events in the last few weeks, which has helped with a sense of focus: Highland Wool and Textiles Festival and then St Abbs Wool Festival. It's easy to underestimate the amount of work that goes into making these events such a success until you are at the event and see how much needs to be co-ordinated and how much effort goes into the pre-event publicity. At both events I had lots of lovely visitors to the Lammermuir Wool stand, and it's filled me full of enthusiasm for the year ahead. The sheared fleeces have been taking up useful space in the conservatory for far too long. Although the cats have made lofty perches up on the tops of the sacks, and will miss their high seats.
The fleeces were well skirted at shearing-time, with all daggings and 'clarty bits' removed. The task for today was to unroll each fleece in turn and give it a good shake, removing any double-cuts and vegetation. Then the fleece is laid (skin side down) on the table and checked over very carefully. Any remaining bits of vegetable matter are removed, then the fleece is rolled back up again and packed - as tightly as possible - into a sack. The colours are each kept separate, so that they can be processed separately at the Mill. It's tiring work, and a bit greasy as the fleeces are still rich in lanolin. The trick is to remember how soon it will come back, cleaned, spun and ready to use. The weather her has been fantastic and Hamish and I spent the afternoon wandering around Lammermoch, taking new photographs for the website - especially the shopfront section. We are lucky to live close to the hills and the reservoirs, and so there is plenty of opportunity to take great photos while enjoying some peace.
I met a lovely lady last year who got me thinking about photos, and branding and the like, and so I'm happier now that I have product photos which are as much part of the landscape as my wool is! Check this out - sunbathing wool. I love going to the Great Yorkshire Show (or GYS) each year. I usually divide my time between the sheep lines and the Yorkshire Dry-Stone Walling Guild project, and rarely get to see much else on the showground. This year the Guild was working on a permanent bench which (when the fields are not full of cars) will have a great view down over the Crimple Valley. Here are some of the team hard at work: I was also asked to show my friend's sheep in the ring on Tuesday afternoon. Never was a third prize more happily received!
It's always such a relief to get the fleeces off of the sheep and this year - with the recent spells of wet and warm weather (ideal for flies) - especially so. In fact we've ended up shearing a whole month earlier than previously. We've taken some fleeces off ourselves but got a batch done by the shearer on Saturday. Anxious about the weather as we've no shelter or shed for them. The main things - where you can when hand-shearing - is to clip along the rise in the wool. The rise is caused by the growth of new fleece and clipping through is is like shearing through butter: lovely and soft, and leaving a small amount of the new growth on the sheep. I've tried to take a picture of the rise this year )as people often ask me what I mean) but not sure if this photo shows it well enough. In this photo you can see bare (ish) skin, then to the right of it the new growth in the wool, with the rise just showing under last year's fleece. Returning the lambs to their shorn mothers is chaos. No one knows who is who, and lambs have been known to attach themselves to a shorn fleece which will smell like their mum. Within half an hour or so though, all is quiet again, the fleeces are cleaned and rolled and stowed in the defender ready to head home for further sorting.
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