WonderWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!

So, this past weekend was the fantabulous Wonderwool Wales festival in Builth Wells. I went, along with my entire family (who, to be fair, spent the day I was immersed in wool fumes hiking and exploring and playing in tide pools). The weather was glorious, the wool was plentiful and there were venison burgers. What more could a fiber fanatic ask for?

I went with a few ideas of things I'd like to get, but no absolute requirements. I'm pleased to say I came away with 4 items, one of which I'd been lusting after for quite a while, and some supplies for a repeat engagement with a particular process that I've been wanting to try.

Item 1 (the smallest and most expensive): an IST Turkish Spindle in Satin Rubain and Ash.

Like most of last October's P3 participants, I came away entranced by the whirling dervish Turkish spindles that Brenda and Amy were playing with. I'd looked at IST spindles before, but managed to refrain from getting one until I saw them in person. After trying one, I couldn't resist.

My failed dyeing test run from last week

Doesn't it look like it's itching to get started on this fiber? I can't wait to get going on it.

Item 2 (not pictured): some Unicorn Power Scour, bought precisely to deal with

Items 3 and 4: one dark grey/black and one white-ish Shetland fleece.

Now, my previous experience with spinning yarn from hand-prepped raw fiber was a mixed experience. So you may be wondering what could possibly induce me to start all over again with approximately three times the amount of starting material. You may be sitting in front of your screen, slowly shaking your head side to side and thinking "This may be the final fiber that breaks the porpoise's back." And I'm not so sure you're wrong. But here's the thing...

...I love Shetland fiber. I absolutely adore spinning prepped Shetland top, and ever since taking a day-long course on the inestimable virtues of the Shetland breed with JMM, I have been wanting to play with some fleece.

All this is to say that when I walked through a doorway and beheld the glory that was the Shetland Sheep Society's booth on Saturday morning, it was all over but the shouting...not 15 min after the doors  opened, I was the proud owner of two Shetland fleeces.

The first one is a gorgeous dark grey fleece that I kept coming back to, and couldn't leave behind.

It is lovely and soft. Unrolling it revealed some light tips that are either sunbleaching or guard hairs. Either way, it's going to be just gorgeous spun up. I think that I can sort the locks into two different colors and end up with a black pile and a grey pile. This is going to be the first project.


The second fleece is white, with some light apricot sections - it remains to be seen what it looks like once it's washed.

The locks have some absolutely gorgeous crimp. I'm really looking forward to getting this baby washed up too.


So there you have it - my personal spinning time for the next year, booked.

I've got one more, critically important piece of this fleece-processing puzzle that is guaranteed to make it a success:

I'm going to borrow a drum carder.

Wool House

Today, I finally got a chance to take a good wander through Wool House and to take a cubic boatload of photographs. Seriously, I took more then 100 photos in an hour, which is exponentially beyond my normal photo taking MO. In the interests of not having this post be 40 pages long, I'll share a selection, but all the rest are in a Flickr set here.

First off was a shot of the sheep flag flying proudly over Somerset House as I walked over Waterloo Bridge. Yesterday was the first day of spring, which in London this year apparently means that the second day of spring should be sleeting and windy. Lovely! It did mean that the flag was flying straight out, so I guess that's one positive outcome.

On reaching Fountain Court, I was greeted by some colorful sheep,


and a personalized entry way.

The foyer contained a huge brown bear (crocheted), and a bunch of awesome sheep fleece hats, some complete with horns.


On the right side of the foyer, a long hallway led to seven separate installations of interior design, including a bedroom,

drawing room,

study,

snug (aka den),

a nursery,

a psychedelic party room Austin Powers would have loved (my description),

and a "natural" room.



I loved the old fiber-prep implements scattered around the display.




The other wing was all about wool in fabric and clothing (as well as the room where we did our spinning demo and they had classes). There were several rooms looking at wool art in the form of tapestry weaving and felt making.




I love how these pieces by Claudy Jongstra incorporated felt and intact locks - they were just stunning!


Then there were the Saville Row suits and high fashion, including a wool bike jersey!



The left hallway had a glorious rainbow colored carpet,

and ended in an archway made of yarn strung on frames.

I ended up in the craft room, where Alli was (yet again) spinning, and manged a few shots of some of the displays there.



So there you have it - Wool House, a photo-essay. If you have a chance to drop by Somerset House before Sunday (when it closes), you should check it out. It doesn't have to take long to get through, and it is absolutely gorgeous and inspiring. And, on a day like today (when it's cold and rainy and generally miserable), being surrounded by wool seems like a really good thing.

Unravelled

After (more-or-less) three weeks of being home with one or more of my children (first with sick child, then sick child plus irritated child on half-term holiday, then sick-but-now-well child on half-term holiday), I was feeling just a little bit familied-out. As in, my fondest dream was to crawl under the covers on the bed and never come out again.

Instead, on Sunday morning, I got up early-ish and went off to the lovely village of Farnham for Unravel (Alli made me do it...I think she just wanted a ride down there...).

We arrived in Farnham just before ten and wandered over to Farnham Maltings, a fabulous group of repurposed tannery-turned-brewery-turned-community-space that contains the event. We knew we were in the right place when the yarn bombing began to appear...






I have to admit that once we got inside I had total camnesia and neglected to take pictures of any of the stalls. Mostly because I was too busy making grabby hands at more or less everything. You know how it is...

In our whirlwind tour, we stopped at John Arbon, Fyberspates, Pom Pom Quarterly, rock+purl, Hilltop Cloud, Bigwigs Angoras, Skein Queen, The Natural Dye Studio, Blacker Yarns, The Threshing Barn, Aragon Yarns and vast numbers of other fabulous stands that were just spectacular. Thankfully, I did not come home with goodies from all of these people, but a number of them are going to be at Wonderwool, so I'll have another chance to get in trouble.

I told Alli in the car on the way down that I had a specific shopping list in mind.

1. A new bottle of Soak woolwash, since mine is almost gone.
2. A skein of water-inspired laceweight for an ongoing shawl design.
3. 1800 yds of natural colored bulky wool for a coat design.
4. Some superwash something or other for a ripple blanket for the Wee Nephew.

Exhibit 1:

Look at that, the first two items on my list taken care of at one stall. Result! To be fair, that colorway is more sand-inspired then water-inspired, but I did actually mean something rock colored vs. water colored. I blame low blood caffeine...

Exhibit 2:

Appears absolutely nowhere on my shopping list, but I went by Katie's stand and spent about twenty minutes trying to pick something out. That is 100 gr of gradient-dyed, handcarded, dizzed roving that is 30% Shetland, 50% merino and 20% Tussah silk. You can understand why I had a hard time walking away. I'm even willing to overlook the merino content, just because of the colors. Too beautiful.

Exhibit 3:

Also not on the list, you will note, but bunny fluff!!!!! SO FLOOFY AND SOFT!!!! The fact that I don't like wearing angora yarn is of no importance here because its SO GORGEOUS!!!!! The pictures of adorable and beautiful rabbits didn't hurt either. 

Smoke...sigh...it is such a fabulous shade of grey. I have no idea what I'm going to do with this beyond spinning the most fabulous hat/mitten lining yarn ever. 

So...I'm still on the hunt for the yarn, but am coming to the conclusion that I might be better off spinning the bulky yarn, and I'll break down on the superwash sometime soon, I have no doubt.

In conclusion, I highly recommend Unravel for a day trip or so. There's a lot to see packed into not very much space. I heard from most folks that it was unbelievably busy on Saturday and I can imagine that it might be a bit hard to move about with too many people, but it was fab. And if you're willing to get out of the venue for a bit, there is a really good French cafe on the high street. I can't remember the name, but they had good food and fabulous almond croissants. Yum!