A Wooly weekend

Once a year, Wingham Wool Works visits the local area enabling a lot of spinners, knitters, felters and others to get their 'Fibre Fix'.

They set up on the Friday evening and provide two days for perusing, sampling and buying their wares.

Many ladies come to sit and spin because, for £6 for each day, you can take sample lengths to try out.

Others come to just buy....well, in point of fact, most of us are seduced into buying at some stage. There is a vast array of fibres from Merino and Merino/Silk blend, linen and various man-made fibres, through all sorts of luxury ones, such a silk, camel down, cashmere and Quivet; this last probably the most expensive of all, so not much comes along...There is a selection of books and journals, equipment, dyestuffs, yarns and everything necessary for felting and needlefelting. 

Ruth Gough, who with her husband Alan, owns Winghams, gives demonstrations of spinning techniques and the use of various pieces of equipment to process fibre with.

This year, I decided I wouldn't get any fibres except some for a felting project for which I didn't have the right colours...

However, I also succumbed to the temptation of some of the luxury yarns for my smaller projects. 

From left to right these fibres are,
Dyed Tussah silk
Camel down
Mulberry silk
Camel down and silk
Yak and silk

About half the Tussah silk tops are spun and will be plied with some dyed Gotland singles which are ready. The rest, I haven't decided about yet.

This is the dyed Gotland fibre, which I finished spinning on the Saturday and...

...this is the silk. In reality, the Gotland is rather darker than it looks in this picture: one is fairly hairy and the other very smooth, so I am interested to see how they blend.

Instead of doing lots of sampling (although I did some), I plied some other yarns I had previously spun but I haven't been organised enough to write down what they are.

As always, it was a very good and sociable weekend!