Border Leicester Fleeces continued.

A few weeks ago you may recall that I had eventually managed to track down a lady - Ellie Stokeld - who was willing to sell me a fleece or two. Recently I made the trip up to North Yorkshire to visit Ellie, meet her sheep and collect some fleece.

 

As you can see they are absolutely gorgeous sheep! I love those long ears!

 

 

This is one of Ellie's Champion Rams - I think his name was Benny.

 

 

Soon it was time to meet the sheep out in the field which was a mixture of ewes and lambs with "special needs". This gave me the chance to help bottle feed some of the lambs who need extra rations.

 

 

 

I had a lovely time talking about sheepy things with Ellie and I came home with three beautiful fleeces. The weather managed to stay warm and sunny for a couple of days and I was able to sort and wash two of the fleeces so that I could spin samples for Ellie to take to shows over the summer months.

 

 

The first batch of washed fleece drying in the garden.

 

 

For more information on the Border Leicester breed please check out Ellie's website.

Wonderwool Wales 2014

It's hard to believe that it is already a week since we were setting up our stand at Wonderwool! So I thought it was high time I did a post about my time there. Unfortunately the weather was not wonderful but not as bad as it could have been! Lot's of rain fell over the weekend but it didn't deter the crowds as we were very busy especially on the opening day.

 

The My Fine Weaving Yarn stand looked magnificent as always with some new samples and colourful skeins of silk.

 

 

I didn't get the chance to have a wander about until late in the day but here are a few snaps of some of the things there were to see.

 

 

The stand next to ours was The Natural Dye Studio with some lovely crochet kits on show.

 

 

 

Here is the Threshing Barn stand.

 

One of my favourite exhibits is the National Wool Museum showcasing a lovely old loom and a bobbin winder which looks like a great wheel. At previous shows they have had the loom working but I didn't here it in action this time sadly - I don't think people like the noise!

An example of the lovely weaving done on this type of loom.

 

 

This year saw the show expand in to another hall and amongst the many stallholders here I found an exhibit by Alison Murray of her Giant Textile Books which looked very interesting and must have taken ages to make!

 

All in all the show was fantastic as always. Plenty of things to see and buy with lots of space between the stands for ease of access. Brilliant! Can't wait until the next show! Of course I did manage to make some purchases but more about that later.