WOOLFEST 2008

On Saturday, June 28th, my long awaited pilgrimage to the Mecca of all that is woolly, "Woolfest", finally happened. It was great. All & more than I thought it would be, marred only briefly by the antics of ninja grannies with sticks akimbo (the walking, not knitting type), jostling & pushing into the crowded booths as though someone had yelled "Everything must go!".

Mitchell's Lakeland Livestock Centre (just outside Cockermouth in Cumbria), was awash with yarns of many colours & the heavy odour of cows, sheep & disinfectant. The sun shined all day and the Centre was rammed (no pun intended)!

My first eager visit was to The House Of Hemp where I bought a small lacy knit scarf kit with the most lovely fine hemp in variegated shades of violet & green.
The garments on display revealed a fabric of unbelievably soft and fine yet tensile texture...I'd always thought that hemp might be quite a scratchy yarn to work with. I was given kind permission to take this photograph:

I also visited The Natural Dye Studio Ltd, to say hi to Amanda, from Marianne, & to have a good look at the 3 gorgeous Bessie Blankets she had on display...Amanda fancied she could hazard a guess on which motifs were made by Marianne! Well done to all who contributed to the blankets. They are highly covetable delights. Why didn't I take a photo?? Really thought I had. Sorry!

There were some good, if dear, books for sale which I successfully stayed away from, but ended up on the KCG Trading Ltd booth perusing £3 patterns. I purchased a lovely £3 design for a 'Reversible Lace (Mock) Cables Scarf' by Jackie Erickson - Schweitzer of www.heartstringsfiberarts.com . I'm pretty sure I've seen this design on Ravelry. To go hand in hand with this pattern I bought 2 lovely variegated 100g hanks of Merino from The Wool Clip in shades of earthy greens...Delicious.

Other delicacies were to be found in the booths of Fyberspates, Claire Crompton, Freyalyn's Fibres, Injabulo, Thread Of Life, & Oliver Twists.
There were some wonderful pens of various breeds of sheep and some beautiful Alpaca.I stayed at the event for 2 hours, lucky to have seen Lucy and Deborah from the Miss Spiritual Tramps Knitting Group that I go to now and then. They had been mooching around for 4 hours, laden with goodies by the time they flagged me down, and fully intended to carry on until the end (some 3 hrs later)!

My need for a nice brew, fresh air & somewhere quieter to ponder over my few, but delightful purchases led me into Cockermouth, a very pretty town which reminded me, very much, of Aldeburgh in Suffolk. I had a lovely pot of Assam tea and the strangest, yet tastiest slice of chocolate fudge cake to go with it at Norwoods cafe, restaurant & hotel in a courtyard just off the main street. Afterwards, before starting off home again, I had an enjoyable pootle around the Percy House Gallery (www.percyhouse.co.uk) in the market place. The gallery is situated in a 16th century architectural beauty of a buiding which is deceptively small looking from the outside. There are many nooks and rooms within retaining many original features. It was as much of a pleasure exploring the building as it was looking at all the interesting art works on show.


On the return journey I travelled through the atmospheric beauty of the Lake District & arrived home strangely whacked out, good for nothing except slobbing in front of the tv and fantasizing over the eventual end results my new yarns will bring.