For Yarn and Fibre festivals!
So last weekend I went to my second festival in less than a month.
Bakewell is a beautiful little town in the middle of the Derbyshire Dales, only an hours drive from where I live. You can even get a bus there from Sheffield city centre, but as a few of us are not so steady on our feet any more, we thought we'd take the car. Bakewell is well worth the visit, even if there wasn't a yarn and fibre festival going on. There is a beautiful river to walk along, many lovely tea rooms to stop for lunch, and of course, it is the home of the famous Bakewell Tart.
I did buy a Bakewell tart, but we ate it far too quickly for me to get photos of it!
Instead, here is a photo I took from the bridge in Bakewell:
Just across this bridge is the Bakewell Agricultural Centre, and for one weekend it had been converted into a haven for fibre fanatics.
Now as you know, it's really not very long since I went to Yarndale. Then last week Countess Ablaze did a mid-month update of regular colourways. Now I knew I'd be looking at this update anyway, as I needed yarn for a particular test knit I've agreed to do, but as though she'd done it just for me, there was my favourite colourway, on my favourite yarn base! Nerds Prefer Their Rainbows Darker, on Viscount of Spark:
So between this and the test knit yarn, plus the money I'd spent at yarndale, I was really short on funds for Bakewell. In fact, I think I had less than £45 in my purse, and that included money for lunch.
So I wasn't expecting to actually buy much. I thought maybe I'd get a souvenir yarn and a bit of fibre, and be content with spending the day just looking at all the pretty things.
I was wrong! Look at all of this that I managed to buy:
That's 1 skein of shetland lace, 1 skein of sparkle sock yarn, 500g of various sheep fibre tops, a book on natural dying, a strip of felt with penguins on it, and a bag of Miyuki cube beads!
Plus, a big bowl of homemade roasted pumpkin and parsnip soup, with a fresh granary roll, for lunch from one of the lovely tea rooms in town.
Amazing, isn't it?
Both of the yarns are from Rosie's Moments. My mams memorial shawl was made from a Rosie's Moments yarn that I bought at Bakewell last year. The Shetland lace was actually in the bargain bin for just £6! Can you believe that? 900m of lovely autumnal beauty for such a small price.
There's a gorgeous pattern that I've been looking at for years that I think will look amazing in this yarn - Maple Leaf Shawl. It's designed for 4-ply, but I think it will work just as well knit in laceweight. It'll be a more sheer fabric, or possibly a smaller shawl, depending on which needle size I choose, but I'll swatch and see what I like best.
All the fibre came from Adelaide Walker, for just £2 per 100g. That's 500g of mostly British combed tops for just £10! Outstanding value in my opinion.
I also got to meet up with the very lovely James of the Dancing Geek Podcast and fondle his latest sock WIP.
I discovered the reason why Sleeping Beauty was able to prick her finger on a spindle, something that had always mystified me, as modern spinning wheels have no sharp spindle. The reason is this:
There's a cute little blue needle protector on the end of this one, because Health and Safety people! But this is the spindle on a Great Wheel, also known as a Walking Wheel:
This is what the very first spinning wheels were like, in the 16th Century. With no flyer, you manipulated the fibre around the tip of a spinning needle, much like the mechanism of a Spinning Jenny. If you were working very fast, it was easy to slip and find your hand pulled towards the needle by your new yarn.
In the background of that photo by the way, you can see some of the ShefKnit girls exclaiming over the new spinning wheel that Tracey bought while we were there :)
I managed to make myself a new contact, who may be able to supply me with a Turkish spindle. This is something I've been after for a while, but they're so difficult to find in the UK. You can buy them from the US, but the shipping cost is usually more than the value of the spindle!
Finally, I spoke to the lovely people at Sparkleduck about a particular colourway that I'd like for an especially epic pattern I want to knit. As they only dye a handful of skeins in each colourway at a time, there was no way I was going to find 3 full skeins in the colourway I wanted at any of the festivals. However, I've been told that I can request any of the regular colourways on any of the regular yarn bases, and they will dye it for me. So that is on my list of things to do after Christmas.
Yes, I know, I said the 'C' word. It's ok, it's not here yet...
Time to get back to that October WIP-down now...
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