Saturday 26 June 2010

Woolfest

The end of the holiday coincided with the annual Woolfest in Cockermouth, what a coincidence that my OH booked this week off :). It was my first time at the festival (OH has been 3 times before) and it was a bit overwhelming, if only for the vast number of people crammed in.

Sadly some of the people I wanted to speak to weren't there but there was still lots of stalls and displays and rather painfully for my wallet a fleece sale. Even worse the fleece sale was right by the entrance so we only made it about 20 yards in before having to return to drop off the first haul to the car. Also many thanks to Enys at Growing Colour for babysitting the 2 Dyer's knotweed and madder plants, that we got from her, till we could pick them up at the end.When not browsing there were a couple of demonstrations on fleece selection and rare breeds the latter of which is shown below


And of course a number of fleece animals to see, with an emphasis on the rare breeds that were the focus for the festival this year. Glad that the Manx I sheared last week had much smaller horns than the lad in the middle.And despite stuffing my face on holiday the highlights were still the delicious ewe's milk ice cream and a pint of Jennings and cake at the end of the day.

Then at the end of the day just time for a last raid on the fleece sale to pick up some more fleeces giving me a grand total of 5: Soay, Teeswater, TeeswaterxShropshire, Portland and BowmontxShetland. Just got them in the car
Good job I also bought some more scouring agent

2 comments:

  1. Lovely, I've never seen you looking happier than you did at Woolfest Jon, you were in your element LOL I got half a Polwarth with Agusta and my sil just emailed to say she has 2 more fleeces for me (don't know which breed yet) - I'm going to help with shearing later this week and I have 2 Romney shearlings coming too - I may need a source for that scouring agent!

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  2. I think we need a bigger car...

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