Hello again,
Ewe & Ply HQ has been hectic again, well I suppose you would now expect nothing less.
Since the beginning of Spring we've been to two shows, Wonder Wool Wales and Wool@J13, and by the time this blog post is published, we'll hopefully have been to The British Wool Show in Thirsk as well.
Wonder Wool was great fun as always, and we had the opportunity to meet up with some of our suppliers, and also with some of our social media audience. Thank you to all of you who came and introduced yourselves to us, its great to put faces to the avatars.
I ran a casting on and off workshop called Beginning To End - matching cast ons and offs to suit the needs of particular garments. I confess I was rather nervous, and it does show. A Big Thank You goes out from me to the lady who, having attended my workshop on the Saturday, attended the Wool School on the Sunday and gave me a big hug before my next class. It really did help :)
Wool@J13 was a brand new show this year, and as it was really only just up the road from us, was a bit of a no brainer. It turned out to be a great success, and I think we'll be there again next year. As an event it was really well organised, and there were a lot of little touches that made it a bit special. I loved the horse box bar, and we were both really pleased that there was a exhibitors only tea room (not that we had time to sit and relax!).
It was especially nice to meet some new traders, especially River Knits (https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/RiverKnitsYarn), Staffordshire Buttons and Sue Stratford (https://www.suestratford.co.uk/ ). Even nicer for me was receiving a skein of River Knits hand dyed 4ply yarn in Starry Night for my birthday a few days after the show :)
Beginning To End ran again at this show, and was great fun. Through it I met the ladies behind Daisy Yarns (https://www.facebook.com/daisyyarns) who are just their yarn shop in Southport. They are very keen to offer a wide range of workshops and classes, so it was rather nice to know that the skills I was passing on would get passed on further still. There's so much life left in knitting even though its 2000 years old already.
Once back into our usual routines our next big event was shearing. Dicko came to give Teri's sheep their annual hair do, and I got to help round them up first. I actually felt useful this time :) I had a lovely day, I used to work with sheep a lot as a child/teenager, and earned most of my holiday money as a human sheepdog, so it was nice to have another go. Might need a bit more practice though... (I did manage to take a few pictures between serious conversations with Teri's matriarch Boss Girl - https://www.instagram.com/p/BUXcbCbAVH9/?taken-by=eweandply)
Since then we have been to the Sansaw Estate to collect more pedigree Shropshire fleeces, and next we'll have a trip down south to collect some very special fleeces.
Stay tuned for the next installment to find out what happens to all this fleece!
Toodle-pip!
Becca