wool gathering

Here we have one of this years 'pet lambs' at the farm in Silverdale very noisily trotting around while we packed the fleeces into the car.A selection of crossbred North Country Cheviot and Blue faced Leicesters fleeces.All beautiful and huge!
Lots of triplet lambs this year so plenty of bottle feeding.I'll have their fleeces next year!

The first 3 bags ready to go to the spinning mill.About 40kgs in there.....and still more to go.

The Morecambe Bay Brand

                       The Morecambe Bay Brand will appear on all our wool from this years fleeces to show that the wool comes exclusively from 3 farms in this spectacular area.

Arnside/Silverdale AONB Local Food and Produce Festival 2016

OOPS,I set up a nice display of wool at The Silverdale Hotel as my contribution to this event.Its a lovely venue you can see the sheep in the fields next to the hotel and also have a great view of magnificent Morecambe Bay and the wool looks great.So why the OOPS? I forgot to take a picture!!

 

 

Very quickly took this picture before dismantling the display.It looked much better in real life on a window seat in the panelled entrance hall at the Silverdale Hotel.Many thanks to Caroline and everyone at the hotel for the loan of space and their interest!

 

Exporting to Australia!

This was really nice! Drinking tea in the kitchen with my brother on Sunday morning when he spotted 2 people at the front door and headed off  grumbling that they would be trying to sell something! However he then shouted 'lady here come all the way from Australia to buy some wool!' She hadn't really but they were from Australia,over here for 6 weeks and she wanted to buy some real wool from real sheep in each of the areas they visited and I was happy to sell her some! Don't know how she found me andI was too gobsmacked to ask and I also suppose thats why I didn't think to take a picture. She has promised to send an image of whatever she decides to make and that will be nice too!

Yarn Shop Day!

Looking forward to this event,kindly invited to join in by Maggie Baldwin of Crookilley Crafts which is a super venue!

Northern Yarns Lancaster

New Etsy shop selling yarns from across the North Etsy.com/shop/NorthernYarns.Just set up by Kate Makin and it looks lovely with lots of beautiful wool including some of mine! She's also on Twitter and Facebook and has loads of plans to promote British wool.

North Country Cheviot pencil rovings

Heres some pencil rovings I had made from 3 North Country Cheviot fleeces from the conservation grazer sheep.I had most of the crossbred Cheviot/Leicester and Bluefaced Leicester fleeces spun into yarn but there wasn't the quantity in these fleeces for millspinning.The mill suggested pencil rovings,something I'd heard of but not used.I'm finding them really interesting and versatile! A little twist on the spindle wheel gives me a good single thread which I've used as a weft thread and felted.That makes a really dense fabric that I like very much,possibly for bags.I've also plied it and knitted it with nice results and will keep experimenting. £1.65p per 50grams including postage and free samples sent out if you let me know.