Woolfest

Well, it was a long, hot weekend - we've had rain and thunderstorms before, so I shouldn't complain - but what fun! We saw lots of people we know and met even more lovely people for the first time.

There was nearly a fiasco with the tables on Thursday's setting up day. We'd left home very early, got to Cockermouth about 11, put the tent up and unpacked, and then waited for tables to arrive. And waited. It turned out that the company providing the vast amounts of sturdy trestle tables that most of the stallholders rely on thought they were needed by 9am on Friday morning - oops! Luckily someone from the Woolclip thought to ring and check, and they started arriving from about 4pm. So Mark grabbed two for us, then whizzed round and helped various other people to tables too. I unpacked our stall, arranged it in vaguely decorative fashion, then Mark and I took the lovely Denise out to the Mill Inn at Mungrisdale for dinner, which was much needed by then. We've been going there, on and off, for years - it's always excellent. And dog-friendly too, so the pups lay in heaps on the floor and didn't phase the waiting staff at all.


You can rather see that colour is my strong point! I found an odd comment on a photo of my stall at Wonderwool this year, that someone had posted on Flickr. Something along the lines of the brown tape, and how unprofessional it looked, and how careless it was to use it. Which rather misses the point of these events.

On Friday evening Mark and Denise and I sat up on the bank behind the auctino mart and enjoyed the beautiful evening. Our tent is the blue one below us. We've been doing Woolfest since its beginning, and I still haven't managed to explore Cockermouth. I know the Eastern Lakes well, but whenever we do Woolfest it's always straight up here and then straight home. I must somehow manage to take longer and stay around soon.

We charged off at speed on Saturday night - we were packed up, fed (in the canteen which does really good, basic food - pie and chips and salad for me!) and off by about 6.30. So we drove down the scenic way through St John's Vale, Grasmere, and Ambleside, and stopped to let the pups cool their feet.


They have been so good this weekend - they spent most of Friday and Saturday in the big crate in the shade of the tent or the van, and the evenings monstering on the bank. They've since been zonked for the two days we've been home.