We had a lovely weekend for Fibre East this year - no rain, despite the promise of a shower or two, sunny but not baking, and a breeze to lighten it up a little on the Sunday.
Our new tent went up without a problem (having bought it on eBay back in May, to give ourselves plenty of time to give it a test run, of course we didn't). We spend time with old friends, met new ones,
And this was the first big show with my new look presentation.
I've dyed my table covers, left the shelves at home and used two flat-pack chairs and a plank for Gladys The Sheep, and Mark spent a while putting hooks and rails on a wood and paper three-panel screen I've had for ages and ages.
The bags I've always kept my fibre in were starting to look a little sad, and I'd noticed that sometimes the material it was made of would dull the colours. And the whole point of my hand-dyed fibre is the COLOURS, so not being able to see them rather defeated the purpose.
Now, all I have to do is see if the braids end up looking a bit 'handled' at the end of the season. Mind you, I think a lot of the wear and fuzzing that braids get is due to storage, and we also invested in some new storage from Ikea (what would wool shows do without Ikea??), which are boxes rather than bags, so once the fibre's packed away between shows it shouldn't move at all.
I also have a few one-off sockyarns as well as my usual BFL, BFL/nylon, and merino.
I had a huge run on my bags of scoured and dyed fleece, which I had thought would last me the rest of the season, so I had to have a panic run to the Sheep Sanctuary tent on Saturday afternoon to see what fleeces they still had. I picked up three: a Lleyn, a Suffolk cross, and a surprisingly lovely tan-faced Mule that I managed to get washed and dyed this week. All to be done in the next few weeks.
I have a few new colours this year, Foxglove (which I'm really pleased with, as I've nailed the colours of this year's amazing foxglove display) and Selkie (the blues and greens of water, the browns and greys of seal fur).
Sadly, none of it is going to go online in my Etsy shop until after my last show of the season. But in the meantime, coming up I still have:
I could do with time at home to have a good sort out and start some more dyeing, but I'm teaching my 'Woollen and Worsted' workshop at Peterborough Guild of WSD tomorrow (note to self, make sure we know where we're going) and visiting Nunnington Hall on Sunday to pick up fleeces.
No rest for the wicked. Or even the slightly naughty...
Comments
Post a Comment