Woolfest

Woolfest is held in Mitchells Lakeland Livestock Centre near Cockermouth in the Lake District and is organised by WoolClip as a celebration of natural fibres and all things wool.

This was my first to Woolfest and I really enjoyed my day - although was exhausted at the end of it. The setting in the Livestock Centre is obviously very atmospheric and they have some rare breeds of sheep there too. Everything in the day is related to wool and sheep - even the ice-cream was from ewe's milk - and was lovely!!

As a fundraiser you could hand in a knitted (or otherwise) sheep to be auctioned. This was fun to watch, but I just couldn't bear to part with Woolly so he was not put into the auction - and no other sheep would do for me so I didn't bid either!

There was plenty of stalls with lots of lovely things to buy. Mainly for spinning or felting though this year. I have done a bit of felting but bought some more roving and think I will try out some wet felting as well. There was not that much actual knitting wool there, but I did still manage to find some to buy. A lot of the wool was either aran type weight or lace weight or sock weight and a lot of it was the expensive hand-dyed stuff. I managed to buy some merino 4ply, some sock wool and a lovely lace weight wool and pattern to knit a lacy shawl - no don't ask for a timescale of when it will be finished!!

Back at our B&B we just had to have a look at our lovely purchases.

I did enjoy the day, was a bit disappointed that there did not appear to be many demonstrations at the stalls though. The Saturday was busy but not too busy - in fact one of the staffholders said that the Friday had been busier, so we chose the right day!

The weekend was lovely though and we stayed at a super B&B near Keswick - so had to visit the Old Keswickian chip shop for tea on Saturday!