Ibstock country fair

Yesterday was a beuatiful sunny day, I think the weather is playing tricks because it has begun to feel like autumn is coming, and then we have some glorious weather. We took a trip to Ibstock country fair, a local show that I found while looking for craft fairs.

I found this handsome chap, a Lincoln long wool, with some lovely looking fleece, but he (or possibly she, too much fleece to tell) was still wearing it, so I just looked longingly then left it alone.

In the craft tent there was yarn and fibre on offer, but I have recently bought yarn off the same seller at another show and I didn't like the feel of the fibre, so I left empty handed. My OH was amazed and thought I might be feeling ill!

For more, mostly non sheep related pictures of the show see here.

Melton Mowbray country show (the fibre bits)

Yesterday the weather perked up and we went across to the Melton Mowbray country show, I have some pictures of the fibre related bits to share with you all.

There was a pen full of alpacas, I think the owner said they are all Hucaya, but she has some Suri alpacas too. I have been learning the difference thanks to The Wonder Why Gal's super blog post. I was quite pleased to be able to identify the bag of Hucaya fleece by myself.

A bag of each of Suri and Hucaya came home with me, so I have another 200g to play with during the Tour de Fleece. I am looking forward to being able to compare the two.

A lovely alpaca shot taken by my OH. It was a very hot day and I think this one had had enough of being patted. I think the out of focus blob in the foreground is a stick, but near animals you should never look too closely just in case!

Too hot for this sheep in his long woolly coat!

There was a "Sheep show". They do a bit of a talk about sheep and farming followed by a shearing demo. This is a mini one with just four sheep. I learnt that the Suffolk breed was made by crossing the Norfolk Horn with the Southdown.

The one labelled as Suzie Southdown (behind the shearer) was actually a boy, I don't think we were meant to notice!

A shearing close up. The sheep receiving her haircut was a Scottish Mule. I claimed a handful of the fleece to add to my collection of breeds, it is soaking at the minute as it is very sheepy.

We noticed that the shearing demo sheep had had a belly trim, so I guess they do take some of the fleece off in the spring to avoid them getting too hot and reduce the fly strike risk. The show travels round all summer, which would be a long hot time to spend in full fleece.

There were some stands displaying spinning and knitting, but the people on them were busy chatting so I spent my time admiring the critters that give us their lovely fleeces instead.

If you would like to see some photos of the non fibre bits of the show, they can be found here.

Steam fair sheep

This weekend we went to a local steam fair. It was not really crafty focussed event although there was a small craft tent and a lady spinning. I think she was using a Kromiski Mazurka, it looked like one, although if I am right then they are a lot smaller than I realised. She was also combing peoples' dogs as they went past to be spun. I am really not too sure about dog fur yarn, doesn't it smell like dog?

There was also a rare breeds tent with some chickens and a few sheep. We all love sheep and their lovely wool so I took some pictures. Since I am a bear of very little brain (Winnie the pooh reference) I didn't take a picture of the breed labels, so I can't remember what they are.

These are long wools of some sort, a ram (hiding) ewe and lamb.

Inside the tent were two breeds of shorter wool sheep, a ewe and lamb of each. The lambs are pretty big, soon be weaning time I guess, they are almost as big as their mothers!

FO Friday- Little scrappy sheep

Hurrah for the return of Blogger! I thought I was going to miss FO Friday, but it is back in time, so here is another one of those stash busting projects that you think will be speedy but ends up taking much longer than expected.

Pattern: Sheep toys by Janice Anderson- http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/sheep-toys

Yarn: Rowan Wool Cotton in light brown and cream

Needles: 2.25mm dpns

Mods: Worked the legs and body in the round then switched to working flat for the head.

The finished sheepy is very cute but it is a fairly fiddly way to build a sheep.

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I am suffering from a little bit of project ADHD at the minute, nothing I have on the go grabs my fancy and I have a huge long list of things I want to make a start on. In the interests of keeping the WIP menace under control I have allowed one scrap down start and the making of a project page today. I also have two or three WIPs lined up for finishing this weekend.

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In other good news the postman brought a delightfully soft and squishy parcel today, looking forward to showing you the goodies tomorrow.

Meet the sheep

If you have ever read the hitchikers series I can't get the phrase "meet the meat" out of my mind having typed the title for this post. But this lady was not a meat sheepy.

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I was rummaging through some ancient pictures on my laptop a couple of nights ago and found this one, so I thought I would share. This is Poppy plus lambs, my first pet sheep. She was our first bottled fed lamb, and made it to the age of about 10 (quite a few years ago now). She rather enjoyed a nice stale rich tea biscuit :)

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Obviously back then I didn't know the awesomeness of spinning, which is a shame because it would have been nice to have some Poppy yarn, many of her offspring are still in my Mum's flock though.

If there's fibre I will find it!

Ok, so it was not exactly hidden, it was sitting in a tent waiting to be bought.

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We went to another show today, the Asby de la Zouch agricultural show. Lots of different animals to see this time- sheep, cattle, alpacas, horses, rabbits, ferrets, dogs as well as lots of other things to look at like dancing diggers, craft and food tents, show jumping and trade stands.

Sheep, of course:

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Alpaca with attitude: "You looking at me?!"

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Is it normal to look at anything fluffy and think "I wonder if I could spin that"?
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I got excited when I rounded the corner in one of the craft tents and saw a line up of spinners with wheels, a big display of handspun yarn and knitted items. No fibre though (sob!). The second time round I had a nice chat with a couple of them, they let me pet some silk roving, gave me the name of a rovings suppliers and told me that I should go to Woolfest in Cumbria next year (I think all spinners are enablers!).
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Fortunately there was another small stall selling some roving and yarn. Most of the fibre was unlabelled so I opted for a 50g bunch of Cheviot x Border Leicester. The label says it is by Moro Rovings.
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Finally a stroll over to the WI craft competition, I eyed up the hand knit socks and was very interesting to read the comment cards, think the competitions are not open to non members though.
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