Woolfest & Cumbria

We left for Cumbria last Wednesday in brilliant sunshine. Simon had gotten some cheap tickets for a National Trust property so we decided to stop at a property on the way up to Cumbria. We thought somewhere around Manchester would be good so I googled National Trust Manchester and Dunham Massey came up. It was close to the motorway so that's where we went.

It was definitely the right decision. The house was nice but not like some of the NT properties we have locally, although we did find out that one of the daughters of our local NT house, Lanhydrock House, married someone from Dunham Massey.

I left my camera in the car so I used my phone which takes rather 'foggy' looking photos. But look what we found just outside the main house. A herd of deer relaxing in the brilliant sunshine.

 We managed to get up really close and look in the photo above, there's a deer grazing right next to some girls relaxing on the grass. We've all seen black sheep but I didn't know there were black deer too. We only saw one black deer though.

 It was a very hot and sunny afternoon and there were quite a few people around, but the deer didn't care at all.

 The garden was beautiful with little ponds and a larger lake with swans.

 There were large lawned areas, patios, paths. 

 We walked around for a while then settled on a bench in the shade.

 This was my view from the bench while I was knitting.

 There were lots of beautiful flowers and inspirational colours.

 And an interesting 'whatever this thing is'.

 I'm so glad we stopped for a couple of hours as the next day when we were driving through Cumbria the weather was like this:

 This was driving across a pass which I've forgotten the name of now. The landscape was dramatic but I'd love to go back on a sunny day as we didn't get out of the car at all. I did take some pics from the car though.

 And yes it really was that dark outside and this was late morning.

 We drove around for a while on Thursday morning then headed to the Woolfest site for lunch time. This was our stall when I arrived (after Simon had started carrying in stuff from the car.

 This is what we transformed it into after 4 hours of work. We had a double stall this year and it took us a while to work out how best to utilise the space.

 The extra space meant I had more room to show off my shawls. I always put the Midnight Stole on my dress form at the front of my stall as it really makes people stop and look. This time i borrowed a dress form from a friend and also displayed the Lightning Shawl.

 We had some colourful yarn this year and a lot of this was gone by the end of Saturday.

 This was our busiest Woolfest ever and our best sales-wise. So I'd like to say a huge thank you to all our Woolfest customers who helped make this a successful event. Also a big thank you to the Wool Clip (organisers) who did a great job again this year. I've read today that there were over 5200 visitors over the 2 days. We were flat out for most of the day. I demonstrated 'how to knit with beads' 4 times each day and had a big turnout for the first 3 of the demos each day. The last demo was at 4.45 (just before closing time) and I only had 2-3 people on each of those demos. The demos were well received and I got a lot of positive feedback.

 It was great to meet old and new friends. Normally I manage to sneak away for a little time to look around the other stalls. This time we were so busy I couldn't get away. Keeping an eye on a double stall was too much for one person. I did manage to sneak off to the Textile Garden to stock up on buttons, which I've forgotten to photograph. I also managed to snap a pic of the knitted interpretation of 'The Scream'. It's a bit more colourful than the original but apart from that it's excellent. I had to take a pic of this as 'The Scream' is a Norwegian painting.

I managed to look around 2 aisles (out of about 10 aisles) and bought 2 balls of Excelana 4ply. I'm planning a shawl using this yarn and meant to buy some at Wonderwool but forgot so I was determined to get it this time. I'd planned to get grey and either blue or yellow but I just loved the red when i saw it.

A lot of the yarn is in the shop now but I've still got more to list which i'm working my way through.

Don't forgot to check out my two online classes for July that are enrolling now - Professional Finishing Techniques and Continental Knitting with Norwegian Purl.