Bakewell Wool Gathering

Bakewell 'Wool Gathering'  was a woolly temptation too far. This is a festival in it's second year - see here for details. I only heard about it recently and didn't want to miss the chance to go, despite the house  move ramping up. I sneaked off to Bakewell on Sunday morning. The weather was glorious, and the countryside was just unbelievably beautiful with the autumnul colours exploding around every corner and over each hill. I kept seeing photo opportunities as I was driving along, but was so conscious of limiting my time out that I didn't stop to take photo's, so I'm afraid I can't share any of the views. It's a small show but I can forsee it getting bigger as it becomes established in the festival calendar. There were a lot of different exhibitors with every colour and texture imaginable, from fleece to finished garment with everything else inbetween. There were quite a few workshop's but I just didn't have time to book into any.  I really would like to try spinning. The idea of being able to create my own yarn and make something from it is very appealing. It must be the primeval mother earthiness of it all. I know you can buy ANYTHING on the internet, but it's so rewarding to make something beautiful from scratch. Spinning also looks so rythmically relaxing, which might only be because the people demonstrating had spent years honing their spinning skills. I choose to believe that it is something that would come naturally to me. Hah, in my dreams. Next year I'll give it a go...maybe....
Of course I didn't get away without buying something. I really want to crochet a giant doily rug and Texere Yarns of Bradford had the very yarn for me. It's an Axminster rug wool on 250g cones and was exactly what I was looking for. I bought a selection of colours to brighten up our new temporary home and started experimenting the same evening. I started with 4 strands of the denim/purple colour and a 6mm hook. Then I plied it up to 6 strands with a 7.5mm hook. The jade colour only needed 4 strands to match the purple, and the pink was the same. .After several restarts to try out different ply's of yarn and hook size I haven't got much further. It is like the incredible shrinking rug. I did get to 3 rounds of colour last night, which makes it a whopping 12 or more inches, but I wasn't at all happy with the centre loop so I ripped it all back and started again, but this time with a magic loop. I'll let you know how I get on!