Wonderwool

A day out at the Royal Welsh Showground yesterday, with Tracy and her husband Ian.
Last year, Wonderwool was part of the Smallholder's show. This year, they are sharing with Mid Wales Mouthful - so wool at one end and delicious local food and drinks at the other. It took me about an hour and a half to do one circuit - partly because I stopped to chat with Susy from Hay on the way round, but it really was big, and there really was a lot to see, and by the time I stopped for a cup of tea my eyes felt as if they were swirling round like a dazed cartoon character.
I did my shopping on the second pass around, and got everything I wanted, just about all of it stuff I couldn't find anywhere else. So I now have fleece ("This is from Hettie the Hebridean. She had twin lambs this year"), a cheap niddy-noddy and lucets and shuttles to use with kids, a hook to go with my spinning wheel which also has a measured inch gauge on the handle for measuring how many wraps per inch my yarn is, some more silkworm cocoons (I left my last lot behind in one of the schools where I used them as my "mystery object").
There was other stuff that I would have liked, but I was on a strict budget. There were a lot of alpaca breeders there this year, and I love spinning alpaca because it is so soft. There was yarn made out of sari silk, and a whole stall given over to hemp.
I found out how to make a sock on a Knatty Knitter, too, which seems much easier than trying to turn a heel in proper knitting, so I'm keen to give it a try now. Apparently you knit down the leg to the length you want. Then you go almost all the way round, and miss out a peg, turning back on yourself instead of carrying on round. At the other end of the row, you miss out the second peg, and go back, missing off a peg each time until you have only two pegs left with knitting on them. Then you start increasing again, by one peg each row, until you're knitting in the round again. The lady who showed me said that this is how old sock knitting machines worked.
There were things I'd never think of using, too - giant knitting needles as thick as broom handles, for instance
Tracy was launching her new project there, on the Bedecked stall - Patterns on a Postcard. She's got four hat designs with knitting instructions on the back of the giant postcard. Mittens and fingerless gloves will follow soon, and she met some interesting and useful people there, too, who might want her to design for them.
I found that I'd finally been published in the Coloured Sheep Breeders Newsletter, too - I wrote the article, on medieval lucets, last year - so I was very pleased to get a copy.