23rd July heralded the last day of the Tour de Fleece 2017. It also heralded the 2nd day of Le Lot et La Laine, the wool festival which takes place every two years here in south west France. I usually buy lots of luscious fluff to last me until the next one happens in another two years. This year was no exception.
The first thing to catch my eye was this merino fleece. I really need merino fleece - like a hole in the head! But I'm sort of addicted to the stuff, good quality stuff anyway. This was gorgeous, and once I'd had my fingers in there I just couldn't walk past!
I think the first thing to attract me was how uniform the locks were. The photo above looks a bit disorganised, but that's probably because I've been fondling it so much! The second thing was the softness, and the third the crimp. Just look at the crimp on that!
I did hold myself back with this, buying only a kilo instead of the whole fleece!
Normally when I visit this wool festival I walk around once just looking. Then I walk around a second time buying those things that particularly caught my eye. Then I walk around a third time (laden with bags!) and hoover up all those little bits and pieces that I missed previously. Well, that didn't really work this year. When I saw this next fleece I snapped it up immediately!
This is "super kid" mohair fleece that I first spied two years ago. Unfortunately she didn't have any fleece for sale then, she just had a small sample on the table. I grabbed a sample and her card hoping to snag a fleece when she'd done her shearing, but it never happened. This year there were 500g bags of the stuff, so one of those immediately went into my shopping bag.
The next item was also a "snaffle it first time round" buy. This is 100g cashmere top. What more can I say, it's gorgeous and I had to have it. I'm looking forward to dyeing this and blending with some of my other super-duper purchases.
After that lot, I started my second trip round (by now hubby had slunk away back to the car park and sat in the shade of a tree playing his ever-present guitar!). He did take all my bags with him though to put into the car.
A bit of colour was needed next and I can never resist pink! This is a mix of kid mohair, suri alpaca, Teeswater fleece and tussah silk. The first of my "easy spins" which I save for those days when I need to spin but don't have any raw fleece prepared. These are my treat days when I look into the cupboard and pull out something soft and colourful. Quite often these go with me in the camper van when we're planning to be away for a few days.
This next one is only 35g, but I was looking for "ingredients" for making batts. Kid mohair again - seems to be a theme this year! I know I could just have dyed some of the mohair fleece I bought, but the colours drew me in and I was hooked.
These next two bags contained two dyed batts each. The batts had been carded into a sheet and then hand-painted with dye. I would have been afraid of felting doing it this way, but these are definitely not that - they're still very pliable and easy to pull apart. The first one is a mix of Blue Faced Leicester, Merino, and Polwarth with a bit of glitz, baby alpaca, tussah silk and gold angelina thrown in.
The second was Merino and Polwarth again, but this time she'd used brown BFL plus a bit of glitz and tussah silk.
My final bit of colour isn't what it looks like! I tried to adjust the photo to reflect the true shades, but I'm stuck with it looking brown. This is actually mostly grey with a bit of brown. Here it looks mostly brown with a bit of grey! This might not seem important, but when you hate brown with a vengeance, it matters!!
Oh, and this was 60% merino, 20% silk and 20% yak (I've never spun yak before!)
Last but not least, I needed to top up my batt-making supplies. So into the shopping bag went 50g each of bamboo, rose and milk fibre. The last two I've never used before so something new again.
Our next door neighbours came (separately) too, so after our exciting afternoon (well, exciting for Tammy and me!), we all met up in Cahors on our way back south and had an enormous ice cream. No photos of that, they disappeared too quickly!
The first thing to catch my eye was this merino fleece. I really need merino fleece - like a hole in the head! But I'm sort of addicted to the stuff, good quality stuff anyway. This was gorgeous, and once I'd had my fingers in there I just couldn't walk past!
I think the first thing to attract me was how uniform the locks were. The photo above looks a bit disorganised, but that's probably because I've been fondling it so much! The second thing was the softness, and the third the crimp. Just look at the crimp on that!
I did hold myself back with this, buying only a kilo instead of the whole fleece!
Normally when I visit this wool festival I walk around once just looking. Then I walk around a second time buying those things that particularly caught my eye. Then I walk around a third time (laden with bags!) and hoover up all those little bits and pieces that I missed previously. Well, that didn't really work this year. When I saw this next fleece I snapped it up immediately!
This is "super kid" mohair fleece that I first spied two years ago. Unfortunately she didn't have any fleece for sale then, she just had a small sample on the table. I grabbed a sample and her card hoping to snag a fleece when she'd done her shearing, but it never happened. This year there were 500g bags of the stuff, so one of those immediately went into my shopping bag.
The next item was also a "snaffle it first time round" buy. This is 100g cashmere top. What more can I say, it's gorgeous and I had to have it. I'm looking forward to dyeing this and blending with some of my other super-duper purchases.
After that lot, I started my second trip round (by now hubby had slunk away back to the car park and sat in the shade of a tree playing his ever-present guitar!). He did take all my bags with him though to put into the car.
A bit of colour was needed next and I can never resist pink! This is a mix of kid mohair, suri alpaca, Teeswater fleece and tussah silk. The first of my "easy spins" which I save for those days when I need to spin but don't have any raw fleece prepared. These are my treat days when I look into the cupboard and pull out something soft and colourful. Quite often these go with me in the camper van when we're planning to be away for a few days.
This next one is only 35g, but I was looking for "ingredients" for making batts. Kid mohair again - seems to be a theme this year! I know I could just have dyed some of the mohair fleece I bought, but the colours drew me in and I was hooked.
These next two bags contained two dyed batts each. The batts had been carded into a sheet and then hand-painted with dye. I would have been afraid of felting doing it this way, but these are definitely not that - they're still very pliable and easy to pull apart. The first one is a mix of Blue Faced Leicester, Merino, and Polwarth with a bit of glitz, baby alpaca, tussah silk and gold angelina thrown in.
The second was Merino and Polwarth again, but this time she'd used brown BFL plus a bit of glitz and tussah silk.
My final bit of colour isn't what it looks like! I tried to adjust the photo to reflect the true shades, but I'm stuck with it looking brown. This is actually mostly grey with a bit of brown. Here it looks mostly brown with a bit of grey! This might not seem important, but when you hate brown with a vengeance, it matters!!
Oh, and this was 60% merino, 20% silk and 20% yak (I've never spun yak before!)
Last but not least, I needed to top up my batt-making supplies. So into the shopping bag went 50g each of bamboo, rose and milk fibre. The last two I've never used before so something new again.
Our next door neighbours came (separately) too, so after our exciting afternoon (well, exciting for Tammy and me!), we all met up in Cahors on our way back south and had an enormous ice cream. No photos of that, they disappeared too quickly!
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