Over the past weeks as I've been preparing for Yarndale at the end of the month, I've been playing around with some new dye techniques, and finding some fantastic ways to put colour on fibre!

Back on the podcast a little while ago, Allison suggested that I should try speckled fibre. As someone who has been slow to get on the speckled yarn bandwagon, I was a little bit dubious as to how that would look on fibre and then again as handspun yarn, but I've been trying it out and I am really pleased with the results!

What's even more interesting is that the speckles on the fibre in Sand Creatures ended up blending in the handspun yarn in ways I didn't expect.

I'm really looking forward to seeing how these colourways look spun up in different ways as other spinners put their own touches on them.

While the process I've developed for speckled fibres is more time-consuming than my standard dye process, it does allow me to layer on colours in ways that end up very unexpected sometimes!

*Anakinra, the August Lab Goddess Fibre Club colourway*

I'm working on a few more different variations in the run up to Yarndale (including [left] Sunshower on BFL and [right] Gorse on Superfine Falkland), so if you're intrigued, please come by and have a squish in person! I'll be on Stall 163, and I hope to see you there!

I'd not been to Yarndale, the spectacular Yorkshire celebration of all things colourful and woolly, before this past weekend, and I am definitely going back! From the location for the show to the spectacular decorations to the wide array of vendors, it was absolutely lovely.

First up: the venue - held in the Skipton Auction Mart, the site for Yarndale is not what would immediately spring to mind when thinking about a show venue. There's a rough concrete floor, and vendors are literally penned in - most stalls are placed inside one of the animal pens. And while this may strike you as a bit odd, as a vendor it was akin to having a ready made shell system. We took advantage!

Then there was the decoration of the hall - I sadly did not get a photo of the famous Yarndale Bunting, but there was plenty of added colour to enjoy!

Then there were the critters - alpaca, bunnies, sheep on every aisle. I was particularly taken by the matched set of alpacas at the end of our row on Saturday.

Then there were the sheep: Herdwicks, Shetlands, Jacobs, Wensleydales - just about everything you could possibly imagine!

Thanks so much to everyone who came by the booth over the weekend - it was a pleasure to meet so many of you! If there's something that you wish you'd grabbed at the show, the shop is now back online so go over and have a browse. If you don't see what you're looking for, let me know through the contact links at the bottom of the page. And hopefully I will see you next year in Skipton!

Trying new things

Home from Yarndale

Porpoise Fur