I loaded up the car with spinning wheel, lunch, flask of coffee, carders, batts, rovings, knitting, etc, etc and set off in the pouring rain. I met up with Sheila, Janet, and Alice from the Ceredigion Guild of Weavers, Spinners, and Dyers, and we started getting set up. This is the first time I've been to this event, and in previous years when the weather has been OK the spinners have been close to the shearing, but this year we were in some stables out of the rain, a bit away from the shearing action. At least we had easy access to water - if you wanted to use the trough!
We were allowed to drive our cars in to unload and move them to the car park before the visitors arrived. Walking back with Sheila we went to see about the fleece we were supposed to have for the demo. Surprise, surprise Jos was the shearer! Haven't seen him for a while, he taught me to shear (not that I did much), and sheared our sheep for us until last year when he hurt his hand quite badly. Nice to see him back shearing, he does a good job, treats the sheep and the fleece with respect. You can't say that about all shearers!
I picked out a ewe who looked nice, and her fleece was dry (although they were under cover in the pole barn, the rain had blown in and some of them were more than a little bit damp) so Jos pulled her out of the pen and sheared her for me. A few minutes later I was hugging a nice warm newly sheared Llanwenog fleece under my umbrella and heading back to the others.
Sheila spun the fleece in the grease on her wheel, and Alice spun some on a drop spindle. I spent the day spinning some white alpaca batts that I made a while ago on my drum carder. I now need to drum card some more and spin another bobbin full so I can ply it. Duh. Should have weighed and divided it up before I started. Ho hum. Dim problem, I have plenty of fibre!
We had a lot of visitors and a lot of interest from people of all ages, it was a pleasant day.
Nearly forgot to say (how could I forget!) ... just as we started to eat our lunch a TV crew from S4C arrived. They were doing a piece about the shearing day for the Welsh magazine programme, Wedi 3, and wanted to show what happens to the fleece after it comes off the sheep. Being a Welsh programme they needed a welsh speaker, so the NT lady (Janice) brought in a lady who knits but doesn't spin, and Sheila and Alice explained the process to her so she could tell the viewers. She was sat in front of me, so if you see someone behind her head down and spinning, that's me!
After that they took some shots of us all spinning, so I continued to keep my head down and tried not to fluff my spinning!
The item will probably go out next week. I think Wedi 3 is on most days, 3pm on S4C. Will have to set the recorder up.
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