Yarn in my Pocket

All about the alpacas

I've been a bit absent from the blog for the last week or so; it's all the fault of the alpacas.

Last Monday, I was selling and demonstrating weaving at Houghton Hall Alpacas. I'd intended to get two looms set up: the rigid heddle loom with a 'give it a go' project, and my Klik with an 8 shaft project. I ran out of time, though, so the Klik spent the event sitting elegantly, with a warp chain draped over it, so people could see how a multi-shaft table loom differs from a rigid heddle loom. I ended up putting a plain cotton warp on the RH, and taking along lots of miscellaneous blue and white scraps. I wove a firm header (using the same cotton, doubled), and then went for random blue and/or white stripes in the weft:

The idea was that weft-faced would be graphic, not difficult to weave, and easy to get decent selvedges on. A few people had a go, but most were convinced they could never do anything 'so complicated', and were scared of 'messing it up'. Those who did give it a try seemed more than pleased with the experience, though!

It was a relatively small event, from a fibre point of view; apart from myself, there were two spinners (demonstrating rather than selling), and Purl Alpaca Designs:

As always, their stand looked wonderful. I think they were previewing their new designs for Autumn, and had done a lot of work telling their fans about the event: a lot of die-hard fans had come to see them, some from quite a distance! Even a small event takes a lot of time and energy to set up, though, and I had difficulties for this one. We were told, two days in advance, that we needed to bring our own tables and chairs. Since I was already planning to bring two looms on stands, my stock, shelving, books and samples (oh, and I drive a Polo!), it just wasn't possible to fit much in. I took my sewing table, which is effectively a large bench, and built a low display area out of straw bales. Looking at the photo of my area, I can see now that it was too 'spread out' from the point of view of people coming into the building: something to remember for next time:

Sales were low, but I met some wonderful people, and we had some wonderful chatting time, all day long! (Oh, but it was cold! August Bank Holiday it might have been, but we were working in a wind tunnel, and it's been feeling autumnal here, lately...)

The real attraction of the place, though, was the alpacas. Lots and lots of wonderful animals were for sale, and I couldn't resist taking a few minutes for some snaps (even though I'd left the good camera at home - no room for it in the car!)

Alpacas are, of course, desperately cute, and they hum! Which is also cute, but one of these little black beauties did not shut up all day. Even a cute noise gets a bit wearing after the fourth hour or so, I can assure you.

72) That was the week(end), that was...

Recently, time does not seem to be flowing smoothly.  One afternoon seems to hang around forever, stretching out into infinity - then four days seem to be go past in a single lump.  This makes for sporadic blogging.

Nevertheless, the last week has been rather productive, all things considered.  I have:

• started seaming coppertop (ravelry link) - my two-week sweater, haha;
• finished plying the spindled silks;
• finished plying the Sweetgeorgia BFL/silk, featured mostly in this post;
• started spindle spinning some of my own batts ('Titania' - mixed purples with holographic angelina - here);
• made copious notes about what has and what hasn't worked in the garden this year.  However, these are all currently on the back of an envelope, so I can't share them with you yet;
• reached the crunch point on the Peacock shawl. I will be omitting one full repeat from the middle section.

Several of these items deserve blog posts of their own, but I am rather fond of the plied BFL/silk photos I took on Sunday, so I'm sharing those now:

That is a UK 5 pence piece tucked behind the yarn; that's slightly smaller than a US nickel (18mm as compared to 21mm, according to Wikipedia).  That's some pretty fine spinning!  In fact, this is the first time I've managed to get over 1000 metres of yarn from 100g of fibre, so it's a genuine milestone.  I'm not interested in spinning ultra-fine thread, but I am keen to spin true laceweight knitting yarns, and also yarns that could be woven into garment-weight cloth.

The glamour shot.  This yarn is one ply of silk and one ply of blue faced leicester (a lovely, soft, fine wool).  The flash on these shots really shows off the sparkle of the silk against the more matt texture of the wool - click for bigger to see it properly!

And don't you love that little wooden bowl?  It's maple burr, turned by a local craftsman, and I'm hoping it'll work well as a bowl for using with a support spindle.  It's taller and narrower than the ones I've seen in use, but I love it anyway.

I bought it on Saturday, at the Willingham Feast Market, where I and several others from Rampton Spinners were demonstrating spinning.  Geodyne originally organised the event but unfortunately couldn't make it on the day.  I'm pretty sure a wonderful time was had by all four of us who did make it, even though I dropped my phone down the loo (oops! - time for an iPhone, perhaps?)

This is the demo area as it looked just before the marked opened - we had wool, flax and silk on display, including a progression of flax from dried plant to spun fibre, and a lot of interest was shown by the public.

The left hand side of the display, showing Jo's range of spun and dyed fibres, plus tools and fabrics, (and books!!  I never thought to bring books..) along with my new toy (wool picker) and a bag of clean but unteased wool, and my Rampton bag from last year.  The wool picker deserves another post of its own, but was quite the hit with young boys; it relies heavily on long, black nails for its function, and looks like a mediaeval torture device on the inside.

Inadvertent amusement - and education - was provided by the nice man who came round offering us tea and coffee before the event opened.  I told him I'd brought my own, but thanked him for the offer.  Jo only drinks hot chocolate, so he talked her into that - then, when she finally agreed, informed her that that would be one pound, please.  Both of us were ...slightly gobsmacked.  Bear in mind that we were 'working' at this event for free, and a free cup of tea or the like is a nice (and relatively common) way to say thanks.  It was a funny experience rather than an unpleasant one - but it's a lesson in customer service/expectation management, too.  I don't think that either of us would have minded paying if the price had been clear from the beginning - especially as the proceeds go to charity.  But both of us - even me, and I wasn't the one getting a drink! - felt slightly .. what?  Affronted?  Cheated?  Tricked, I think is the best word.  And the sad part is that I'm sure he didn't mean to make us feel like that.

The really notable part, the one that anyone who deals with customers of any kind should note, is that this is the experience, out of all those I had that morning, that I've chosen to write about here.  They say it takes five positive experiences to outweigh a negative.  I suspect that is a conservative estimate.