Why I love Wonderwool
EVERY SPRING, I look forward to Wonderwool Wales – the annual yarn festival that’s like a ray of sunshine after the long winter. The show has a special place in my heart, as it’s an event I enjoy with my mother. We’ve had many memorable days exploring the aisles together, discovering amazing new yarns, and chatting to the endlessly fascinating exhibitors.
There’s a lot of dreaming involved, too – we marvel at the spinners working away at their wheels, or the weavers at their looms, and wonder if one day we’ll have the time and money to take up these wonderful crafts. We squeeze all the yarns and ponder what we could make with them; we admire the garments on display, and wonder if we have the skills to make them.
There’s something about the location of Wonderwool, too, that makes it special. The drive to the Royal Welsh Showground outside Builth Wells in Powys always takes my breath away. The twisting road winds its way through hills covered with gorse, bracken and slate; as we arrive, and walk up the path through the grounds to the exhibition halls, we breathe the fresh mountain air, and often hear the call of buzzards overhead.
This year, I enjoyed Wonderwool as much as ever, and although I’m a regular visitor, I still made lots of discoveries. The yarn highlight for me was the Yeavering Bell from Whistlebare. Alice explained how the yarn was produced from her flock of Wensleydale sheep and mohair goats, and is spun at Laxtons in Yorkshire; the result is soft and lustrous, and knits up beautifully.
Products sure to end up on my Christmas list are the beautiful wooden yarn bowls made by Woodbeach in Machynlleth; the hammered silver bangles decorated with usable stitch markers from An Caitín Beag; and the incredible silver jewellery and tools made by Lyn Roberts. My favourite item on her stand, a gorgeous shawl pin, had been cast from a leaf picked up in a Pembrokeshire forest, Lyn told me.
Happy faces were everywhere to be seen at Wonderwool, with lots of friends of The Knitter busy working at the show – the lovely Jeni from Chester Wool Co., Marie Wallin, Jane Crowfoot, Belinda Harris-Reid, and many more. It was great to see Jamieson’s of Shetland at the show – their staff looked fantastic in their intricate Fair Isle knitwear.
Most fascinating for me was meeting Astrid and Janice from the Williams Gansey Project. This will be providing handknitted ganseys for the crew of a tall ship, making a voyage from Blyth, Northumberland to Antarctica in 2019.