Woolfest 2012

Firstly, apologies for the lateness of this blog, but I've been having computer problems, but these have now been resolved.
I drove over to Cockermouth early on Thursday morning, 2 reasons, Firstly, high winds were forecast for the A66, which when I'm towing a trailer, I was not looking forward to, and secondly the Olympic Tourch was due to arrive in Cockermouth around 4pm and I didn't wnat to get caught up in all the traffic.
Well the winds weren't too bad and I missed all the traffic, but lots of other stallholders had, had the same idea and arrived early, but we all had to wait until 2.30 before we were able to start and set up our stalls as the mart was still being cleaned out.

Here is my stall on the Tursday night, it's not a good photo as the light wasn't particularly good, as the weather had started to turn for the worse. It started to rain that evening and I think it forgot to stop. A 100mm of rain fell over the next 18 hours and at one point on the Friday we were all watching the water run down the steps from the top car park, it looked like a waterfall the rain was so heavy, then the winds decided to blow to a point that the trees were nearly horizontal!!! By 4 o'clock several tents had collapsed or were flooded out by the rain. I spent a very rocky night in my campervan being buffeted by the wind. By Saturday the wind and  rain had subsided somewhat, but Tim caught a train from Middlesbrough to Penrith, from where I picked him up from the station so that he could drive the worst part of the A66 with the campervan and trailer.
From a sales point of  view, Friday was a quiet day, I suspect most people were put off by the bad weather, but despite the flooding on the A66 Saturday was a much busier day and overall my sales were just as good as last year.
I did treat myself to one or two things this year, a drop spindle made from Holly, a sample niddy noddy, a darning mushroom (all made for me by Joan at Woodland Turnery). I also bought some wool from the Natural Fibre Company, not sure what I'm going to knit with it, I just liked the colour.
I thankfully, don't have to do a lot to get ready for Fibre East in a couple of weeks time, though I have decided to dye a Kerry Hill x Oxford Down fleece that I found when I was packing up my fleece store. Lets just hope the weather improves for Fibre East as it's in a marquee!