Woodstock Fleece Festival

I visited the Festival on Saturday with one of my knitting friends.

This is from their own website. "The Woodstock Fleece Festival is an annual event that invites fibre artists and others to join together in an atmosphere of appreciation, learning and camaraderie.  The show will incorporate workshops and demonstrations from top instructors.  Exhibition booths will be selling everything from raw fibre to quality finished goods.  It is also a great place to have lunch!"

You can find their website here. 

This festival was a little different from the other shows I've attended this year. I was at both the DKC frolic and the Kitchener-Waterloo Knitters Fair. When we arrived the first thing we saw was livestock, alpaca's, goats, sheep and rabbits. I'm a city girl so I don't normally get to see where most of my fibre comes from. The show had fewer vendors than the others I've been to but this is just their second year and the vendor list was much longer than for 2009.Clearly it's a growing event and its attracting a good variety of vendors some I'm familiar with as well as many that were new to me. It's also an event that spinners would enjoy as there were roving's available at many booths as well as spinning wheels and accessories. 

There was a lot of alpaca available. I'm very fond of alpaca I love it's drape and the combination of lightness and warmth. This shawl is knit from fingering weight alpaca that was kool aid dyed.

The pattern is available here. The pattern shows a commercially available yarn that the test Knitter used for my sample but any fingering weight yarn will work.

I also had the opportunity to talk to a lovely woman (I forgot to ask her name) from the Alpaca Fibre Co-operative of Ontario about why we tend to see only the natural colours of alpaca. She told that generally alpaca is seen as a natural product and at this point the growers are not keen on the idea of chemical dyes. The natural colours are beautiful, gorgeous grays, creamy naturals and camel shades which are supposed to be the upcoming hot fashion colour. 

I did buy some yarn and Wanda took home some square sock needles. I'll be interested to hear how she likes working with them.

There were also vendors selling finished products like sock's, mittens and sweaters. A few yarns stores were there and some of the hand dyers were represented. As well as many others too numerous to list. You can see the complete vendor list here.